How To Jack Up A Floor To Level It

Figure 3 jacking up floor joists.

How to jack up a floor to level it.

Then measure the distance between the bottom of the level and the level area of flooring. The only tools required is a bottle jack string straight claw hammer circular saw and a light source. It took a long time for your floor to sink so you can t push it back up quickly without causing cracks and stress in the building. It consists of two heavy steel pipes one inside the other.

Make repairs to settling piers and weak joists to fix swagging floors and roof lines. Make sure that the lumber or lally posts are perpendicular when jacking or. Figure 3 shows the jacking process. Don t jack it up too high just high enough to remove the post.

The long term solution for your sagging floor is to remove the flooring replace or fix the problems with the foundation that may contribute to the sag and replace the flooring. A screw jack is a metal support post that can be adjusted to level the floor. Your foundation may not be the problem. The screw jack is attached with nails to the underside of the girder and to the wood block atop a concrete pier.

If you have a sagging floor you may need to use floor jacks in order to restore any low points and re level the floor using floor jacks to level a sagging floor should be viewed as a temporary solution to your problem. The 4 inch lally posts can be replaced by 6 x 6 inch lumber. Jacking must proceed slowly. If an engineer found no structural issues you may be able to level the floor by applying a cement based self leveling floor product such as henry level.

As with other structural repairs jacking must also be done appropriately. You cannot simply put a screw jack under the lowest spot and start turning. For instance you may have a dining room floor that end to end is level but between those two points are various sags and dips. Instead it may be an issue with joists and beams below your floor that require shoring up.

Raise each jack by 1 8 inch at a time this will help to reduce any damage to window frames and plaster or drywall walls above the floor. The inside pipe is threaded and adjusted up and down by turning a large wing nut. Place one end of a level on the high spot and the opposite end to a predetermined level area on the floor.