How To Level Your Floors In Old House

You re dealing with older material.

How to level your floors in old house.

Place heavy duty floor jacks under the low spots. Foundation repairs are the most expensive reason for sagging floors in old houses. The question is how do you level a floor that sinks toward the center of a home. Over time the dirt your house sits atop can compact causing the foundation to sink.

Assign a person to each jack and raise the jacks slowly and at the same time until the spirit level shows the house is level. Foundations settle over time. Run a line outside the house and mark the low spots in the foundation. If your house is built over a basement first inspect all of the basement support beams and posts where they meet the floor.

Be suspicious of wood posts set on dirt floors or wood posts with concrete poured around the post bases. The only problem with owning an older house is that you can run into a myriad of problems. Having an older house can add a lot of character especially if you are into that style and design. Even brand new houses experience some movement of the foundation.

If you have a crawl space foundation which is common in the south a sagging floor often means you have a structural problem with your floor joists or beams. Before taking steps to level a floor you must find out why it s not level. You will have to make sure your joists can handle the addition of considerably more weight from the plywood subfloor and any floor coverings. And how much of this can.

Lay a long level downhill on the floor with one end of the level on the level part of the floor and the other end at the lowest point. Place your level in several different spots as you did before to get a more accurate reading of the floor s overall slope. If you have uneven floors in old house issues you can rectify this. The level shouldn t be off by more than 3 16 inch 0 48 cm any minor deviations you happen to discover shouldn t impact the stability of the finished floor.

Determine the underlying problem. On the top side of the floor another fix it idea to lay down new hardwood over the existing floor. As the posts slowly rot and melt into the floor the house settles accordingly bottom to top. Raise the lower end of the level until the bubble is centered then measure the distance from the bottom of the level to the floor to find the depth of the dip.

Check the level again.