step one of the Great Lift is complete. today we cleared a bunch of space in basement, ie finished finding places for everything we removed from 1st floor, and installed support jack to brace the 1st floor beam, which will be placed under significant load when we start jacking up the 2nd floor.
the support jack is really just the little black metal tube that's sitting at intersection of wood cross we built to distribute load into the basement floor. the jack is pressing on 4x4 post that's finally braced against the beam. the white stripe behind it is the original wood post that inspector told us should be replaced with metal so it's less prone to failure due to fire or stray saw blade. we'll be putting in a proper metal post (or two) with concrete footings soon.
engineer recommended a direct line of contact between hydraulic jack and foundation, which means positioning it over the beam, but also providing support between beam and sub-floor. caught a lucky break with location of 1st floor joist, which can be seen where we pulled section of basement ceiling down, in that it's located EXACTLY beneath the lowest joist in 2nd floor, ie the one that needs the most lifting. if we were talking about newer construction i wouldn't be surprised to find the joists vertically aligned, but so far there's absolutely nothing standard about the original construction of this house -- it's 100 years old after all.
uhhh...wow.
Posted by: douglas | 2005.11.17 at 19:08