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You are here: Home / Home Improvement / Fixing a Sagging Floor

Fixing a Sagging Floor

January 18, 2014

I finished up the basement support beam last night. We no longer have a floor in the log cabin that sags or bounces. When you walk up there, it’s as firm as a fiddle. And it only cost me around $15.

I already showed you the first half of this project. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it right here. If you have, then just keep on reading.

Since I had already set up the support beam, all I had to do was get some lumber, set up some cement blocks, do some measuring and cutting and BAM – done. So that’s what I did. And I have pictures to prove it. I’ll go through them below.

Laser Level

Sagging Floor Joist

Laser Level On Floor Joist

The first thing I like to do when I’m fixing a sagging floor is to see how bad it really is. In this case, I knew the situation wasn’t terrible. Probably a half inch at most. What we really noticed and what the main problem was was the bounce. Laura would stand on one part of the floor and I would jump on another. Let’s just say she would feel it. So that was my main concern. The floor has a 12 foot span across, so it really needed some sort of a support below.

It’s very simple to measure the sag of a floor with a laser level. I like to set it up with a regular thumb tack and then let the laser do the rest. I start the laser on the lower most part of the floor joist and run it along the beam to the lowest part of the other side. If you see a red line somewhere in the middle, you have a joist that sags. And if you measure how far the line is up on the joist, you’ll know how much does.

Measuring Basement Support Beam

Cement Blocks in Basement


Next, I measured where I was going to put the posts. Initially, I was going to screw together two 2x4s each to create two 4x4s. That would give me two posts. I changed my mind when I realized that I didn’t need that much strength down there. The posts are only holding up less than 100 pounds, so I decided to keep them as 2x4s and put in three. Three is better than two.

After I measured where I was going to put the posts (4 feet apart), I hung a weighted string to cement blocks below. I wanted the cement blocks directly centered below the posts. This would make things very simple when it was time to install each post.

Jacking Up Basement Floor

This picture is out of order. I simply wanted to show you the floor jack and board I used to jack up the floor. Later on and once the cement blocks were set up, I put the jack on the cement floor and worked from there. Here, I was looking to see how heavy the floor was going to be.

Leveling Basement Support Column


After I jacked up each section where each post would go, I placed the 2×4 on the cement blocks. I marked where to cut them, cut them and pushed them into place. I made sure to keep them level and then let the jack down. If I did a good job measuring, the floor wouldn’t lower. It didn’t.

End of Basement Support Beam

Since there was very little weight at the end of the support beam, I used a piece of 2×4 to hold that section up. It was dipping down slightly, so this was necessary.

Basement Support Columns

A perfect job. Now, the floor doesn’t bounce at all and is totally level. The picture above looks distorted because of my wide angle lens. Don’t let that fool you – things are straight.

Related posts:

  1. Setting Up a Cheap Basement Support Beam
  2. Adding Support Posts to an Old Garage
  3. Installing Lally Columns and Footings for Girder Beam
  4. Moving to the Log Cabin
  5. Kitchen Cabinets for the Basement

Filed Under: Home Improvement

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Comments

  1. Jeff says

    January 18, 2014 at 8:02 pm

    Nicely Done!

    Reply
    • Jay Gaulard says

      January 18, 2014 at 9:05 pm

      Thanks Jeff!

      Reply

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