# 1890s Post and Beam Farm House Basement issues



## grammyrobinfarm (Jul 18, 2013)

Hi All,

We purchased our farm in August 2012 knowing that the house would need some work. The original part of the house is post and beam and rests on a stone foundation that is about two feet thick. There is one ten foot section that has been replaced /patched with concrete block. The floor is dirt, unfinished. I have one corner of the house that is close to grade and the outer beam resting in the foundation is rotted out which has caused the wood floor in that corner to be bowed as it is resting on the rock wall not the beam. Pretty much all of the floor support beams will need to be replaced and as I am going to be tearing out the whole floor exposing the basement, that instead of replacing the beams I may fill in the basement and put in a concrete slab. Is this feasible and if so do you think I may have issues with the original stone foundation that I plan on leaving.The main reason I am thinking of going this route is I could then have in floor radiant heat that I could hook up to the outdoor boiler I will be installing next summer. Does anyone here have experience with old basements and replacing them or filling it in?


----------



## Maura (Jun 6, 2004)

You could possibly build the foundation you want and move the house onto it. I've seen it down with old farmhouses and it adds years to the house.

I don't know why you want to rip out all of the floor boards. You can put the tubing under the existing floor. We built new, but with the subflooring in, we used aluminium fins to hold the tube and drilled a hole in the beam when we went from one bay to the next.


----------



## grammyrobinfarm (Jul 18, 2013)

I need to replace all of the floor beams and as the floor itself is not in the best condition I have decided to replace that as we'll. so basically I will be tearing out everything and replacing, so if I decide to go the route of filling in the basement now is the time to do that


----------



## simi-steading (Sep 27, 2012)

I've been repairing a house all this past year doing pretty much what you want. Only difference is I didn't have a basement, only crawl space.

I had to remove all of the floor and joists. I had to replace a rotted 10x10 beam. What I did was stacked 2x10's together and ran lag bolts through them to build one solid beam.

I then put it in, being sure to use flashing, or termite guard between all the beams and any place the beams were set on stone. I basically had to lift the whole house up off the foundation to get the flashing in.. This will stop your rotting problems.

I then used joist hangers to install the new joists to the old rim beams... then laid the floor.

You don't need to fill in the basement. I'd kill for a basement... Why lose space?

Replace the floor, then put in the lines for the heater under the floor, then insulate under that to keep the heat in.

If you want, you can see pictures here of what we've done.. 

www.flickr.com/dc-duo/sets


----------



## grammyrobinfarm (Jul 18, 2013)

simi-steading said:


> I've been repairing a house all this past year doing pretty much what you want. Only difference is I didn't have a basement, only crawl space.
> 
> I had to remove all of the floor and joists. I had to replace a rotted 10x10 beam. What I did was stacked 2x10's together and ran lag bolts through them to build one solid beam.
> 
> ...



This is really helpful. Thank you! You have a beautiful property. My floor is definitely not as bad as what you had to deal with in your home. What makes mine a bit of a challenge is that I have large 8x8 beams for the floor joists - not standard floor joists at all. All of them are hand hewed oak. I plan on removing the flooring, then subfloor and finally the floor joist beams and replace two sides of the house rim beams which are rotted. I may end up having to replace three sides of the rim beams. How did you jack up the house to replace those outer rim beams? That is what I am most concerned about as I have no idea how to go about jacking the house up when the beam is completely rotted out.


----------



## simi-steading (Sep 27, 2012)

I bought a bunch of 20 ton bottle jacks.. I had to use a LOT of bricks and stones under them to get a solid footing under them that wouldn't sink any more.. I'd get a big stone and put it under a jack, then jack it up.. the stone would sink, and I'd remove the jack and add more ... eventually they would quit sinking and hold the house up.

With what you are doing, you may need to go a little different route.. When I did mine, the wall was hanging freely, so all I had to do was get a beam under it, then jack up the beam to raise the wall back to where it was supposed to be.

What you may need to do is get supports a little ways up on the wall tying into the studs, then use jacks to lift at that point... I've seen people use railroad and high lift jacks for that. you can use bottle jacks too, but you also need to use posts to tie into the supports you added to the studs. This way your wall is supported, and you don't have a jack in the way of putting the beam back under the wall.

Any time you use a jack for lifting a house, you also want to have at least 1/4" steel plates between the jack and wood so you're not sinking the jacks into the wood.

If all of your joists are beams, then you can remove those to get the rims replaced, the just reinstall the joist beams..


----------



## simi-steading (Sep 27, 2012)

Here you go.. Imagine something like this.. you have to lift from the outside.... This is after the house has been lifted, but it gives you an idea of how you need to tie into the walls and lift..


----------



## rod44 (Jun 17, 2013)

The main part of our house was an 1860's era log cabin. Our stone foundation fell it so I cut off the old add on kitchen and raised up the log part and put a new foundation under it. Then built a new kitchen on to it.


----------



## HuskyBoris (Feb 14, 2013)

hey Simisteading,didn't you have some pics of the inside floor torn up as well?,perhaps that may be a help to.my house is built the sameway and it also makes it a real joy to run plumbing and electrical.


----------

