interior consequences of a failing beam

Posted on January 10, 2012 by admin

A look at the problems that can happen when a beam starts to fail

 

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Leveling a Beam

Posted on January 10, 2012 by admin

In this house the beam across the second floor over the garage was not sized right by the builder.  It had deflected (bent) down over time, and the homeowner was unhappy with the large dip in his floor above.  He hired us to come out and fix the beam.  Our first step was to expose the beam, and jack it into place.  Here we are exposing the beam, and this illustrates the problem:

 

chalk line showing bowing beam

 

Here we have put LVL Beams in place to stiffen the beam:

 

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Membrane Repair – Raised Solid Deck

Posted on November 13, 2011 by admin

A raised solid deck is a second or third story deck where the decking is solid, such as it being tile, stone or brick. The deck will have a membrane under the solid floor and underneath the deck it is waterproof normally with a finished ceiling. The problem we see is the contractor or installer does not install the membrane properly and the deck starts to leak and the wood rots under the flooring and above the ceiling.

This is a good example of a improperly installed membrane.

correcting a improperly sloped solid deck

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Chimney resupport

Posted on November 13, 2011 by admin

This chimney was improperly constructed, and was not supported correctly on the roof of the house.  We have been engaged to place supports under the chimney that were designed by a Professional Engineer.

 

 

installing laminated beams through roof

 

 

installing shims to hold up chimney

 

Removing Jacks from chimney

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Deck Repair

Posted on November 12, 2011 by admin

With this project, the homeowner wanted to build an addition to the deck behind the house.  However, we found a serious problem here – the rim beams that were supporting the decks on the rear of the house were grossly undersized.  This not only presented a serious deflection problem, but a life safety issue also.  To solve this problem, we engaged a structural engineer (Runkle Consulting, Inc.)  to examine the situation.  The repair was to turn the rim beams into “flitch beams”, which are steel plates sandwiched inside timber 2x’s.

There is a steel plate sandwiched in the 2x's.

Here is a video that gives much more information:

 

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House Leveling Video

Posted on November 12, 2011 by admin

This is a video of  deflected floor that we repaired and the difficulties you can encounter:

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