I live in VA. I have about 10 house (screw) jacks supporting the 1st floor joists in the crawl space under my house.
Would anyone care to tell me this is not "code" in VA. or probably anywhere else?! I didn't know they were not proper here. Or maybe they are OK, I'm not sure, so if anyone knows I would appreciate the advice.
Does anyone know exactly what I need to do to bring this to code? Blocks? Concrete footers? etc.?
The best place to address you question would be your local building inspections office. What flys in your area could probably be ok elsewhere. I see screw jacks in basements around here all the time! Greg
You can't get a reliable answer here. You have to ask the building department or authority for whatever city or county at your location. Since you have only 10 jacks they can't be the main support and are likely installed just to level the floor.
And the cost of replacing them depends a lot on why they were put there to begin with. For example, it could be anything from a foundation settlement problem to rotted/termite infested beams. It's impossible to get any estimate on cost without someone doing an inspection. I'd get a structural engineer to take a look.
I think you have to replace them with more permanent supports on concrete footers of a certain size.
Post cut to the right length on proper footers. On This Old House they always called them lally (sp?) collumns.
Greetings,
I hear people talking about getting structural engineers involved. Are they actually causing you a problem? What exactly is the issue here? Are you afraid they will somehow cause a collapse or other major problem?
William
IMO, anyone that has 10 screw jacks with unknown or non-existent footings supporting their house, already has an issue and getting a professional opinion before there is a potential major problem makes a lot of sense.
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