Replacing/Lifting floorboards, sloping and wood worm

[Toby Newell]

Sill plate? How old is your house? Do you mean sill plate as in beam construction and sill beam is supporting wall uprights? Or do you simply mean seat beam as in beam that simply supports the floor joists?

If your house is brick construction then removing your seat beam and replacing the entire subfloor is not a problem, although it may be necessary to replace the pier walls as often in these chronic damp cases the mortar and even the bricks themselves effectively 'rot' and crumble.

I would ask a surveyor to check exactly what load these 'beams' carry.

All modern timber C16, C24 or otherwise are normally PAR (Planed All Round) or regularised (same thing) and often eased edge (rounded edge) nominal dimensions are usually 45x95 cf. 50x100mm + for rough sawn old 'four by twos'.

You can make up any difference by either stacking slate on top of the piers (traditional) or using plastic shims (modern) If you are rebuilding the piers 5mm is quite easy to accrue with mortar over the stack with careful tamping. In any event nothing will be 100% level and I personally level each joist I lay with shims, both plastic and wooden that I cut myself.

Bear in mind that your skirting will have moved with your house over time, so, no matter how diligently you level both the sub and top floor your skirting may still be wavy! Like it or not this is the inevitable 'charm' inherent in older buildings.

If you have money to burn or just enjoy a challenge, you can remove all your skirting and scribe it in for a closer fit, although I would leave it a few months, possibly a whole year, for the new floor to settle.

If it makes you feel any better, I would like to see how the 'Barret' home generation of modern buildings fare in a 100 years time, I am not convinced they will be fairing much better!

 

[RushupEdge]

Sill plate? How old is your house? Do you mean sill plate as in beam construction and sill beam is supporting wall uprights? Or do you simply mean seat beam as in beam that simply supports the floor joists?

If your house is brick construction then removing your seat beam and replacing the entire subfloor is not a problem, although it may be necessary to replace the pier walls as often in these chronic damp cases the mortar and even the bricks themselves effectively 'rot' and crumble.

You'll have to forgive my malapropism re: sill plate, tried to find the correct term but my googling failed me on this occasion. Seat beam it is then! Yes, these are running along the foundation walls, and sitting on top the second or third row of bricks, on the first course. My main concern (as mentioned) was just not doing anything that causes me more problems structurally. Totally happy to give things ago, as long as I don't end up pulling it down inadvertantly :lol:

The house is a brick construction, circa 1903 (at least thats the first record of ownership).

Re: Timber sizes - that's good to know, my understanding was that there was a bigger difference than that but it looks like the Americentrism of the internet has betrayed me a bit here! 5mm is definitely a manageable difference.

Definitely don't have money to burn, so a bit of character is welcome! Just don't want to deal with huge gaping gaps as it's safe to say this will trigger my aesthetic OCD, ha!

Thanks so much for your post again - will drop you another email

 

[Toby Newell]

Yes. Terminology matters! Not your fault, I spend hundreds of hours a year reading and learning. Because I am such an expert in some fields I am very conservative in other related ones. A lot of the time it is confidence.

You can see where I replaced an entire floor including pier walls (dwarf walls, 3 to 4 courses high normally sometimes with a tile or slate top) on my website home page, very similar story to yours. I can post photos of epic munching, a 4x2 joist made of 'paper' totally worm eaten. Quite surprising nothing collapsed. Thats another thing I have learnt, however awful it appears most older buildings were so overbuilt they can sustain almost unbelievable amounts of damage and yet remain, mostly, upright.

Sills hold up the entire house! Seat beams just hold up the floor. You can remove these no problem. I always suggest checking with a surveyor.

Looks like you will need to remove and relay the entire sub floor. I can do that, you can save money by doing the rip out yourself.

Laying a new subfloor isnt technically difficult, I mean if I can do it, anyone can, obviously you will need a saw and drill and a level and some string. Mostly it's a matter of confidence.

You biggest problem will be the pier walls, prod, poke and push, if they are crumbly you will need to rebuild them.

At first I had the insane idea that I was going to rebuild them myself, I mean how hard is brick laying? Actually, it is a very skilled and nuanced vocation, especially to UK standards (anyone can throw up a wall Indian 'that will do' style) I have always admired bricklayers and the like for their deftness and skill. I guess I blame my Grandfather who like many of his generation were jack of all trades by necessity as well as highly skilled in their own, for my temporary loss of sanity. He built stairs and walls for our first family home extension when he was 70 and he was a French polisher!

After a very short period of reflection I got my friend and colleague and his guys in, they did a brilliant job and showed me how idiotic my idea was to give it a go myself.

If the area is cleared and level the piers should only take a couple of days or so for a skilled brickie. The joisting takes longer as you need to level and I fit multiple extra noggins, because, well, I can, not needed, but who doesn't want a more solid floor?