I had a similar problem in a 1930 9-room Dutch Colonial that I bought in 1976. I took the realtor's advice on how to correct it. You need to install telescoping poles at the point where the sagging is the deepest. To spread the weight, so that the poles don't sink into the ground or into the beam of the house, you need to use thick steel plates, about 12 inches square, one on the ground below the pole and one above the pole so it is between the pole and the beam. That's really a 2-person job, but I did it myself because I was young then. Once you have the poles in place, you need to turn them to lengthen them GRADUALLY to give the added stress time to distribute throughout the house, or else, you could have breakage of windows, window frames, plaster walls, etc. We found that we were able to correct the sagging to a degree that satisfied us. But you will always have some sagging in these older houses. That condition comes with the territory. Some say it's part of the charm of older places. I say it's a pain in the you-know-what.

If a ledger system would work, that would be great! By rough calculation, I'd need about 350 Simpson brackets to finish the job. Obviously, 2x2's are a LOT cheaper. Out of curiosity, would screws be acceptable fasteners, instead of nails? There's not a lot of room in this crawlspace, and I don't have a nail gun that fires anything bigger than finishing brads. Addressing a few other questions/comments, and correcting an earlier misstatement: 1) The flooring is T&G, so there are no nails to pull out to jack the stuff up. 2) The "bounce" I mentioned has to do with multiple unsupported pieces of flooring butting together in open air. This is what needs to be corrected, because it not only bounces, it's sagging as well. 3) The plywood IS laid down so that the joists are parallel with the 4' dimension of the ply. There is NO continuity over the supports. 4) The span is 30' at the shortest point and about 50' at the largest. The ply is laid down directly over the joists. The joists are supported by concrete piers with short 4x4 uprights. There IS cross-bracing, but there's no rhyme or reason to the way it was installed. 5) While adding new joists to divide the 48" span was my original thought, it would be exceptionally difficult for a number of reasons. Therefore, if any of the other options being discussed are viable, then they are vastly more preferable. 6) We are nominally the first owners of this house (it being the house DW grew up in). It was built to code in '75, by lunatics, apparently, but not by DIY'ers.

Hi, fixinfool. Thanks for the email alerting me that you brought this one back up! I've been meaning to come over and update it, actually. OK, so here's the update. We did buy this house at the end of December. What ultimately happened with the floor repair situation was that my husband negotiated with the seller/seller's agent to lower the price of the house by around $20,000. This was done because the highest estimate obtained by the seller was just under $20K. It included fixing the sagging joists and getting rid of the mold. However, we were uncomfortable using this contractor because he did weird stuff in his estimate such as adding in a "20% markup" just as a line item. Another contractor (plumbing, not flooring/foundation) came out and while he didn't say anything bad about the $20K contractor, he expressed some level of surprise that the guy was in the floor-fixing business. That was enough for me to want to pass on it. And as it turned out, passing on it was a good thing because we got two or three more estimates, and finally found a guy who jacks up and levels floors for a living. Very down-to-earth guy who works with his father and son and it's something they've all done all their lives. He came in and told my husband what needed to be done and gave him an estimate, which included all materials, jacking up and leveling the floor, and replacing the damaged joists/adding new ones alongside to strengthen everything. He added concrete piers and something called "six buh sixes" (sorry, we live in TN and I'm from PA so my husband had to talk to the guy--I literally couldn't understand a lot of what he said, hehe). He also built a subfloor in an area of the house with a concrete slab (I think it used to be the garage, maybe). The total cost was $5,000 for all of it (including the materials and subfloor that he built). We had to pay him cash and buy the materials ourselves, but he provided us a list and told us what to get. He did a very, very good job. The floors are leveled out in all but one area, and he could not do that area because there is a heat/AC main duct going along the center of the house in the crawlspace. He could not move it to jack up that one small section. But what he did was add piers and joists (? not sure exactly) along either side to make sure that it was all structurally sound and fortified. It took him about a week to get it all done. When they were jacking the house, we were inside and could feel it. That was pretty cool. They would do a little at a time. They also said that one of the original joists was actually broken in half, so they replaced that and then added some sort of sistering thing alongside just to be sure. They did not remediate the mold or the damaged vapor barrier, however. For this, we found a termite guy. We are from Florida, and we used the Termidor system down there. I don't like bait systems; too iffy and "wait for disaster" for me and it's also dependent on technicians coming back and checking. Blech. No thanks. So we were at a home show and one of the termite guys had a Termidor sign. He was also kind of a skinny little fella, which seemed sort of like an advantage when it comes to crawling around in confined areas. This is what the termite guy did for us (it was a total of $3100). He treated the house with Termidor. It's a 3200-3400 sf house with about 800 feet on the second floor, I think. He removed the insulation under the house, which was mold-ridden, soggy, and gross-just a moisture magnet. He also removed the failing vapor barrier. He put up a new barrier for us. He treated the house (the crawlspace, I mean) to kill the mold and mildew. He also installed a vent system with humidity and temperature sensors that automatically starts running the fans if they rise above a certain level, to help prevent any future mold. We felt this was a good deal and we also liked the guy. This took him most of a week to accomplish. He incidentally found an HVAC duct that was separated and hanging down, just blowing hot air all over the crawlspace. Nice! No wonder our power bills have been nearly $500. We are not sure if this just happened or if it has been like this for a while. We also replaced the existing HVAC system and added a new one (we are remodeling an attic space and also adding central heat/air to a room that just had a window A/C unit) just before the floor guys/termite guys did their thing. The HVAC guys are coming out next week to do another duct inspection just to make sure it's all tight and stable under there. Geesh, this was long! I hope this answers some of your questions. The jacking up part of the foundation fixing was actually far less dramatic than I'd pictured it in my mind. I think what they did was check the floors for level (under the house) and then jack until they were level, then do whatever they do to the floors (joist fixing?/joist adding?) to support the floors at "level." Then they checked it again and moved on to the next area. I know there was a lot of wood (expensive wood) and a lot of concrete blocks involved in this process. Probably $2K worth of wood and concrete blocks? Sorry my descriptions are not incredibly technical, but I might be able to answer specific questions if you have them. The answers will probably not be all that technical but they might still work for you. Good luck, and thanks again to sdello, HancyMac and kudzu for helping me out!

Sammy, it looks like the vertical pieces are toenailed to the horizontal ones. Looks like a quick, dirty & cheap fix that is just OK. At the very least, I would prefer to see a clean 90 degree cut on the old beam with a tight friction fit between the old and new. And some steel mending plates (both sides, front and back) to tie the new splice into the old beam and the new vertical supports. Preferred fix would involve quite a lot more work. As in getting those plywood structures (shelving?) out of the way and splicing in a new plate that spans the opening and goes back under at least one of the other floor joists on both sides. Sistered 2 bys on edge w/ stagged let-ins on the old plate, glued & screwed. Tight fit w/ steel mending plates/ strapping. With vertical support at the crawl space opening...where you could have used a single 2x on either side and preserved more of the opening. More work in tight quarters and need temporary supports for the joists while fitting in the new repair. $$ Not a fun job.