check out the link ... maturity does not equate with the tight little babes you planted ... the ones that are displeasing you are loosing up like its elders are prone to ... i wish you had come to us beforehand .... scopulorum family of junipers has many problems associated with them .. i am not happy that you went with a monoculture... your future includes tip blight with ends browning.. and snowload issues ... may as well read up on juniper tip blight.. so you will be prepared to battle it ... bottom line.. give them 2 years to get over the transplant.. keep them PROPERLY watered ... remove the stakes by the end of this year .... you might.. if the budget allows.. plant a second line of some other plant.. so that in 5.. 10 .. years.. the junipers are not making you happy ... you will already have new plants growing .... you could go rather cheap and small .... since the junipers are already there ... check out musser forests and their 2 or 3 year old seedling offerings... next proper planting time is fall.. about when the leaves fall off the other type trees ... good luck ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

Decker my Man,I could not have said it any better my very own self. Becides all the mold/mildew problems on the decking its the rail system that seems to completly fail in a few years/months. I usually go with TimberTech decking and build the rail with TT 2x4s,that is not go with the rail kits they make.Pretty good sucess with this far as the top/bottom rail spliting. The composite boys advertise a lot and fill the need for the Wallet that has had it with puting on finish/cleaning up a wood deck. Of course they cant deliver what they advertise but thats business thats progress. It might be different if composite was just starting out but after 20 years or so of pratice a Person would think they could get a little closer to their claims. John

Sagging floors are a common problem in homes of that vintage. How much you should worry probably depends on the extent of the sagging, whether it has been gradual or whether there's been a sudden increase, which would probably spell trouble. Back in 1976 I bought a house built in 1930, a 9-room Dutch Colonial, that had sagging floors. It was our first house and I was naive about these things. The realtor suggested that I get telescoping poles and install them under the main beams at the lowest point of the sagging and gradually, over a period of weeks increase the height of the poles and thereby counteract the sagging. I did as he recommended and the place is still standing, as far as I know. A lot depends on how bad the sagging is. In our case, the floors on the first floor were slightly uneven, and we were told that that is "normal" for a house of that vintage and type of construction. I would start with a good house inspector, the type who does inspections for houses that are changing hands. A local realtor should be able to recommend one. It should not cost so much because you're not asking him to inspect the whole house, just this one issue. With his trained eye, he should be able to tell you a good deal about what's going on and whether you need someone with more expertise like a structural engineer.

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!