Uneven Joists for Dummies

jacking sagging joists

It bugs our home repair specialists no end to find some self-appointed "expert freelancer" attempting to address a complicated repair process by regurgitating factoids harvested, apparently at random, from around the web. It's especially irritating when a recent J-school graduate's bona fides consist of writing for "lifestyle" websites. Ahhh, but such is the expertise of our latest DotD nominee, one Allanah Dykes. She caught the Leaf Group cleanup request for a dog of a post written by Cleveland van Cecil, a little ditty called "How to Level Uneven Floor Joists in an Old House" at Hunker.com.

We looked at Cleveland's post, and it could only be described as utter bullshit. Sadly, what Dykes published looked more useful, but once we thrashed our way through the jumble of information, it really wasn't. For starters, it was clear that the young fashionista was completely unfamiliar with how a house is constructed, as well as the terminology involved. Check this out for an example:

"Floors tend to settle near the center of a house because the perimeter floors are constructed over a sound, deep foundation."

It would be interesting to see what information she misinterpreted or misquoted there, but Hunker doesn't publish references for their rewrite work. We'll just say that the notion of a "perimeter floor" seems... weird, and that one of the reasons floors sag – in our experience (a phrase Allanah couldn't use) – is that the foundation has shifted or been otherwise damaged. And then there's this notion:

"If you have a house that's built over a basement, you need to examine the beams and posts where they meet the floor. Make sure that you don't have wood posts set on dirt floors..."

The "beams" meet the floor? Maybe in an A-frame? As for dirt floors, well, they're pretty rare in basements unless the house is a few hundred years old. But if you do have a dirt-floored basement (or far more likely a crawl space), you can't "Make sure that you don't have wood posts set on dirt," you can only correct the situation if you do. Sheesh.
This particular paragraph definitely tripped the staff's bullshit detectors, spinning the needle well into the "extreme bogosity" zone:

"Another reason that your floor could be sloping is because of insect damage and moisture. If you have a damp basement or crawlspace, look to see if there's insect damage... When you fix your moisture problems, this will fix your sloping floor issue."

No, Allanah, it won't: if you have insect problems, you'll need to treat them before you do anything else. And once you've mitigated the insect and/or moisture issues, you still have to jack the floor back to level! Idiot!

Dykes cited several joist- repair methods, including reinforcing a sagging joist with metal or plywood and sistering the timber. She also suggested laying a new floor (after spreading leveling compound). It wasn't until she got around to suggesting shims (in a somewhat disjointed section) that Allanah mentioned jack, and it was quite obvious that she was talking through her hat because she said that,

"...you need to know exactly what you're doing and how to operate equipment like a floor joist jack. This helps to reduce friction underneath a load as you're making adjustments."

First, a floor joist jack isn't what we'd term "equipment," and second, we had no earthly idea what the bushwa about "reduce friction underneath a load" was supposed to mean until we looked at a vendor's website. It definitely doesn't mean what our Dumbass of the Day seemed to think it means!

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