How to Repair a Damaged Carrying Beam | Ask This Old House

[Music] so a few months back i had a contract to come in he was doing some work upstairs yeah when he came down here he found something that was pretty concerning to him really right above your head was this a dry event it's actually a heating duct there was a finished space down here um there's not any more so the heating duct is no longer in use but what concerned the contractor was the way the heating duct was brought right through the main beam of the house yeah well he's right about that uh well let me explain to you how your house is structured okay right here this is a main carrying beam that means it's carrying a lot of load it's actually rested on that part of the foundation there and it runs all the way down and resting on the foundation on the other end of the house attached to this main carrying beam are these floor joists these floor joists carry the load of the floor above that load is transferred to this main beam and held in place by these joist hangers right here these are actually metal joist hangers and they're actually top mounted and they're good and heavy now to size the beam and to size the joists there's two things that you have to think about when you're building a house the first thing is how much weight they're going to carry so the load above this is a one-story house so that's not too bad the other thing you have to think about is the distance that they have to span all right now this is probably 38 to 40 feet long this house now for that beam to run that distance it would probably have to be this big huge sure all right so you use a beam this size they break the distance up or the span up by using these metal columns right here these lally columns now this is an adjustable alley column it can be adjusted quickly in four inch increments by sliding them together and pushing the pin wherever you want it to go and then you can fine tune the height to make it tight against this beam by turning this threaded rod now because this column is adjustable it's hollow and the steel is only about an eighth of an inch thick so when i look down on the bottom right here i see some signs of rust and that concerns me now there's one more thing over here you see this blocking that goes between your floor joists it's very important solid blocking or bridging and really what it does it transfers the load from this joist to the one on either side of it okay so when someone is walking on the floor upstairs it may want to deflect if the blocking is done correctly and in other words it should fit in there tight when someone stands on that floor or walks on it the joist wants to come down but because the blocking is cut in there tight when it wants to twist but it can't so it transfers the load to the one on each side of it but when one comes in and they break a big hole in like this or they remove it and this one has no one to share the load with okay all right now let's think about it you have a hole in the beam you have a rusty column and you have some missing bridging all of these things affect the structure of your house it's worse than i thought is the house even safe well it's not going to fall down all right but i have a few things i want to do great let's start with the lolli column i'll support the beam with a bottle jack and a temporary post then i'll cut the old post out with a grinder all right and that's our length now this is a brand new steel alley column and it's filled with concrete a lot stronger than the old one nice but it's not adjustable so we have to cut it all right now we're actually going to cut it with a big pipe cutter have you used one of these on copper pipe sure all right well it's the same thing okay so now give it a quarter turn no more quarter turn it's uh if you tighten it too much then we can't hold it by hand we'd have to get a big clamp on it that makes sense give it a little another turn there we go there you go how's it look well it looks pretty good i just have to knock off those high spots with a cold chisel all right there's a good footing in the location where the old post was so now all we have to do is put a new plate down on top of the old post and put the post in place center it right on the top of the column little divots right there allow that now i want to center it on the beam all right got it like that and i'm going to put a little bit of tension on it so i'm going to let the house down just a little okay keep your fingers out of the way now they're clear coming down nice and slow coming down just right there okay good now i can plumb up the post and see how it is it's got to come this way just a little bit [Music] all right it's good that way now we'll check it this way all right that's good now i'll let the jack down all the way i'll secure the plates with wood screws at the top and masonry screws at the bottom all right now we're getting ready to repair your damaged beam sounds good and to do that i'm going to use this piece of angle iron right here it has a four inch leg here and a six inch leg here and it's 3 8 of an inch thick so it's good and heavy good and this will more than make up for the damage that was done to your beam great what i want to do is i want to sister this side of it right against the side of your beam sounds good where do you find something like this time i found this one on the side of the road really tough no i actually went to a metal shop and anybody can go to a welder shop or a metal shop and order any kind of steel that you want so i ordered one the length that i need and i actually had them drill some holes for me so we can fasten this to the side of your beam so i had them small holes down here and i had them drill a large hole right here and that hole is for your copper water line that runs through the beam okay so the first thing we need to do is remove that line you want to do that absolutely okay okay that's out of the way all right i've pulled the bottom of the joist hanger away from the beam to create a gap i also noticed that when they built the house they cut the joists a little bit too short creating a gap right up there between the end of the joist and the beam well that's actually a good thing because we can slide our angle iron right in there and get it against the beam between the joists how are we going to do that we're actually going to jack it in place okay beautiful go ahead there we go it's going keep going keep it going very nice very nice it's going right in there excellent all right you can get that post out of there and i'm gonna screw this off with three inch lag screws okay [Applause] all right bill now we're ready to fix your copper pipe and put it back together okay now i want to put this back together but i don't want to solder it so what i'm going to use is a solderless connection great we're just going to slide this on the pipe twist it around until it stops all right now that end is fixed that's all you have to do is attach it to the other one nice first thing i want to do is slide it through the hole okay okay that's that end okay i have the bridging in over here and that will stiffen up those joists okay your new column is in and that's nice and strong that's not going anywhere great we've got this piece of steel in here nice heavy piece of steel to fix that little hole in your main beam that's not going anywhere great this is great tom you know i had no idea how to fix it myself and i feel a lot safer so thank you [Music] you

Channel: This Old House

Views: 2,571,024

Keywords: tom silva, repair, beams, framingThis Old House, Ask This Old House, DIY, Home Improvement, DIY Ideas, Renovation, Renovation Ideas, How To Fix, How To Install, How To Build, Kevin o’connor, kevin o'connor house, kevin o'connor this old house, kevin o'connor ask this old house, kevin o'connor interview, tom silva this old house, tom silva house, tom silva construction, tom silva tools, tommy silva

Id: 4DYzcyQaNuc

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 09 2018