The Owner FELL THROUGH Their Floor... So They Called Us

hey gang it's paul with studpack welcome back to the channel jordan and i are actually up here in false river louisiana on this saturday morning we're headed to some friends house we're going to help them out with a serious problem at their house people are falling through the floors we were actually up here about three months ago helped him out with a bathroom when you open the door to the bathroom you just saw the wood floor and rotten joist and in three days we transformed that bathroom completely by the time we were done we had a finished floor a brand new shower and running water so we're gonna try to help him out with this rotten floor today in the hallway and do another section of the house i see we're about here to the job site let's go check it out all right we're here in the main hallway and check it out i'm staying towards the left where we have some solid flooring and grab the tape measure what do we have there about five and a half inch drop what we have here is a complete failure of the subfloor system now come on down here and let's check it out if you look through here this is where somebody fell through and you can see the subfloor the one by six diagonals that were going this way they're actually sitting on the dirt and in addition to all that i can see a joist right here a two by eight right here so that means there should be one about 16 inches over where my hands are well it's gone too now right behind me is the bathroom that jordan i fixed up in that three day weekend and this is rock solid all new framing and you can see the edge of our new plywood but just one or two steps from the safest part of the house we come to the most dangerous part of the house but it's not just this hallway where the subfloor is rotten let's walk back here and check it out look at that so see this hump right here that's where the next sill is so we have a little support right here that's why there's a hump look at this board they're just splitting right in half look at that really bad right here and as i get to the front of the house now i'm on safe ground so what would cause a subfloor in a house to completely fail like this let's head outside and see if we can find some clues all right here we are outside and since jordan i already worked on that bathroom we know how this house was built how it was framed and we know why it failed come over here and check it out so on a raised foundation home here in the south what they typically do is they'll finish off the front of the house with brick right here so it looks nice from the street but on the sides it'll just be open so you get plenty of ventilation under the house about 30 years ago they put a brick veneer here on the sides in the back of the house they brought it all the way down to the ground and they completely blocked off all that ventilation yeah they added a few grates like this but it's simply not enough and if you come over right here you can tell exactly what i'm talking about here's that brick veneer that was put in 30 years ago and here's the original solid front in the front of the house and i don't know if you can see back there jordan but there are some bricks on the vertical with a space between a little bit of ventilation but again not enough so proper ventilation is key on a raised foundation house if you want to save the foundation right so let's head back inside and start working dude so let me walk you through our game plan and let me show you how we're going to tackle this we're going to cut through this subfloor right here that's cut number one see where there's been a patch and the oak strip flooring has been repaired here and here we're going to take that to our advantage make one cut there then we're going to move eight feet this way and make another cut in the middle of this doorway so that's going to give us an eight foot section that we're going to pull out and that works great because we're using 4x8 plywood we're going to make a cut in this closet door right here and remove all this oak strip flooring all the way back to that other beam once all the demo is done we can start reframing it so let's head outside grab our saws and start doing some demos [Music] [Applause] [Music] check it out here's the original 1x8 shiplap subfloor this is how they used to do it back in the day before we had plywood but it's all rotten and it's got to come out [Music] check it out guys i got a pretty big hole to work in now and we switched to the reciprocating saw which i always have to sell you one my dad can we please start using power tools no you don't and when i'm using a reset especially with a blade like that i am always mindful of any wires that may be up under the joist got these copper water lines down here got a gas line right here but check this out sometimes you don't even need power tools [Applause] so how do we know we can just start ripping the framing out of here even though it's rotten without further compromising the structure we'll check it out over here to my left you can see this is one of the new joists we put in when we redid the bathroom here's another one here's another one there's a couple behind jordan and so that is sitting on this four by six creosote treated bean and we know it's creosote treated because we could smell the creosote when we did the bathroom just like a railroad tie or the utility poles when we were kids so these are holding up this wall now we have the same thing going on over here this floor has all been reframed so that new lumber is holding up all of this structure so we're just concerned about this hallway right here so we're going to continue with the demolition and start framing [Music] [Music] yeah check it out everyone we are almost done with demo just a little bit more to go but we wanted to take a pause and show you what we found as you can see you now get a 360 degree view of how this thing was framed and we found kind of a critical error i'm going to show it to you over here but first i want to come down here closer to jordan and show you this one you can see the end of this joist right here instead of the end of the joist landing on the beam over here they let it in mid span the one coming from your left from my right assisted on this one with six nails and that joint failed here here here all the way across and you can see on this far wall how devastating that failure was here's the end of the joists closer to me and here's the end of the joist on the other side of it and they were sister together right here and it simply rotted and broke now check it out right here we have this man-sized jenga tower and this was critical to save somebody's life and keep them from falling through this floor right we had this 2x8 another one that we've already removed hopefully we can save those and use them when we reframe this and this bottle jack was keeping those two 2x8 supported so i think our next step i want to remove all this we're going to get a rake clean up all this lumber in case there's any nails sticking out that way we don't step on the nail goes through our foot and then we're going to see how we're going to reframe this and start rebuilding this floor [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] all right that's better i wish i could get this out of the way all right we're all cleaned up now let's talk about this mud right here because that's what it is the water table is extremely high in this part of the state and this i'm just bouncing like a trampoline and we have standing water under here from a rainfall the other night so that exacerbates the problem right we have we have all this humidity under the house so once you jump down here jordan and we're going to show you our next step all right i'm gonna all right now remember the very first cut we made through the oak strip flooring and our subfloor right here that's where our first joist is gonna be let me grab one of these blocks buddy and we can show them we're going to put a new joist right there it's going to help support this and our new plywood on this side but i want to get rid of this piece because it's in our way and it's pretty rotten right here so our next step is to remove this and i got a block on the other side that's going to be in the way of this joist so we're going to remove this joist and that block and then i think our next step we're going to start rebuilding right here cool you ready bud let's do it all right oh all right that was easy to take off right here all right here's our first joist ready to go we cut it to ten and a half feet long and these two by eights are seven and a quarter wide here the end on my left it's perfect it's going to fit fine between the top of the sill and the bottom of the existing subfloor but over here on the right we did have to notch it because we don't want to fight it too much and the plan is now i'm sitting on both sills we're going to roll up into place something like that i'm gonna pull it with a sledgehammer and it's gonna lift this up and support this floor really well and roll this into the position it needs to be once we get this one in the rest are easy all right bud you ready let's do it all right i'm gonna just hold it so it doesn't fall all right nice all right hold up let me hit this in back a little i'm going to come down a little i want to get it under there a little more how's that better ready yep nice look how that floor came up beautiful man nice all right i'll get in here tap it out that's about three quarter huh yeah nice lip for our new sub floor all right a little more here all right man let's go grab some lunch and we'll finish this floor all right gang that is nice and solid we got our first one in so we're gonna head outside cut our next three with the same notch on this side no notch on that side now here's the deal with this house it's a huge piece of property and there's actually another house right behind me a couple hundred feet away the plan is they're gonna move into that one in a couple of years and tear this one down so we don't have to make this one look pristine and perfect we just have to make it functional and safe for two more years all right bud let's head outside and cut some more wood [Music] a board to cut to length something we're paying attention to is the crown it's crowned this way we want the crown up if the crown worked like this like a belly we would flip it over so the crown is going to be up when we install it any weight that's put on the floor helps to level that board out [Music] all right we got our first three joists in and we were able to roll them up into position with the sledgehammer our fourth one's going right about here but this corner has dropped too much so we have a 12 ton hydraulic jack set up we're going to lift this corner and slide this joist in put the wall back on top of it i'm digging this out because our jack wasn't centered on the blocks he's pushing down on one side of the block and that soft mud and our post was crooked so we're gonna get the jack right on the middle of our blocks and this is going to be hard because when the jack is trying to lift the house the house is trying to push the boards into the mud right what just happened yeah it's just did that yeah pretty good huh yeah about a quarter of an inch already um you got to keep going until these miters line up oh my gosh they have closed so much you're almost there keep pumping it what are you scared i am i'm i'm nervous i'm anxious this is no it is scary this is not something to be taken lightly right true all right let's try and beat it in a couple more all right you're gonna need me for this aren't you yeah i'm ready nice you ready all right so we'll go on three so it'll be like one two hit wait wait that was practice huh no i was i was giving you an example gotta come to you all right nice there we go yep yep yep yep nice right on you just needed that yeah try and hit the top if you can i know it's gonna be hard nice you know what i can hear that i can get some good hits on it with the sledge or the framing hammer whichever one yeah let me get the switch nice no i got it hold on you got it yeah i got it gotta come up here yeah three quarters of an inch i'm taking the bottle jack handle out an eighth of an inch that's 32 dead on all right all right guys we've got these three joists in and they are pretty good now i don't know how it looks on the camera but they are not parallel we had a lot of blocking a lot of shims a lot of stuff in our way on that beam end so we did the best we could plywood's going to lay this way so the fact that they're off a little is gonna be fine and check it out up here we jacked up the house this much this was our original mark for the laser and this was the mark after we jacked it up it made those miters tight and this door right here it wouldn't even swing at all now it's swinging just like the day it was put up so our next step we're going to demo this hallway back to that sill put it in our next three joists and we're ready for plywood i'm ready buddy you yeah we got we got monsters in there do you need one i might you know i've never had a whole monster well today might be the day buddy i don't know it might make me like all right let's get going okay we have our fifth joist in and we put in a block right there it's fastened to these two joists and that's going to support the wall ideally i'd want a joist right here under the wall we can't do that number one our jacket's in the way and number two i got all kind of joists in the way back in this room so we've got our laser on our bottom mark let's ease the pressure off the jack and see how much the wall drops i'd be happy with what quarter inch yeah there's a quarter all right half an inch don't you see if that door still well well that sub subfloor right there is actually gone so if there was a plywood subfloor there it would have made that up right here yep yep let's see if that door works nope okay let's slide one of these down just to give you a place to walk on just so it's a little a little a little better walking on this stuff because yeah that's what our life is about to be [Music] crazy all right gang quick little update it is really difficult for us to video a project like this but we're doing the best we can as you can see we have a sheet of plywood down we left the jack in place the bottle jack and we notched the plywood and slid it around the bottle jack homer's going to come back later build a pier back here then he can remove that jack because this corner really needs some support our next step we're going to cut this it's an 8 footer by 26 and a half and we'll screw that down just like this one is this is really solid can't wait to see the homeowners on this they're going to be so happy coming out of their bedrooms not having to do this all the time right let's head outside cut that piece of plywood and then this one and i think we can start cleaning up [Music] [Music] [Music] alrighty gang we are done now our goal today was to make this safe and we accomplished that now it's not pretty the homeowners are going to make it pretty they're going to come back in here with another layer of three-quarter inch plywood that'll flush it out right here to this oak strip flooring and they'll put some other flooring in here maybe this laminate but now it is safe for our friend's father so he can get to the restroom without falling through the floor and we are fired up about that and jordan got some framing experience today he's going to need that pretty soon and you're going to find out why in what maybe a month or so longer than a little longer all right so if you like that video and your like button's a little out of level get yourself a 12-ton bottle jack make it perfect or close to perfect like we did smash it for us jordan i really appreciate that ask a question drop a comment and subscribe if you haven't already and we will see you on our next studpack video [Music]

Channel: Stud Pack

Views: 450,232

Keywords: studpack, stud pack, rotten floor, rotten joists, subfloor failure, repairing rotted wood, rotten wood, oak floor, hardwood floor, framing, framing a floor, repairing a floor

Id: rRQ6YYMFTGg

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 17 2022