Floor sloping upstairs

The floor would still need fixing though as he said it leans quite a bit!
 
Ok, my mate said the surveyor rang him earlier and said that the sloping floor is not a big concern. He reckons its historical and he has seen much worse.

The wall between landing and bedroom is timber stud he said.

My mate said he will have a go at straightening the floor himself.

Not sure how difficult that is. Anyone had a similar issue to resolve upstairs and how did you tackle it?

Mate will get full survey report next week.
 
Koolpc said:
My mate said he will have a go at straightening the floor himself.

Not sure how difficult that is. Anyone had a similar issue to resolve upstairs and how did you tackle it?
Click to expand...
With a laser set a standard datum level to work off (arbitrary, but normally something like 1 metre above the highest point on the floors). Mark the datum in each room on the wall opposite the door, and on the landing. Doors, skirtings and architaves off. Lift floor. Set up the laser in the doorway - you need to work towards the laser starting at the furthest point away from it. Screw sistering timbers (3 x 2 or 4 x 2 will often do on terraced houses) to the sides of the existing joists starting at the far corner of the room and working towards the doorway and laser. To set the sistered timbers a marked lath is used (say 1.2 metre long accurately marked with a line, using a try square, at the 1 metre PLUS THICKNESS OF THE FLOOR (say 22mm) up from the bottom. This rod is used to set the sistering timbers at the right height. Screw the sistering timbers to the sides of the joists at 400 to 600mm centres. These new timbers will subsequently carry the floor. When the rooms are done, do the landing. Refloor the area. Refix the architraves and skirtings. Trim the bottoms of the doors to match the new floor levels - allow a 4 to 6mm gap beneath (more if a thick carpet). Don't try to do this by messing about with packers or wedges - it takes longer, is a less flat floor and stacks of packers have been known to shift

A word about stairs: the going of the stairs needs to be fairly constant. In fact there is a requirement that a tread should be within 6mm+/- the height of the preceding/following tread. If your new floor ended up =, say 25mm above the level at the top of the stairs, on a 12 tread staircase you'd have to raise the height of the treads using thin plywood or MDF s"skins" fixed to the top of the treads to give a progressive change. In fact this would mean something like 22mm on the top tread, 19mm on the tread below, 16mm on the tread below that (so far all standard plywood thicknesses), then 13mm, 10mm (9,5mm), 6mm (6.35mm) and 3mm respectively (so a transition over 7 treads). The rest of the treads would remain as was. This transition is a lot safer tham having one or two non-standard steps near the top and is much less of a trip risk

I have undertaken this task a few times as part of my "day job", and that is more or less what I do. It is a lot of work, but with a laser it is well within the capabilities of a keen, competent DIYer
 
JobAndKnock said:
With a laser set a standard datum level to work off (arbitrary, but normally something like 1 metre above the highest point on the floors). Mark the datum in each room on the wall opposite the door, and on the landing. Doors, skirtings and architaves off. Lift floor. Set up the laser in the doorway - you need to work towards the laser starting at the furthest point away from it. Screw sistering timbers (3 x 2 or 4 x 2 will often do on terraced houses) to the sides of the existing joists starting at the far corner of the room and working towards the doorway and laser. To set the sistered timbers a marked lath is used (say 1.2 metre long accurately marked with a line, using a try square, at the 1 metre PLUS THICKNESS OF THE FLOOR (say 22mm) up from the bottom. This rod is used to set the sistering timbers at the right height. Screw the sistering timbers to the sides of the joists at 400 to 600mm centres. These new timbers will subsequently carry the floor. When the rooms are done, do the landing. Refloor the area. Refix the architraves and skirtings. Trim the bottoms of the doors to match the new floor levels - allow a 4 to 6mm gap beneath (more if a thick carpet). Don't try to do this by messing about with packers or wedges - it takes longer, is a less flat floor and stacks of packers have been known to shift

A word about stairs: the going of the stairs needs to be fairly constant. In fact there is a requirement that a tread should be within 6mm+/- the height of the preceding/following tread. If your new floor ended up =, say 25mm above the level at the top of the stairs, on a 12 tread staircase you'd have to raise the height of the treads using thin plywood or MDF s"skins" fixed to the top of the treads to give a progressive change. In fact this would mean something like 22mm on the top tread, 19mm on the tread below, 16mm on the tread below that (so far all standard plywood thicknesses), then 13mm, 10mm (9,5mm), 6mm (6.35mm) and 3mm respectively (so a transition over 7 treads). The rest of the treads would remain as was. This transition is a lot safer tham having one or two non-standard steps near the top and is much less of a trip risk

I have undertaken this task a few times as part of my "day job", and that is more or less what I do. It is a lot of work, but with a laser it is well within the capabilities of a keen, competent DIYer
Click to expand...

Not all the floor is slopping. Its confined to the landing area and part of the floor the other side of the landing wall in the bedroom (see pic above with lots of cut floorboards in a row, first post, first page).

Thanks
 
Koolpc said:
Not all the floor is slopping. Its confined to the landing area and part of the floor the other side of the landing wall in the bedroom (see pic above with lots of cut floorboards in a row, first post, first page).

Thanks
Click to expand...

As earlier (and obvious from the video walkthrough!), those floorboards run under the wall, I don't know what @JobAndKnock thinks, but would it be better to take the wall down and rebuild?
Screenshot_20220825-201019_YouTube.jpg
 
RandomGrinch said:
As earlier (and obvious from the video walkthrough!), those floorboards run under the wall, I don't know what @JobAndKnock thinks, but would it be better to take the wall down and rebuild?
View attachment 277687
Click to expand...

The wall is a stud wall apparently.

Is it actually worth going to all the effort of removing a perfectly fine stud wall? I ask as i have no idea.

I thought he would take out the landing floor boards, take skirting off of wall, trim door frame, level up that floor, fit new flooring (Ply?), Put skirting back.

Then, in the bedroom, remove skirting, trim door frame, cut out section of floor boards, level that end of the floor, fit Ply section, refit skirting.

This sound feasible?
 
Better to take the skirtings, etc out, then a part of the floor, do the levelling work and make good. Taking out a stud wall completely is potentially an awfully messy procedure, especially on an older house. As that stud wall runs in line with the joists it may well be necessary to take the floor out piecemeal in the vicinity of the joist, inserting solid strutting as you go between the joists adjacent to the wall in order to carry the weight of the wall
 
JobAndKnock said:
Better to take the skirtings, etc out, then a part of the floor, do the levelling work and make good. Taking out a stud wall completely is potentially an awfully messy procedure, especially on an older house. As that stud wall runs in line with the joists it may well be necessary to take the floor out piecemeal in the vicinity of the joist, inserting solid strutting as you go between the joists adjacent to the wall in order to carry the weight of the wall
Click to expand...

What if he takes the skirting off of that stud wall, lift all the floorboards along the length of the wall and then sistering a joist under / protruding from the wall, making that level with the other joists and then put new section of floor back (Ply?) and then refix skirting?

That feasible? (Do same on landing side)

I guess he will have to trim the door surround and door too.

Thanks for you help
 
No reason why you can't do a partial. If you need to take the skirtings off, then the door and archtrave legs will also need to come off. It's much less work to replace and remove the legs than having to scribe round them. Door wiil almost certainly need to be trimmed.

If the amount the floor is out is up to about 10 or 12m it can be a lot easier to just clad the floor with thin plywood (screwed down at 150mm centres) and spread a layer of SLC over it. Again, skirtings off for a better quality job
 
Mmmm, maybe easier than ripping the boards up. I wouldnt use SLC on landing floor. Maybe shim up the plywood to level it?

What about carpet shims?

Carpet going down on top.
 
Shimming is a PIA to do and is almost impossible to do right, and it will always tend to have issues, such as the shims moving in service. It is a complete and utter bodge. Sometimes you just have to take the hit and do things a bit better.

BTW, self levelling can be contained by a temporary "dam" of, say, 2 x 1 softwood lath screwed to the edge of the landing ans the joint siliconed. It might even be better to add a permanent fascia (say a rip of painted 8mm MDF or the like with the top set to the required floor height at it's top edge) before putting down the SLC
 
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JobAndKnock said:
Shimming is a PIA to do and is almost possible to do right, and it will always tend to have issues, such as the shims moving in service. It is a complete and utter bodge. Sometimes you just have to take the hit and do things a bit better.

BTW, self levelling can be contained by a temporary "dam" of, say, 2 x 1 softwood lath screwed to the edge of the landing ans the joint siliconed. It might even be better to add a permanent fascia (say a rip of painted 8mm MDF or the like with the top set to the required floor height at it's top edge) before putting down the SLC
Click to expand...

What about laying thin ply on the landing floorboards and then shimming that to make it level? Glueing the shims down.

Carpet would go down on top.

I just wouldnt think of using SLC on a landing floor.

Thanks for your input and advice.

Trying to get some ideas together for my mate. I guess getting someone in to level the floor would be expensive? Couple of k?
 
Shimming is a pain. Even if the shims don't move you'll still get flex in the boards between the shims.
Easiest way is sister the joists with inch ply (rip it down to 4" or 6" wide strips) then screw your floor to the ply edge.
Then deal with skirtings, doors, etc etc :)
 
Shims and packers are effectively the same thing. I'm not suggesting the traditional, well proven methods for dealing with this issue for the sake of it. It's up to you (or rather your mate) if you take the advice that packers or shims are really a terrible idea, and the reasons why they are
 
I will pass it on to him. See what he thinks.

I dont think he wants to pay a trade to fix the floor as money tight.

Sistering seems like the best way forward but quite a bit of upheaval regarding skirting, door frames, doors etc....
 
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