Old Jacks

[IPACA9]

So my mothers 150 year old house floor is falling and my wife's uncle and I decided that we will take it on ourselves to jack it, replace some joists, redo the floors and do whatever is needed to raise it back in order to sell. I told him I'll need to get some bottle jacks to do the job and he said grandpa had a couple that he would bring as well. I just had to take a picture of them for you guys.

 

[sberry]

A lot of these are still in use regularly.

 

[Gmonkee]

l own a version of the screw jack and have used a few of the ratchet jacks. The ratchet jacks can lift huge weights but tend to scare me a bit.
A lot of respect for those while in use. Otherwise it could hurt a bit.

Timeless tools that just keep going.

 

[Jarhead0408]

Crazy thing is, they're still making them!!!

Nice old jacks btw!

 

[IPACA9]

That ratchet one is very handy. With the changing ground levels under the house its nice that you can either use the top foot or the one that sticks out the side to hook under a joist.

 

[The Cobbler]

I did that at a friends house approx same vintage. we used several jack posts as we were limited with jacks. jacked it up and braced with jackposts and removed jacks & moved to a different location. we took about a week to get everything where we wanted , everyday we would lift a bit more so as not to stress the wood .
be prepared for some major creaking and cracks in walls , doors no longer fitting etc. it didn't matter in my case as we were doing a complete reno to half of the main floor . but the areas that weren't being reno'd needed some tlc after the lift

 

[Zrexxer]

Yeah, they sometimes call them a "railroad jack." I watched my Granddaddy jack up and level a two story house using those back in the 70's.

 

[IPACA9]

It definitely is a job. The joists we can't remove we are scabbing new ends on. In total we are looking at replacing repairing about 30 joists. The two layer floors are nailed down with the old square nails. Nice thing were finding is that they seem to just break off when prying up the floor due to rusting with age. This house or i should say building was built in 1870. It was originally built as a post office.

 

[IPACA9]

What we're finding as we pull the flooring is that the foundation inner stones where notched for the joists to fit into. The 2x10 joists have rotted at the end and have fallen out of the slots. Pretty much every spot where there is a window upstairs or downstairs is where the joists look the worst. Thank GOD there isn't much room for these to fall due to a very minimal crawl space under the house. I remember when I was 8 years old (32 years ago) my father had me under there repairing the plumbing. He couldn't fit so it was up to me. I remember it was very scary, spider webs everywhere and my father screaming at me to pretty much "man up" and do it. That really sucked but hey, my plumbing is still going strong to this day.