Treated Floor Joists Over Crawl Space

Floor joists in crawl spaces are closer than 18 to the ground.

Treated floor joists over crawl space. The crawl space floor joist plays a vital role in the construction of your home. Wooden supports can easily rot and fail in problematic crawl spaces with open vents high humidity and standing water. The main beams down the center of the crawl space are staring to rot along the bottom edge and on the 2 outside plies. The bottom 1 of 75 of the already overloaded floor joists are rotted.

A floor joist is one of the horizontal supporting members that run from wall to wall wall to beam or beam to beam to support the main floor. Any wood on a foundation wall and is less than 8 from the exposed ground. But most often it is wood 2 x8 s or 2 x10 s. Girders in crawl spaces are closer than 12 to the ground.

Typical beam installation includes pouring concrete pads in the crawl space then placing screw type house jacks on the pads and using the jacks to lift the beam perpendicular to the joists. Cut pieces of insulation just large enough to fit along the rim joist the framing material into which all the floor joists are nailed. The sill plate is rotted in many places. It may be made of wood steel or concrete.

Your cabin didn t have any of these problems until the development of plastic. If your floors feel like they are bouncy uneven and sagging you could have a problem with the floor joists and support system underneath your house. These problems must be addressed firsthand prior to implementing any restoration steps. If there was water damage make sure that whatever leaky pipe or condensation issue caused the rot is fixed.

Pressure treated wood was developed as termite infestation prevention not so much as a rot prevention. Most often floor joists need to be sistered because of two problems either water damage which leads to rot or termite damage that crumbled the joist. Both the beams and the floor joists are also sagging. When you re using fiberglass batting insulation material run it about 6 inches or so onto the crawl space floor.