Rotten Floor Joist Replacement on a MASSIVE scale! Entire House Floor Joist Replacement project. 

Man what a job you are doing good work. Im so glad my joists aren't rotted,they are however warped and need some attention.

I feel your pain! Got some land with a 160yr old "tear-down" that I decided to save. Rotten joists coming down led to my finding rotten timbers supporting them. A look behind the wallboard showed all the studs were rotten, along with double plate and upstairs joists. Another problem was the foundation was collapsing. Took me 3 months of weekends to rebuild the foundation with new mudsills, jack and post under all the rotted timbers, sister or replace rotted studs, and build a new double plate. Fixing something like that is an exercise in patience, meditation, and beer. Glad your project looks great, man. Well done!

It’s humid in the south in summer. I installed one of those electric vent fans under my house in southern Tennessee and it has made a world of difference.

Holy COW! There are about 100 no no's going on there

FYI - Pressure treated lumber does rot. I have 2x10s that literally crumble. The wood was destroyed by a fungus. The humidity in the air was enough for the fungus to thrive & spread. I also found white mold that destroys wood, too. Its also on pressure treated lumber. I'd ensure all your dirt slopes away from the house, your gutter downspouts discharge 10 to 20 feet away from your house, encapsulate crawlspace, and install crawlspace dehumidifier. You've done a lot work! Impressive!

Dry rot as you call it is actually wood fungus. Wood fungus grows in damp dark places with un protected wood and can destroy more wood than termites in the same amount of time as it basically turns it into paper. If you haven't treated the wood under your home and corrected the moister issues you didn't actually fix the source of the problem . You can treat the fungus by spraying it with mold control . The moister issues can be fixed by crawlspace encapsulation , installing a dehumidifier , or using appropriate ventilation .

Wow! This is some serious home project. Thanks for sharing.

Excellent work. I wish I had these skills.

Dry rot is a misnomer. The wood needs to have 20 percent moisture content in order to support the fungus. You will need to find the reason for the dampness and put a stop to it. That or condition the crawl space and closely monitor humidity. There will be millions of microscopic fungal spores just waiting for that humidity to start eating your new joists.

That’s my crawlspace. Thanks.

wow. thought mine was bad. yours looks like the floor is holding UP the joists.

ALSO for those watching if you use pressure treated wood>> Know if the wood is fir, larch or white woods. pressure treated white woods like pine in most cases ARE NOT structural in strength vertically. I once had a 6x6x12 roll off my flatbed and it broke in half. no knots or cracks, just weak.

Thank you for the detail of your video much appreciated

My house looks worse I just paid off the home this past June now I have to take out a second mortgage to afford $30k get a complete floor redone

I have to do something similar on my house, it’s been vacant for 5 years, I have most of the subfloors pulled up, but stopped last year when lumber went through the roof. Getting ready to tackle it again next week.

Doing a similar job in the crawl space on my old house. I have to stop the moisture that gets under there after a very heavy rain. This causes white mold to form then it "eats" the wood. Five years ago, I replaced 19 floor joist, seals, subfloor and redid the flooring. Last week, I found 6 more boards (not the ones I replaced already) with white mold again. Moisture is horrible in a crawl space. Looking at French drains and water proofing. Also, fogging the area with mold preventative. I bet you are glad to have yours completed.

I did something similar. I added about 60 choice underneath the old house. I ended up just cistern next to the warped Joyce. I found the secret was buying several actually tan floor jacks and gradually lifting up the joists in sections. I also put foam board between the joists for insulation.

i see this and think how did you arrive at a video of my cottage(an old house i bought for the purpose). it is rotted because of moisture and the darkness helps a bunch. mine has complete concrete foundation around the perimeter of the house with access and vents. for my situation( only throwing it out for all to consider), the wood sweats and then the surface moisture evaporates in a vicious cycle. the darkness helps aggravate the situation. the mold/ fungus like the dark. and then there is poor ventilation. seems it's a paradox. to have ventilation there is warm moist air entering a cool place in the summer months. to keep warm in the winter it needs be closed. warm air in the house and cold below the floor, moisture transfer across the floor envelope just as in an exterior wall. crawl spaces are a pain to deal with. good luck with this. some tricks i have used in the past under porches etc: use light colored gravel over white tarp- like vapor barrier on the soil. white wash. low energy lighting. this helped discourage the mold/ fungus, they like it dark.

We're in the midst of doing this right now. We have a couple rooms done so far. We don't have enough crawl space to do it from below though, so we're having to pull subfloor first, then replace any damaged sill plates/joists/beams. It's a job, but we got the house and property so cheap, it's worth doing. We bought enough advantech and treated 2 by lumber when the price came back down a month or so ago, so hopefully we don't have to buy more. Thanks for the vidya

I love it

hate to break it to you, but dry rot DEFINITELY needs some quantity of moisture to grow (although it can be as low as 20% moisture in the wood). and looking at those "piers" made of cinder blocks, the BOTTOM of those cinder blocks look quite wet. my guess is that the cinder blocks on the perimeter of the building (who thought THAT was a good idea?) are allowing water to pour in during particularly heavy rains. and of course, water doesn't just sit, it evaporates, and rises up to whatever is above (your floor joists). pressure treating is best, but it will not protect the wood forever. it would probably be best to spray concrete on the outer "foundation" to seal it from inflow of liquids. one more thing: the cinder blocks being used as piers are sitting on the flat side, which SOUNDS logical, but in actuality, the support is NOT HALF as good as when they are stacked vertically, with the flat surfaces on the sides (as your foundation is). i've seen cinder blocks buckle under stress from having weight placed on their flat side from above. you will see this if you try to jack up the house by placing the jack on a flat topped cinder block! if you are jacking up the house anyways, it would be a simple process to flip them, though you may need to adjust the height, since cinder blocks are not often perfectly square.

Can you explain how you are taking the main beam out?

Man I found this as my first search for keywords to fix a bad joist in my soon to be for sale home.. haven't looked from underneath yet.. man I hope it's not this bad lol

The plan to reduce humidity in crawl space of my NC house: 1) gutters, 2) underground drain lines from gutter downspouts to ditch to carry rain water away from house, 3) moisture barrier on crawl space floor, 4) dehumidifier, 5) seal crawl space vents with brick. Completed first 3 steps so far and crawl space appears to be drying. What a pain, but beats needing to replace floor joists and floor.

Are you going to put down some plastic sheeting/tarp material to cover up the bare dirt that is allowing the moisture to cause the damage? I am closing on a house that is going to need the same repair. It looks like all of the floor joists will need to be replaced. After I get the joists fixed, I'm going to remove a lot of the dirt (to give me room to do repairs or mods in the future) to flatten the crawlspace and put down some heavy tarp-like plastic sheeting to prevent moisture. I will seal the seams with tape and try to remove any path that moisture might have to getting into the crawlspace. I will also look into some sort of ventilation system to help keep the crawlspace dried out.

Good job on fixing you house . i wish you show the process on how to do it

Did you jack the surrounding beams leaving 1 for replacing loose at a time

I do some renovation work with a friend from West Virginia. He says building permits and code enforcement is almost nonexistent there, and now I believe him. Here in California of course, it is as ridiculous the other way.

You should not lay concrete blocks on their side you really reduce their strength dramatically when you do that

DO NOT USE ADVANTEK!!! Our floor joists were almost as bad as yours. Our rim joist, sill plate, and lower wall plate are also badly rotted. The Advantek flooring is rotted in our house along the outside walls, in the bathrooms, entrance ways, and kitchen. We would never use Advantek, It does not hold up. And this house was built in 2005. Any slight moisture will cause it to eventually turn into wood flakes. We are trying to figure out how to replace the outside wall on one side of the house without it collapsing.

@Homesteading Bartram Style My current scenario is I've been told that I've got some loose tiles in the bathroom and some water could of seeped underneath. They need to pull up the tiles to see if their is any damage and the quote could be even more expensive. Would i ask them to go under the house to see if there is any damage to the joists and subfloor to avoid have to pull up the tiles ?

This house should be jacked up and have a footer poured, ideally with a sealed crawl space and humidity management. At the very least, you gotta have mortar between the blocks and concrete pads underneath , any soil settling and the house could collapse.

undergoing joist repairs nowmyself I hope you dont regret using those boards that have large knots such as those in the video... all of my joist that failed were at a knot that was 2" or larger . I have noticed really poor lumber at the big box stores, buyer beware...

I got this same problem and don't know how to go about fixing it .and I can't afford to hire someone.but that's really the only thing wrong with this place.but when I do it I'm going to rip up the floor and do it like that bc I dont like crawling under my house .

Where do you live? That foundation would never pass any type of inspection if you want to spell or even for insurance.

How much would it cost to redo the whole house?

wow... as someone that has always lived in a house with a basement, that foundation is bizzare. its just sitting on top of cinderblocks.

How much would something like this cost?

I always wanted to know how they build and make. Apartment and houses floors so they won’t fall. For a long time…,

This is how mine look.i gotta figure out how to repair

My joists aren’t rotted but they are fatigued and need to be replaced after the new basement is put in. I want to use I joists.

I ran into a situation WORSE than that redoing my parents old house. The rot is not from moisture in their old house its from total lack of ventilation

How much do you charge ? I need help my floors are doing the same thing . My house is 92 years old . My husband just pasted away and I don't know how to fix any of my floors

How much did this cost ? Curious my girlfriends parents house needs this done

I have a 125 yr old home that needs an entries load bearing wall replaced an sill plate... should a temp wall be built while work is done on the original wall & sill plate?

I did two rooms at my house, but then another beam disolved later (so I have more to do). And old house, moves stress around. You fairly much have to replace it all. ouch. I easily spent $7,000 on electrical repair because of rodent damage, then $25,000 in two rooms, fixing indescribable problems. One room had no rim joist. the floor floated in the room. Which made taking it out safer, but repairing it, still required jacking up, and putting in rim joists.

wow...i have never seen a house up on cinder blocks like that. is that a trailer house or something? not the most stable way to do a house. i deally, it should have been poured concrete, though i realize that can be tricky in an already existing house. who built this thing originally? was it before the building code existed? i'm no pro contractor, but even i wouldn't feel comfortable walking around in that house...

What wood did you use? Weather resistant? Or which one should be used?

Why didn't they use mortar on the foundation?

I'm going through this very thing right now 😭🤦🏻‍♀️

Can someone please tell me, as a DIYer, do you need permits to replace rotted joists and subfloor or no?

Maybe I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that the minimum size of floor joist is 2x10's. Some places even require 2x12's but almost everywhere requires at least 2x10's. 2x8's just don't have enough meat to them.

Don't they have building codes or home inspectors in that area?

hey this is what i am doing! lol bought a 100+ year old house but its not that bad... sofar.

We all wood roots in dry conditions, not

How much would something like this cost to repair and is it worth repairing it? I have a small 877sq Ft home and this issue in my bathroom

Considering purchasing a home with joist issues throughout. How much did it cost to replace for the entire home?

I’m having to get this done to our house, sadly I’m not smart enough to do this myself.. so I’m going to hire someone.. whole house needs it, I hope I don’t spend an arm and a leg on it

Powder post beetle damage?.

Why don't they build them out of brick or stone.? My house is a 100 years old and has had a new roof about 35 years ago and is still standing.

if ur taking the flooring out why jack it up?? pull up the floor and u can work from above!?

Get to the how-to part 😊

How much did it cost to fix all that?! My commentary made my husband tell me it sounded like I was watching a horror movie.

OMG, what a freakin nightmare. I thought my house was a nightmare!

This is the worst. Besides what you said, no vapor barrier, cinder blocks for footing set sideways and not plumb, soil not leveled. Can't imagine what the home looks like.

Wow what does something like this look like cost wise? I just got an inspection completed and they mentioned one of the beams was rotted on one end. Who knows what else.....just trying to prepare myself for worst case scenario.

At that point i would have considered building a new house from scratch. It may have been easier honestly bc there was so much wrong with this

How much will this cost

Mack human tell you if you have an enemy that's a carpenter he could repair top and bottom rafters and he'll beat you up in the repair

those concrete blocks at 3:22 are off by 90 degrees. They should be rotated. But it will probably be okay w/the new lumber.

Brother you have your work cut out for you. The crawl space is damp. That's not " dry rot" fortunately you're using treated lumber. You need to ventilate the crawl space in the summer. I know it's a beastly chore but you can do it . Good luck.

So the house isn't bolted down to a foundation. It'll be like the wizard of oz in a tornado

He said not what I would consider wet, you have midline’s on your foundation water is coming in and rotting away your wood

How viewed for over five minutes and still have no idea what you are doing. All I see is dry riot that I need to replace.

No such thing as dry rot

😅

bruh

THere is no such thing as "dry rot". Wood can not rot without moisture.

Increase video speed by 2X. 1) Top right three dots 2) Press playback speed 3) select 2X speed You're welcome.

No such thing as "dry rot"

Dude u living in this house like that? Lol I hope ur teeth ain't rotten like ur Damm house 😅😅😅 just joking good luck