Adjustable Steel Columns are designed to be a permanent building column. Designed for new home construction. Constructed of durable steel for safety and stability. Poured concrete locks column in place.
Dimension tables in their catalogue do not include max measurement of the part of the steel column that is above the concrete floor, only overall min/max dimension for column. I could not pick between two sizes for my replacement column because of this. I contacted their customer support and even though I explained the problem several different ways over several emails, the representative had no clue what I was asking and tried to make me go away by telling me to hire an engineer to choose the column.
The prescribed method is to encase the screw in concrete so that it cannot be tampered with. To do that typically the screw would be down. An alternative method of doing this is damaging (disabling) the screw once it is finally adjusted. You should check with your building inspector to see if that would meet approval. It has been done and approved in some areas but in the end it is up to the inspector.
Would these work fine as replacements for original columns (in my case, a few are heavily rusted and need to be switched out)? I would like something that I can just set on top of the floor and not have to worry about setting in concrete. Also, if these were not being set into the concrete, would there be any reason to not have the adjusting end be at the top?
+Edward Staley These are adjustable columns for permanent installation; so the answer to your questions is yes. You would either have to cover the screw portion in concrete or disable the screw so that once it is finally set it can no longer be tampered with or further adjusted.
Tiger Brand jacks are junk. I had purchased some other brand from Menards and needed one more so I went to Home Depot because it was just down the road and picked up a Tiger Jack. The Menards jack was twice the thickness and the bottom and top plate were almost 1/8 thicker at the same cost. These are over advertised low quality items the jack was returned immediately after opening the box.
Akron and Tiger brands are the same exact companies and the products are the same. Menards like Lowes uses Akron at the time of this post. Home Depot used Tiger brands. They do this so you can't price match them most likely.
Matthew, could you mention the name of the brand you bought at Menards. I'm looking for a quality jack and I need a few of them but don't want to compromise on quality. I'd like to check it out.
