Just purchased an old home and started removing carpet and other old flooring in preparation for laying hardwood floors. My plan is to get everything stripped down to the 3/4" T&G plank subfloor, level it and secure the planks to the joists, lay 1/2" plywood, then lay my 1/2" engineered wood flooring.Now that I nearly have all of the old floor stripped away, I noticed a considerable sag that spans the length of the floor. Its about 1" deep at its worst - can't lay floors over that! The sag runs in the direction of the floor joists from a window on the exterior wall to a party wall (it's a two unit home), so I went into the cellar to investigate. The culprit appears to be a cracked joist which is right under the worst part of the floor sag of the sag. It is visibly buckled, and the bottomed of the joist is noticeably lower that the neighboring joists a few feet out from the exterior wall. Pictures and video of the cracked joist. Joists are 2"x10", 16" o.c. and span about 19' between the exterior wall and party wall.After some research, it looks like I may be able to level off the dip and repair the joist by raising it back to level with floor jacks then sistering the joist. I don't have any experience with this though other than what I have read on the internet. Based on what I'm dealing with, is this something I can tackle on my own or should I call in an expert for an evaluation? My two major concerns are putting pressure on the bottom of the cracked joist to raise it, and figuring out how to get a sufficiently long board in place to sister the old joist with since the split basically spans the entire joist. Not to mention electrical has been run through the joist, so I'd have to sister it with either a narrower board, or notch out a section in the bottom of the sister board for the wires. I would definitely appreciate any advice. via /r/DIY https://ift.tt/2Nv6W5d
