At this point in the realm of projects on our house, the top issue seems to now be the unevenness of the floor, so I'm going to start on the floor joist replacement. I've considered my options between sistering and replacement, and I am at this point of the strong opinion that replacing the joists and subfloor and rim joist is the better route because:
1) most of the rim joist is rotted away anyway
2) most of the floor josits have been sistered at least once because the end of many joists rotted with the rim joist
3) the 2x6 lumber is undersized for its span
4) I will be more sure that the floor will end up flat and level by building new instead of repairing old
5) the floor plan will be changed through future projects anyway
6) existing structure does not properly support penetrations for plumbing or crawlspace access nor provide extra support where needed for higher load items like the bathtub or stairway.
7) the only existing beam is undersized and has unsupported joints.
Anyway, the case can be made for starting over completely on the house, but there are practical limitations which take that out of consideration.
Getting to my question, here's the background which directly relates to my question:
The house was originally constructed in 1917 as a simple 22x22 gable end 1.5 story house with the gable ends facing east and west and floor joists oriented north-south. As a later time, an additional 10' was added onto the east end of the house, this addition used floor joists oriented east-west. In other words, the last 10' of house has floor joists perpindicular to the floor joists of the rest of the house.
It seems to me that the prudent course of action as I replace floor joists would be to replace the east-west floor joists with new floor joists oriented north-south as it is with the rest of the house. This will also simplify the beams I am constructing because they will simply run the span of the house instead of building something like an H-shape.
Is this the right way to proceed or are there any reasons to stick with the original configuration?
My building inspector is fine with deviations I've planned from my engineer's specifications so long as they exceed his specifications, such as I've increased the number of footings (the original spacing would have interfered with plumbing), I'm using 4 beams instead of 3 (due to furnace placement in the crawlspace) and upsized joists (originally specified as using the existing 2x6 joists)
1) most of the rim joist is rotted away anyway
2) most of the floor josits have been sistered at least once because the end of many joists rotted with the rim joist
3) the 2x6 lumber is undersized for its span
4) I will be more sure that the floor will end up flat and level by building new instead of repairing old
5) the floor plan will be changed through future projects anyway
6) existing structure does not properly support penetrations for plumbing or crawlspace access nor provide extra support where needed for higher load items like the bathtub or stairway.
7) the only existing beam is undersized and has unsupported joints.
Anyway, the case can be made for starting over completely on the house, but there are practical limitations which take that out of consideration.
Getting to my question, here's the background which directly relates to my question:
The house was originally constructed in 1917 as a simple 22x22 gable end 1.5 story house with the gable ends facing east and west and floor joists oriented north-south. As a later time, an additional 10' was added onto the east end of the house, this addition used floor joists oriented east-west. In other words, the last 10' of house has floor joists perpindicular to the floor joists of the rest of the house.
It seems to me that the prudent course of action as I replace floor joists would be to replace the east-west floor joists with new floor joists oriented north-south as it is with the rest of the house. This will also simplify the beams I am constructing because they will simply run the span of the house instead of building something like an H-shape.
Is this the right way to proceed or are there any reasons to stick with the original configuration?
My building inspector is fine with deviations I've planned from my engineer's specifications so long as they exceed his specifications, such as I've increased the number of footings (the original spacing would have interfered with plumbing), I'm using 4 beams instead of 3 (due to furnace placement in the crawlspace) and upsized joists (originally specified as using the existing 2x6 joists)