By Walter Jowers
I can’t confirm it, but this is what I was told: A few days ago, the ghostly eight-man crew of the Confederate submarine Hunley turned their boat into the inlet that separates South Carolina’s Hunting Island from the Yankee-occupied resort on Fripp Island. Back when the crew was alive, they might have complained about the lack of fresh-air vents, the bad illumination in the boat, and the poor design, which guaranteed they’d be killed in the blast if their torpedo mission turned out to be successful.
But since they were dead anyway, this outing was just pure fun. They aimed the 20-foot pine boom that held their torpedo at the center support of the Fripp Island bridge. When the charge hit, the bridge groaned and leaned, but it stopped just short of dropping into the inlet. Their mission accomplished, the crew and the boat slipped happily back into the ectoplasm.
Of course, the mainstream-press story is that the bridge simply settled while repair crews were working on the supports.
All I know for sure is that when Brenda, Jess, and I got to the state park on Hunting Island, the Frippsters were trapped on their island. They couldn’t speed their pointy little cars through the park, and they couldn’t smoke cigars or pinch waitresses in the inland restaurants. It was an even happier-than-usual vacation time for us.
I sat on the screen porch and watched the repair crews work on the bridge. Meanwhile, I could hear our cabin floor squeak and skronk every time Brenda or Jess walked over a certain spot in the kitchen. I thought to myself, If we were in Nashville, some buckethead would try to solve the bridge sag and the floor squeaks with a buncha floor jacks.
Nashville handy types use floor jacks the way rock ’n’ roll roadies use duct tape. If the glasses tinkle in the china cabinet when somebody walks through the dining room, if there’s a floor sag in front of the fireplace, if the floor feels a little soft in front of the fridge, then it’s time for some floor jacks.
No, bubba, no. Quit with the floor jacks. Let me tell you why: Wood floors are supposed to have a little bounce. If you don’t believe me, ask a factory worker who walks on concrete all day. If the tinkling in the china cabinet bothers you, move the glasses apart a little.
If your floors bounce like a trampoline, if you can literally see ’em bounce, then you’ve got a structural problem. Don’t get floor jacks—get a structural engineer, or a good general contractor. It could be that the floor was underbuilt from the get-go, or it could be that the crawl-space carpenter didn’t nail off the bracing between the joists. You could have termites, or rot, or all of the above.
The biggest problem with using floor jacks to stiffen floors is that people usually overtighten the jacks. This can actually lift beams off their proper supports and put humps in the floor. Of course, these flimsy jacks aren’t built to support this much load, so they often kick out and let go all of a sudden. This can have ugly repercussions if there’s flesh and bone in the way of the flying jack.
Now, regarding sags and drops in the floors (very common in older houses), listen to me: Jacks will not straighten out crooked floors. A whole lot of people think that if there’s a low spot in a floor, and they jack up the low spot, then the floor will straighten out.
It won’t happen that way. The jack will raise the low spot, but it will also raise all the stuff around it. This is because big old floor beams, bent into a droopy shape over several decades, will keep their droopy shape regardless of jacking.
The only way really to straighten out a sagged floor is to tear out all the finish floor and all the subfloor, attach new, level lumber to all the sagged old lumber, and then rebuild the whole flooring system. If jacks really straightened out sagged floors, my basement would be full of ’em.
Then what, you may ask, are floor jacks good for? Well, if you have to jack up something temporarily, as part of a real repair job, floor jacks can work just swell. But when the repair job is finished, the jacks should be gone.
Visit Walter Jowers’ Web site at http://www.nashscene.com/~housesense .
