Floor joist cracked. How bad is it and how should I go about fixing it?
We are currently in the process of gutting and remodeling our bathroom and we noticed one of the joists underneath has quite a few cracks in it including one pretty long one. This is the longest crack - at least 2 feet long. Longest/biggest crack on the right. A ~6\" crack that's not even visible in the photo in the middle, and then the 2nd longest crack on the top/left. 2nd longest crack in the center. And the 3rd longest on the left going to the end of the joist. The purple sharpie marks are where the crack ends are, to help visualize how big they are. The white puffy walls are the foundation walls - so the joists terminate on the foundation (and on a steel I-beam on the other end). The cracks are all under where the drain end sits (the bath drain is the one visible in the shots). The joists are mostly 16" OC, but the ones past this cracked joist have even closer spacing (not sure if they did that intentionally because this is where the bath and cabinets sit, or what). None of the other joists have noticable cracks. This one is the only one with cracks, they're all in the 5-ish feet from the end under the tub. This joist is also not perfectly vertical - its tilted slightly. I really want to avoid having to get an engineer out here and have professional remediation as that's not in our budget. I'd prefer to sister another joist on ourselves if that would be "good enough". I did some research and it feels like sistering is an acceptable solution here, but I heard some suggestions of getting engineers to do it, but that was on an older home with worse cracking and a very different structural setup. Now, *if* sistering is an option, I had a few questions about that: - Does the sister joist have to be the full length of the original? If not, should I still try to have the one end resting on the foundation? - How many lag bolts to use? (bolts per foot?) - Does the placement of the bolts matter very much? I can get more photos or measurements or answer any questions y'all have. Thanks a ton for reading and helping us out! submitted by /u/imMute [link] [comments]

![]() | We are currently in the process of gutting and remodeling our bathroom and we noticed one of the joists underneath has quite a few cracks in it including one pretty long one. This is the longest crack - at least 2 feet long. 2nd longest crack in the center. And the 3rd longest on the left going to the end of the joist. The purple sharpie marks are where the crack ends are, to help visualize how big they are. The joists are mostly 16" OC, but the ones past this cracked joist have even closer spacing (not sure if they did that intentionally because this is where the bath and cabinets sit, or what). None of the other joists have noticable cracks. This one is the only one with cracks, they're all in the 5-ish feet from the end under the tub. This joist is also not perfectly vertical - its tilted slightly. I really want to avoid having to get an engineer out here and have professional remediation as that's not in our budget. I'd prefer to sister another joist on ourselves if that would be "good enough". I did some research and it feels like sistering is an acceptable solution here, but I heard some suggestions of getting engineers to do it, but that was on an older home with worse cracking and a very different structural setup. Now, *if* sistering is an option, I had a few questions about that: I can get more photos or measurements or answer any questions y'all have. Thanks a ton for reading and helping us out! [link] [comments] |