Fixing Dodgy Brothers handywork.

[nomad]

I'm helping a builder friend to build a new back wall of my house.

A bit of background.

When my house was built in 1922, it was originally double backed so to speak. Facing the back of the house, the bath room is at the far right, at the far left was a sleepout, & the section between them was open but under roof. The back corner posts for the old sleepout are 4" x 4" timbers. The back door was originally the door leading into the kitchen, & they stepped down out of the kitchen then up into the bath room. No one seems to remember if there was a floor here or not, so we'll presume there wasn't, or there was & it rotted away & was discarded. With information gathered from neighbours, a wall was built about 50 years ago to enclose this section & included a new back door.

Dodgy Bros work number 1: When this new wall was built, they didn't connect it to the other wall, but left a gap of about 50mm & covered this gap on the outside with a vertical bit of board between the two sets of windows. Also, the new back doorway they created didn't have a door frame or jamb. All it was, was a stud at the end of this new wall which they put the lock plate into & a stud at the other side which they screwed the door hinges into. This stud was not connected to the corner stud of the bath room either, with about a 25mm gap between the two.

Now, at some point in time in the last 7 years, give or take a year or two, a new floor was laid down in this section.

Dodgy Bros work number 2: I think the photos say a lot more than I could ever describe easily. Tops of stumps at ground level so bearers are laying on the dirt, 2 rows of joists instead of one, plus wedges, to get the height (the plain untreated joists run in the same direction as the joists under the floor in the old sleepout). Heaven knows what the bloke was thinking when he built this floor frame.

[oohsam]

Oh lord. That looks like quite a mess under there. I've never seen so much spaghetti....Good luck with it. Do let us know how it goes, along with progress pics.
What a shamble!!!

[nomad]

Ok, here's a quick update.

I've taken the rest of the chipboard flooring & the termite treated joists off today.

Looking at the rest of the deck framing under that, I've come to realise that it is the framing that was built at the same time or shortly after the house was built.

The comment in my first post about what the person who built this was thinking, still stands.

The measurements in the pic are the distance between the top of the deck bearers & the joists. As you can see, the wedges get higher the further they get away from the house. At the house end, the top of the deck bearer is level with the bottom of the bearer under the bath room wall. It's the same at the other side where the old sleepout wall was. The block slopes up slightly from front to back.

You're going to love this next bit. Each of these outside bearers have no stumps under them. Under where the back wall was (right of photo), this bearer was laid on the dirt, & just nailed to the side of the house stump under the corner post of the bath room. The other end of the bearer (at left in pic) where it slightly goes under the original back wall of the house where the kitchen door is, was lifted off the ground placed against the side of the house stump there & nailed to it. There's no stump or support under this end of the bearers either. The bearer in the middle is the one shown in the other post with the top of the stump at ground level. There are short stumps mid way & just under the wall at the house end under this one.

This is all getting pulled apart tomorrow & being rebuilt properly. I was lucky to be given some lengths of redgum posts in very good condition yesterday that are the same size or slightly bigger than house stumps, so these can be used as stumps under the rebuilt deck.

[Bloss]

It looks a mess and judged by today's standards it is, but in 1922 fair chance the bloke(s) building it had no building training at all - just self-taught or a complete novice having a go. Fair chance whoever did the second lot was in the same situation. Given that the house has stayed up and been usable (albeit with repairs being done in a similar manner to original and the look being pretty ordinary) it actually has lasted quite well. Not that I am suggesting that was normal or should be accepted, but it was not rare to have owner builders just do the best they could with little money and few skills or tools.

It was not all that unusual for bearers to be laid directly on the earth (or to have plain earth floors - and this remains so in many parts of the world and this is an acceptable building form) and there were some who argued that doing so gave better protection from termites and rot as the timbers were easily inspected and stayed drier than timber buried or partly so (termites & rot both need sustained moisture to survive). Depending how far from town the place was in 1922, and what resources were available on the block, would also have dictated the structure. Local council inspections were often not required or cursory until the 60s and 70s, or later in many parts of Australia and rules too were crude or non-existent.

You seem to be well on the path to fixing it, but if it were me I would be using brick, concrete or steel stumps or piers rather than redgum. In a place so close to the ground there is no real reason to use anything more than relatively shallow concrete pads or simply embedded concrete blocks with the bearers on top (although BCA compliance needs otherwise of course). But I guess your redgum stumps are at the right price! :2tsup: