In older homes built throughout Olympia, Tumwater, and Centralia, floor structures rely on a central crawl space beam (girder) supported by wooden posts resting on small concrete pier blocks. Over decades, persistent crawl space humidity, plumbing leaks, and high soil moisture take a heavy toll on this framing.
Moisture content exceeding 19% triggers active wood-decay fungi, softening Douglas fir floor joists and rotting main structural beams. Compounding the problem, small surface pier blocks lack deep footing support; as crawl space soil softens during winter rains, the heavy center load of your house drives these blocks inches into the earth, creating noticeable floor sags and bouncing.
Many general handymen attempt a quick fix by placing thin-gauge temporary jack posts from a hardware store onto wooden scraps. In the damp environment of a Western Washington crawl space, non-galvanized steel posts rust through rapidly, and resting them on soft surface dirt guarantees future settling.
Our permanent structural stabilization process replaces weak framing with engineered components. We temporary-shore floor joists with hydraulic bottle jacks, remove rotted lumber, and install high-capacity engineered laminated veneer lumber (LVL) or treated structural beams designed to span long distances without sagging.
Beneath each support point, we dig and pour deep, steel-reinforced solid concrete footings engineered to distribute point loads across stable subsoil. We then install heavy-gauge, hot-dipped galvanized steel SmartJack systems. These threaded mechanical jacks allow millimeter-precision leveling to gently lift your floors back to planar level.