We had noticed that a room upstairs made a lot of noise when we walked on it and when the kids jumped it shook the floor below. Had some measurements done and they said it looked like the structural beam was deflection 2x the allowed.

Luckily the house is still under the builders warranty. This week they started the repair process and will install a 0.5" steel plate across the beam once it is leveled to keep it in place. After that they have to patch the ceiling and then go upstairs to screw down the subfloor since it had a bunch of nail pops from the beam deflecting.

That looks fun.

Was it bad engineering or construction not to spec?

Soooo sorry ... spec.house?
Even so ... odd the TJI techs missed checking the calcaulations ...

The builder had the Engineering company out there to measure and then they went back and reviewed the plans and checked the calculations.

I was told it was all to spec and that it was likely some bad wood in the beam or it sat outside too long. I have no idea what is right. But I'm not paying for any of it.

Steel plate getting installed and beam being jacked back into place.

How'd they "level" it out? I've not had much luck unbending bent pieces of lumber, especially engineered lumber.

Flitch plates are fun.

When was the house built ?



Built and Installed many flitch beams back in the day for homes that TGI drew up for Borski. But when lvl's came into play they went out of the picture.


Op is there any writing on the lvl beams that say top or arriba ? Sometimes they would show up on site and they were actually crowned the opposite of the top installation stamps so if you installed like it said you ended up with a sag from the start. How much was the beam sagging ?

Agthatbuilds said:

---

How'd they "level" it out? I've not had much luck unbending bent pieces of lumber, especially engineered lumber.

Flitch plates are fun.

---

I have done this on old school sagging garage 16-18 ft 2x headers pre lvl and it was always fun. We would jack the middle up to put some crown back into it then put the steel in with bolts and then slowly let the jack back down. Have never tried it on an lvl beam.

Home was a 2015 build. They basically just put a jack in the center of the beam and pushed it up to get some of the deflection out. Then bolted the plate to the beam.

I did get a custom steel hanger for the other beam. You can see some writing on it but not sure if there is an orientation marking. Looks like branding, date, and time on it.

This also caused some drywall cracking along some seams and baseboards upstairs which they will fix as well.

The drywall has been installed, taped, and floated downstairs and upstairs.

Painters are here to do texture and then tomorrow they will paint the entire ceiling so it matches. They won't try and blend it to the existing paint.

Still have to get doors adjusted upstairs and there is a little rise in the hardwood floor upstairs where the beam was raised that needs to be addressed.