Steel I-beams under bearers?!

[madrussian]

We are looking to renovate and extend an 1890s weatherboard in Melbourne. The house itself is reasonable nick inside, but it needs restumping.

While the bearers, joists and boards are also in pretty good condition, a complicating factor is that underneath two or three of the bearers are long steel I-beams/girders that run up to 18 feet in length. These I-beams then sit on the stumps - many of which have rotted.

The restump job itself looks relatively straightforward, given excellent access, but I am struggling to see how they will get these steel girders out. I was under the impression that to restump a house you need to jack up the bearers a little and replace the stumps underneath. In this case, as the girders are wider than the bearers sitting on them, I am not sure how they would achieve this? I presume jacking the house up by the joists is a sure fire way to pop all your floorboards off, but at least then I could see how they could remove the girders.

At one end of the house the steel girders are sitting on brick piers and I wonder how the hell they ever set the sub-floor up in the first place (it looks a lot more complex than if they had just done it properly).

Just wondering if anyone has ever struck anything like this before and, if so, how they got around it. I mentioned the set-up to a mate, who suggested we just wait till we knock the back of the house off and slide the beams out as part of the reno, but I am still struggling to see how I take the weight off them to slide them out - particularly as I can't get at the bearers.

Any thoughts/suggestions greatly appreciated.

Cheers,
MR

[DJ’s Timber]

I maybe missing the point here, but why do the beams have to come out. Would have thought that the beams would make the re-stumper's job easier as they would be straight

[bpj1968]

I'm with DJ.

The steel is obviously there for a reason. Maybe the bearers above are cracked etc. Given that the house is 1890 and some are on brick piers I'd say that this is most likely the case, as I don't think they would have used brick piers way back then. I have replaced a stump or 2 at the parents house years ago, by making brick piers either side of the offending stump.

Treat the steel as a bearer and leave in place. As an option jack these up ever so slightly, or not at all, but support the weight. remove old stumps and weld some steel stumps under the I beam then concrete in. The weld won't have to be too much, just a tack weld to help locate the stump.

To remove you could jack up the joists, by laying temp bearers either side of the old bearer and jack these up, this will distribute the load, and cause no more problems than jacking the old beaer

[madrussian]

Thanks guys.

I had thought about leaving the beams in, but they are only really on one side of the house, and are in slightly odd lengths - eg. the one that is 18 ft long runs along the main hallway, but stops about half a metre short of the front door, so the door frame isn't really supported by anything on one side! Not even a stump!

Consequently, while it looks pretty solid at present (having been under the house) and looks like it has been that way for a long time, the house does have a very slight V-shape looking at it from the front (it is double fronted).

It is obvious in a couple of spots that the beams aren't totally level with each other. For instance, there is a minor ridge through the middle of the living room, where the beam at the edge of the room/house is probably 10-15mm lower than the one running through the middle of the room.

The upside is they do feel rock solid under foot cause they don't look like rotting any time soon! I like the idea of temporary bearers, assuming we the beams can't stay in.

MR