Why Are My Floors at My Cottage Springy and Sagging
“Why are the floors at my cottage springy and sagging? And can you help fix this?”
Glad you found this article. We help resolve these kinds of problems every week. First, let’s discuss possible reasons for springy or soft floors.
Likely, your crawl space was built with “old crawl space thinking” – built on top of a dirt crawl space with some vents. If you were to go down there, most times of the year, it’s cool and damp. These conditions have allowed the once good, strong floor joists to become weaker over time. They have lost much of their strength. They are slowly deteriorating. But the good news is as long as it has not gone too far, the floor joists strength can be restored, made strong again and prevent further degradation of the floors. It is much easier and far less costly to repair now than to let things continue.
We often hear, “well it’s only got to this stage in 50 years. I only care about the next 10 years.”
So, if we think of your cottage like our body when we are born, generally, we have good health for years and don’t need a lot of doctor or medical appointments. But as we get older, we sure need doctors a lot more. So, the problems progress much, much quicker.
But the great news is we can restore the integrity of your floor structure quickly, and it will be very cost-effective to maintain. Not only will this give you peace of mind but allow you to enjoy it the way it was meant to be. If you want to put a new floor down or build your dream kitchen on top, you can do so with confidence that it is sitting on a strong foundation.
And as a potential cottage seller in years to come, you can list it for more as your cottage will not only show better but also demonstrate how much pride you had in ownership along the way.
With the use of our SmartJack® system, we can support your existing beams. If needed, our crawl space SmartBeam® can be installed to reduce the floor joist span.
Likely a CleanSpace® encapsulation system and Sedona™ dehumidifier, which is like no other dehumidifier out there, is used to keep that high humidity down to a safe level to prevent future floor joist decay and weakening.
