HELP!! Some advice urgently needed!
We are selling up and our buyers surveyor picked up on our bouncy ground floor floors. We've had a builder round and they have identified the problem, basically the joists sit on low 'sleeper walls', or rather they used to! Over time there has been some slight movement ( shrinkage of the joists we believe) and now there is a small gap ( around 5-10mm) between the joists and the sleeper walls - hence the bounce.
The builder has suggested two options:
1. Simply pack the gap between the joist and the wall. He is recommending using plastic wedges ( as used in double glazing) but I would prefer slate. In my view this would be a perfectly satisfactory option but he recommends option 2:
2. This is far more costly and involves lifting all the floorboards and joists, and then removing the top course of bricks from all the sleeper walls and replacing them with a length of wood, bedded on with cement. He would then bolt the joists to this length of wood, so providing ( allegedly) a more permanent solution.
Does anyone have any experience of this problem and either / both of the recommended options. Basically I don't want to be spending money I don't need to, if packing the joists is a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem then I can argue with my buyer that they should accept this option ( they want us to pay for the more expensive option and describe packing the joists as a 'bodge job').
Any advice would be much appreciated!
We are selling up and our buyers surveyor picked up on our bouncy ground floor floors. We've had a builder round and they have identified the problem, basically the joists sit on low 'sleeper walls', or rather they used to! Over time there has been some slight movement ( shrinkage of the joists we believe) and now there is a small gap ( around 5-10mm) between the joists and the sleeper walls - hence the bounce.
The builder has suggested two options:
1. Simply pack the gap between the joist and the wall. He is recommending using plastic wedges ( as used in double glazing) but I would prefer slate. In my view this would be a perfectly satisfactory option but he recommends option 2:
2. This is far more costly and involves lifting all the floorboards and joists, and then removing the top course of bricks from all the sleeper walls and replacing them with a length of wood, bedded on with cement. He would then bolt the joists to this length of wood, so providing ( allegedly) a more permanent solution.
Does anyone have any experience of this problem and either / both of the recommended options. Basically I don't want to be spending money I don't need to, if packing the joists is a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem then I can argue with my buyer that they should accept this option ( they want us to pay for the more expensive option and describe packing the joists as a 'bodge job').
Any advice would be much appreciated!
