With resources around the planet being used up faster and faster – and the earth overshot day coming closer and closer to January – renovating seems to be clever alternative for everyone looking for living in houses, especially on the countryside. Living in an old (well, depending who you ask, old or not so old) log house comes with its challenges – one of which was our floor.
In 2021 the floor in our guest room and also the office was tilting so much that if you would have played a marble game, all the marbles would have ended up in one place – middle wall towards the house wall. We already noticed the tilting floor in 2016, but during that time the tilting was marginal. Year after year the problem got worse. At one point it was so bad that we decided to do something about it.
Let’s examine the floor first
First a friend of ours went into the crawlspace under the house to examine the floor from below. He took some photos and what he showed us was worse than what we expected. Most of the load carrying beams had extensively rotten away and the lateral main beam was broken in the middle. The lateral beam is the one the other beams were resting one in the middle. That beam also carried the load of one wall.
We then quickly decided to renovate the floor completely, which meant we’d need to remove everything from those two rooms, including the floor itself AND the below beams, too. During the time the house was built (actually it’s logs were moved from another location and then rebuilt on this site) the space between the load carrying beams was filled with sawdust – which also would need to be removed. Basically we would be stripping the whole floor down to ground level.
In order to replace the beams we went into the forest and checked for suitable trees. We found 3 and during winter time felled them. In the spring Lumia and her Mum removed the bark and the logs were transported out of the forest to dry.
Treasure hunt
There wasn’t much we could do during winter and spring. We scheduled the renovation for the coming September. Thankfully another friend of ours had time and with his help we emptied out the saw dust and removed the rotten and damaged beams. Within the saw dust we found old newspapers, magazine and of course Aku Ankka – what a treasure!
Seeing the ground from the office door is an image that I won’t forget that fast.
I had to buy some hydraulic jacks in order for our friend and carpenter Kalle to be able to lift the broken beam up to its original position and then fix the problem.
One by one we put the new beams in. Luckily we had some 4x8 which we combined to 8x16. With those and the logs from the forest Kalle went on repairing the floor.
Once the main structure was in, we went to K-Rauta and bought insulation mats and wire mash – protection from mice. We also rented a shredding machine that could blow insulation into the floor bed.
After the insulation mats and the wire mesh were in, we filled the space with the insulation and then closed it with the previously removed floor planks. And – we had a floor again!
The actual problem
The root cause of the rotting came from bad air circulation. The crawlspace under the house only had one large and one small air vent – not enough for a proper ventilation. We had a diamond driller come over and drill multiple holes into the concrete wall in order to allow air to flow more freely under the house. The only task left for me was to close those holes with ventilation grilles in order to protect it from all kinds of animals.
The work itself took some 2 weeks and a few thousand euros of money. The floor is now super even. No more marble games! And the floor is far warmer during winter times, especially compared to the other half of the house where the old insulation is still in. We changed things up a bit in the office space, brought furniture, pictures, etc. back in and have been happy ever since!
Let’s renovate old houses!
Renovating old houses could be a game changer if practised by more people. Think of all the energy that goes into building a new house. Building a new house could be in theory a persons largest carbon footprint ever. Let’s renovate old houses and retrofit them with suitable modern technology instead!
