LESLIE: Now we’re going to take a call from Ted in New York who’s looking for a product recommendation.
What can we help you with, Ted?
TED: Yes, I have a residence which has a pool and out at the end of the pool – which the pool is 50-foot long – there’s a cabana and the cabana is connected to the house by a breezeway which is part of the roof. One side of the breezeway is supported by brick pillars. The other side of the breezeway on the pool is supported along this 50-foot stretch by two wrought iron pedestals which have broken through some terrazzo tile a couple of inches and now that one side of the breezeway has a gentle sag to it. And I need – and I don’t know the proper name for them; I’ve seen them in construction sites but they look like roof jacks or floor jacks. They can be anywhere from 7 to 10-foot long and they’re adjustable. And I can’t seem to find them either in any equipment supply catalogs or maybe you might be able to recommend a different methodology for repressioning (ph) or retensioning that roof upward to relieve the sag in it and get it to where I can put some under these two wrought iron support stays.
TOM: Yeah, actually you don’t need an adjustable lolly column, which is what that is. All you need is this. You ready? A hydraulic car jack and a couple of 2x4s nailed together. You put the car jack under the area where – directly under the area where you’re going to make contact; you cut the two 2x4s to fit up under that – you might need to put a little piece of wood under the 2x4s on top of the car jack – and then you very slowly but surely start jacking it up.
TED: Right, I thought that it would be required gentle pressure over the period of maybe a couple of days or weeks.
TOM: Nah, not even, not even. You just take the pressure off of it and now you have no pressure on that steel column that’s falling. Yeah, and then you just shim it up or whatever you’re going to do and you drop it back down again. It’s as simple as that.
You know, I have a two-story garage and I have a main beam that goes down the middle of it. And at one point, the beam has a joint and it was held up by a column that split and cracked and I just grabbed – now this is holding a lot of weight. I can’t tell you how much weight this thing is holding. But I just slipped my car jack under that and just a piece of cake; it lifts the whole beam right up and you shim it up and you’re done.
LESLIE: Now Tom, do you think this problem could be avoided again in the future if there’s an additional support added on the pool side?
TOM: Well, it sounds like it’s an issue of – what was the original reason it went down? Is it corrosion?
TED: Original bottom was cracked terrazzo tile which the support stays broke through to a dirt bottom.
TOM: So you really don’t have a proper base there is the problem.
TED: Yeah, that’s the problem. I’m going to have the thing redone but before they poured new concrete or did anything I wanted to get this stuff up and get the pressure off of it because it’s …
TOM: Yeah, that’s all you’ve got to do. You know, you can actually – if you want, you can lift it up a little bit on one side and then cut another temporary column to hold that up – so between the terrazzo and the roof – then go to the other side of the column, lift that up, put a temporary column there. Now you’ve kind of supported that on both sides. At that point, you can take out the old column, dig out that hole, pour a proper footing there and then put it all back together again, then let the pressure off of those columns.
TED: Right. That’s brilliant. Hey listen, thank you so much. I appreciate that.
TOM: No problem. Thanks so much for calling us at 1-888-MONEY-PIT.
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