Stumps for thought

Thank you for having the Woodworking Forum. Without taking too many sidetracks towards other good discussions I enjoyed reading through all I could find on stumps. My knowledge on stumps has grown well. Of course i have more questions and hoping to get help/insight on with before I do anything. I'm glad to have found a great resource that can help me with my chores and look forward to reading on about funner woodworking projects soon.

I have just moved into a 50's ranch in the Mordialloc area of Melbourne. Basically two inline offset sections of stretched boxes all on 100 x 100 concrete stumps, 300 to 400 mm exposed above flat grade in/on hard packed sand. All of the flooring is relatively out of level. Some parts more than others - crooked door jambs, cracks in the corners, etc. Most of the floor feels solid. One of the sections is an open floor plan of kitchen, dinning and living space that was added about 10 years ago. Its nice polished floorboards dive mainly towards one corner of the room with a difference in elevation approaching three inches. I could fix the mossie breeding gutter ponds by adding a downspout to the most settled end. I ought to get it all restumped. I'm considering compromising on the worst of the sinks by jacking and packing.

Some of the posts, mid-room I'd say, have a similar lean direction to them of about 10 or 20 mm out of plumb for 300 mm of exposed post. Curiously anomalous. Like soil creep but only in the middle of the house and I don't see my neighbors digging subterranean car parks. Can't explain it other than poorly went in. For that matter I'm thinking the whole house got restumped and not all that well. Perhaps nothing was leveled and stump footing under the bearing walls of the open floor plan undersized (no, I have not actually dug to the bottom of a stump to check it throughly). Then again it's not as if the floor only ramps down at the exterior walls. So I'm also nagged by the thought of ground subsidence. I hear droughts the reason for that.

Anyway here are my questions. How much tilt can a stump handle? With a bar in the stump center does a cement sheet or wood block usually get notched to get around it or do you pack over the stump from two sides? Is lifting structure and packing with cement or hardwood standard, acceptable, reasonable practice? Would I properly need to get council approval to put one cement shim under a bearer over a stump? Would a building council object to a stack of shims, say 75 mm thick of em?

Thanks, fizbit

Hi There

My non-builder view is you want to make sure they aren't going to move any further, if you are sure on that then I'd would just be packing with cemet sheet with a slot for the reo.

Low stumps should generally be taking vertical load, I would say they were just installed a bit quick and scew unless they are all tilting in one direction ... in which case you have a much larger problem. Maybe they put the row of stumps in a bit out of whack and then had to pull the tops across to line up with the bearer?

Thanks OBBob,

Yes, the stumps that are leaning are all leaning in the same direction. Frightening at first look but with eyes open wider it's mainly a clump in the middle. When did concrete stumps start getting put in? Maybe they're original? Or like you suggest the holes weren't quite in the right place and all got kicked in line.

fizbit

If they have reo through the middle they would be original. The restumping ones have a wire loop on each side which is nailed to the bearer ... they hang there while they backfil with cement.

I don't see how you could move some on an angle without moving them all once the floor had them all locked together.

If it really concerned you, you could excavate and knock straight (one by one) and / or backfill with concrete??