I own an old home, circa 1919. In the 70's, when the new furnace was installed, they cut through the floor joists to run the air ducts. Awesome. So in direct correlation to those cut joists, are outside cracks in the stucco.
So….Where do I even start? Can I reroute the ducts just a little bit? It's not a living-type basement. I don't care about the ceiling/headroom. Then I can fix the floor joists?
Sigh. Please advise. Anything would be appreciated.
Best Answer
Yeah, that wasn't very smart of them. Fixing the stucco is likely a bandage for the issue they created here.
You'll have to move the vents and then sister a beam on both sides of the cut. First, get two construction jacks to raise the beams back to level. Next, sistering involves buying some new boards that are the same size as the cut ones. Then you construction adhesive the new boards and pass bolts through all 4 boards to hold them together. You'll probably want to fill the void the duct work left as well.
It's worth consulting with a structural engineer to ensure nothing else is wrong.