Ground floor joists floating

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Hi,

We recently installed laminate flooring in the living room of our ground floor Victorian house (built approx. 1900).

The laminate floor was fine until a couple months ago we started noticing some bounce in one part of the floor. We removed part of the laminate flooring and lifted some of the floorboards and realised one of the floor joists wasn't leaning properly against the concrete "base" (or however these are called, couldn't find the name online), so there's a small gap in between of about 1/2cm or so.

From what we could see in the void under the floor, these "bases" are not very sturdy and they almost look like concrete bricks (I could move one of these bricks with my hand!). Whether these are typical 1900's standards I wouldn't know.

We are probably going to add some extra support in between the floor joist and the base so it stops moving, but we were wondering whether anyone could suggest a more permanent (or at least better) way of fixing the problem? We'll also try joining together both floor joists seen in the picture. Any thoughts on what's the best way to do this?

Any ideas on how to solve this problem would be much appreciated!

 
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mmm no replies yet. Well just to update anyone who might be following this thread:

- We decided to try sticking the concrete bricks on the bases using expanding foam. No idea whether it's the best stuff to use, but at least it was easy to apply and it seems to be setting fine.

- To raise the joist, I'm going to add some wood in between the joist and the concrete base. I'll try my best to add a bit of damp proof course in between the brick and the wood.

- Then I will screw back down the floorboards using woodscrews (4 x 50mm)
 
The soil and rubble below the floor might be an old infill into what was once a basement or partial cellar.

The joisting is not original, no joiner would have done it like that to new work.

If you can post pics of the span of the room, left to right, with the boards up enough to show whats happening with the pieced-in joists, it would help?What is the span dimension, please dont use cm's.

Typically, the joist will run from fixed bearing (a wall pocket say) to fixed bearing. Any intermediate support must also be firmly bedded.

The bricks in the pic are not DPC'ed, and the void looks to be slightly damp - or perhaps its the pic?

Floorboards are typically face screwed down with 50mm or 60mm eight's.

The foam proposal wont work.
 

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