Securing badly split ceiling beam.

[Burnerman]

Can you give us a shot of the other side of the beam?
Happy to say the floor above looks untouched and completely stable.
Are any other beams similarly affected?
John

 

[Nozzle]

I think before you do anything to repair you should jack the beam back together. Use a bottle jack on the floor below - SPREAD THE LOAD across many joists, and use a length of timber cut the right size to reach the ceiling and jack the crack closed. Then sort your repair. This would also pre-stress it slightly in the opposite direction to how it has been bending for years.

Nozzle

 

[Jackrae]

The notches in the upper half of the beam have created natural weak points and as the beam has dried out these weaknesses have permitted delamination. If you visit any old wooden framed building you'll see delamination.
Bolting the upper halves to the lower will provide some degree of strengthening but not back to what it was when the beam was first cut.
One technique you could use is a reinforcing plate running the full length of the beam, say 75x15 cold rolled steel, bolted up through the beam. This method is often used to strengthen beams and once painted the same colour of the beam will be "invisible" to all but those who know it's there.

 

[bernardgreen]

I think before you do anything to repair you should jack the beam back together. Use a bottle jack on the floor below -

DO NOT jack the beam up without first getting expert advice. A beam of that age will be very inflexible and jacking up the centre may cause the ends to lift off the pad stones in the walls and affect the way they are seated in the wall.

 

[joe-90]

For heavens sake. It may have been like that since Victorian times. If it was going to collapse it would have done so by now. By all means pay £300 for some kid out of Uni. Better still, call out the national guard. This is serious.

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

Looking at the centre of the cracked beam in the first pic, it looks as though it has 200 years worth of dirt in it. the next section on the left looks newer and possibly wormy. So has it only become apparent, has the floor developed a bounce? It does not look like an imminent failure, this would be a zigzag crack running roughly vertical. The joists are they only let in superficially into the cracked beam or is the beam notched all the way through? If they are notched deeply then most (90%?) of the beams strength is in the bottom bit anyway, the top bits are just keeping the joists at the right spacing. The loading on the upstairs floor would naturally close the crack up as the top section bend downwards. Get some one to walk across the bedroom floor to see if this is happening. Or to be more scientific, Hang a plumb bob from the top section over a table or pile of books, measure the gap, get your walker into action and see what change in the gap there is.
I once compared what my weigh (180 lbs) did to a 4.2m 6" X 4" antique beam (deflection ~ 3mm) compared to a new 9" X 2" (0 or less the then width of a pencil line).
If there really is a problem that is getting worse, then I would Acroyd the beam upwards by at least 1/4" in its centre, to try and tension the beam , then put a 1/2" oak dowel in every 9" or so straight down with a decent glue like Cascamite, to within 1/2" of its bottom.
Frank

 

[pineapple]

Gosh thanks everyone.
There is 4 inches of solid beam below the crack let into the wall and that part at least seems sound though the bedroom floor did bounce a bit when we did a test jump. I'll get some measurements and more pics - of the other side and the end - which will show better how it is let into the wall.
Don't know how long it has been like that. Like I say - neglected for at least 25 years when it was bought for occasional use as someone's holiday cottage. Now is the time - while it is empty - to do any remedial work. But of course depending on the prognosis - it might be better to do nothing than to do the wrong thing.