10' Beam instructions needed.....

[harleysilo]

Hi everyone! I've finished several support walls in part of my basement, the ones under the kitchen/pantry part of a hallway. I've also finsihed sistering about 80% of the floor joists that I need to. I am now to an area in the basement where the two previous solutions I've used will either severly intrude on the dynamics of the basement (another wall) or be near impossible to install (sistering joists.) So I need to build a beam.

The beam shall be 10' in length, Height and width will be whatever they need to be. It will be supported with two posts (material yet to be determined) at the 1' and 9' marks more or less.

The purpose of the beam is to reduce the span of the joists from 12' to 9'.
Current joists system is 2x10's 12' long 16 O.C. It's also a bathroom floor.....

So would something like 3 2x12's with 2 pieces of plywood, glued an nailed sufice?

[harleysilo]

[Darol Wester]

The best thing to do would be to get in touch with your local building department and run it by them. After all, they will be the ones that will have to pass it.

When I built my basement which is 20x20, I ran two 4x16's down the middle, full span, with 2x8's making the 10 ft. span. Even with that it has a slight bounce to it when the washer goes into spin cycle.

[Darol Wester]

As far as the studs go, if it was a bearing wall I'd replace them but otherwise I see nothing wrong with shimming them.

[Bud Cline]

Either shim the joists to the beam or install individual blocks betweeen each floor joist, the blocks would be mechanically attached to the joists and rest firmly on the beam.

[harleysilo]

O.K. here are some pics.....this one is the area I'm trying to improve deflection in the floor, it's of the guest bathroom.....



This is the area under the stairs, I wish to turn into U shaped bar, utilizing the posts which support beam. Beam would run parallel to doorway into the little closet



Finally, the area right infront of doorway, beam to go between two a/c ducts....




Now regarding a/the inspector. So far the work I've done in my basement has been to remove other homeowners work, and replace it. I.E. i've not added anything "new" to the house yet. Except for the 8 joists I sistered, the 20 joist hangers I installed after I jacked up all the sagging joists. Who is to say I did any of this? I do plan to have an inspector inspect the area of the basement we would like to finish, and have included in finished square feet calculation of our home, but not my shop area where i've added two "closets" which are really walls to shorten joist span in prep for tile in upstairs kitchen. What is an inspector going to say when he walks in my basement anyways?

The thing that bothers me about the whole inspection process, is that we bought a 3 bedroom home that someone had finsihed a 4th bedroom upstairs and added a full bath. Now I know from talking to neighbors that a homeowner did it, as well as you can tell from the craftmanship, but what happens when I let an inspector from the county or city in my home. This is not built right, tear it all down? I don't think so.

[Jerry Thomas]

I think you could use either 2x10's or 2x12's as long as you use two plywood flitch plates as you described. As mentioned, the real key to this is to use two opposing wood shims driven firmly between each joist and the beam so the beam is supporting most of the weight along each joist.