I am trying to lift my house on a I-beam frame, where can i get proper calculations as to what the span is?

Question

I am planning to make a 4" to 6" struc I-beams frame to do the job. the dimensions of the house is 40' by 24' from the inside of my basement. I am trying to make a rectangular frame on the perimeter of the basement, with 2 center beams along the 40' middle of the house, and few i beams at 90 deg to make it square. So basically, Two frames of 2X40' beams and about 5X10' beams. These two frames connected at the 40' length by 5X4' beams.
This frame is going to be used to jack-up the house and additional steel columns are going to be added on to the bottom of the frame to prop up the house (like stilts) on the inside perimeter of the footings.
The house is a one story ranch built in 1955 or so. I plan to lift the house on to these columns premanently, and frame the void between the top of the old basement wall to the new cealing height.
I want to find out how many cloumns would i need under each beam, how far apart they need to be, and how much weight it can hold?

Answer 1

This is not a complicated problem, but requires structural analysis. Find yourself a civil engineer. I'm guessing a renovation of this magnitude will require a building permit. Depending on where you live, regulatory authorities might require that the design be sealed by a licensed professional engineer. There may be no getting away from this.

I want to caution you that the consequences of being wrong about what you are attempting to build are quite serious. Do NOT attempt to do this yourself unless you have a background in structural analysis and are familiar with the local building codes. Axial stresses in columns are just one part of the problem. You would also have to account for bending and provide cross-bracing as required for overall stability.

Check if a university might be interested in making this a class project. Would be great experience for students.

Good luck.

Answer 2

Get in touch with a structural consulting engineer that can design this frame for you.

When I remodeled my basement I had to make some large cutouts in the main bearing wall that ran the full length of the basement, right down the center.

I found a consulting engineer who designed the Headers and their placements that I required using tri-lam headers. He made calcs and sketches of all the modifications and stamped them and only charged me $200.

Definitely not worth the brain damage to try to do it myself, plus I needed a building permit from the city where I live, and his work was accepted with no questions asked.

Answer 3

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