The floors of the house were the usual pine boards, mainly in good
condition and mostly covered by hardboard underneath the carpeting.
Lifting the floors downstairs
Having had problems with the floors of our previous house ( a similar
if smaller property in Queensland, Southampton ) we bravely made lifting
the downstairs floors an early priority ( and they stayed up so long our
eldest had to learn to walk in the upstairs corridor ).
Under the floor is basically packed earth
covered with rubble.
As the clearance between the top of the rubble and the bottom of the
floor joists was not massive I decided to dig out the rubble to create a
better air space for under floor ventilation, however not far into the
process it became apparent that I could see day light coming in under the
foundations, so I decided to replace the rubble.
The foundations (to my horror ) appear to be no more than a row
of brick laid on earth across the line of the wall, but then these houses
have survived in tact for over a century, out lasting many more modern
designs and with little or no structural alteration to accomplish that
feat.
The next concern was the wall plates. These on the whole had survived,
but had rotted through in places, requiring sections to be removed and
local repairs made, while the plates in good condition were treated as far
as possible with a preservative. The only place where the floors had
noticeably dropped was predictably in the kitchen, possibly due to the
presence of water spillages encouraging rot.
The floor joists downstairs were 2" x 4", which could leave them a
little bouncy in places a believe something nearer 2" x 6 " would be
used today.
Upstairs the floors were in better condition the joists were 2" by 6"
and the only real problem encountered was a little woodworm, which was
duly treated.