Any ideas on how to fix a set of sagging stairs from the mainfloor to the basement?

[JDMMAN]

I'm trying to figure out a way to (a) jack-up the stairs which have "sunken" about 2" from their original position and (b) to secure the flight of stairs to the joist/floor head-out so that this doesn't happen again.

This was an early 90's Shane Home show home, so I'm surprised there wasn't more care in making sure things were done correctly.

From the pictures and what I can see, the entire stairs are being attached to the floor head-out with only a few nails, which were nailed through the top riser butting up against the head-out along with some diagonal nails which have loosened overtime between the top of the stringers on the L&R to the floor/nose of the main floor.

You can see some nails backing out of the riser, and the gap of where the carpet used to attach to the riser, and the main floor nose is visible as to how much movement there's been over the 30 years.

My thoughts are to add some horizontal 2x4's under the stairs so that I have a place to use the jack-up posts to "jack-up" the stairs again with an even force. At which time, I will have some verticle 2x6's run from top of the back of the strings down to the ground creating "feet".

Another idea I had was to find some really long-ass lag bolts and just drill through the top riser into the floor head-out to fasten the stairs. This I think would be temporary, as once it sees a vertical load again, will start "ovalling" the holes where the lag bolts are used.

Any ideas on how to fix them would be welcome! Has anyone had this happen to them?








No Header Board for the stairs to attach to the floor head-out


Gap between the backside of the top riser to the floor head-out (~1/2" or a bit over 1cm)

[Darell_n]

While not nearly as bad, my basement stairs have 2 small turns going down and they were suspended with metal strapping, causing a bad squeak and movement of a 3/8” with weight on them. First day I moved in, I pounded in a pair of 4x4s underneath to the concrete floor (on a floor stud for future drywall) and added bolts up high where the straps were nailed on. Just like a ledger board for a deck, use long carriage bolts with fender washers instead of lag bolts so you can tighten them to infinity and they will stay put.

[JDMMAN]

Darell_n - Thanks for the idea. I need to be able to "jack-up" the top of the stairs first so that when I install some carriage bolts through the top riser and the head-out/joist, it will be straight (in the correct position).

[JDMMAN]

Well it happened. The staircase fell into the basement. I got away lucky with a foot injury when the stairs gave way this afternoon. I can not believe the stairs were not built properly. I hope the builder will do the right thing and fix it.

[Darell_n]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

Well it happened. The staircase fell into the basement. I got away lucky with a foot injury when the stairs gave way this afternoon. I can not believe the stairs were not built properly. I hope the builder will do the right thing and fix it.

Holy shit! Were you lifting it up when it came off? I'm happy you were not badly injured.

[JDMMAN]

Funny thing, I was at the bottom of the stairs, about to head up. I had used some 4x4 posts to help secure it just in case. Turns out that the nails holding the stairs via the top riser to the floor head-out had sheared. There were only like 5-6 relatively small diameter and short nails used.

Hopefully Shane homes will do the right thing and fix it properly.


Floor Head-Out (note lack of any header board or fastening or support for stairs)

Top down view (view from main floor door way), stairs slide away from where they were attached with a few nails:



Note lack of any support structure under or around stairs:

[Darell_n]

In my opinion it will be a small miracle for a home builder to go back into an almost 30 year old house for repairs. But it can't hurt to try. you never know.

[ExtraSlow]

It's hard enough to get them to fix things during the warranty period.

[B.Spilner]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

It's hard enough to get them to fix things during the warranty period.

Amen brother.

[JDMMAN]

I definitely understand that home builders, in general, are hard to get to do punch list items on new builds. But this is negligence in design/construction. The quality of the build might have to do with the relative time the house was built (mid-late 1990 or early 1991, where Calgary was coming out of a recession).

The pros are definitely the fact that plywood instead of OSB was being used and real 2x10's for the joists etc.

I've contacted Shane Home's construction manager. Let's see what they say. He's away until May 20th.

So in the meantime, as it would be nice to get access to the basement without going outside of the house (luckily for a walk-out basement though!); anyone can recommend a licensed carpenter/contractor who can tackle the project of correctly attaching a set of stairs?

[Tik-Tok]

You are dreaming if you think they are going to do anything for you except laugh. I'd be surprised if you even got a call back.

This is like taking a 2001 Pontiac Sunfire to the dealership and asking for warranty work.

[JDMMAN]

Tik Tok- while I don’t doubt that’s likely to happen, there’s a difference between warranty and design/construction negligence.

[AndyL]

They'll just blame a long defunct framing crew; and likely framing inspector for not catching it.

[JDMMAN]

AndyL - I think they’re likely to do that. I guess you’ll see the true colours of a home builder by how they treat cases like this.

It’s likely a small cost to Shane for them to step in to help and correctly fix, and would yield lots of Goodwill.

[FraserB]

What kind of goodwill do you think this would get them? Are you going to run out and buy a Shane home as soon as they fix the stairs?

Just grab some bolts and fix it yourself, quicker and less stress than trying to complain to someone at Shane that doesn’t care.

[JDMMAN]

FraserB - I was going to fix it before the collapse. That would've been a one-person job to do. Now with my foot injury because of the staircase, there's no way I can lift & elevate the top of the stairs while preventing it to slide out again. These are solid plywood and 2x12" stringer construction. It's easily 300lbs+ of weight to try lifting 12 feet while wrangling it into place.

Hence, looking for a licensed contractor to prevent any issues in the future.

As for the Goodwill, it's not just with previous Shane homes customers, but with potential future customers. If a home builder is willing to take care of things like this which were clearly incorrectly built in the first place, there'll be a reputation of standing behind their name.

[Zero102]

What's with the triangular shims under each tread? It's bad enough that the treads rest on plywood triangles, but they got the size/position wrong and had to shim them???

It almost looks like they landed the stairs too far away so then they ended up at the wrong angle then they shimmed the treads to fix that. If that's what it is, it would explain why the top end is so much lower than expected against the joist. Though, thinking it through, they could have just pushed the bottom of the stairs in to correct the angle instead. I'm still shocked that they would only nail through the top riser to affix those stairs to the header.

The only way Shane is going to do anything about this is if they recognize the liability they may be exposed to since you were injured as a result of the stairs being improperly built, though it's unlikely they would have lasted this long in the business if they didn't have good lawyers and contracts to cover their asses.

[npham]

This quote is hidden because you are ignoring this member. Show Quote

As for the Goodwill, it's not just with previous Shane homes customers, but with potential future customers. If a home builder is willing to take care of things like this which were clearly incorrectly built in the first place, there'll be a reputation of standing behind their name.

I get that you are pissed that your stairs fell out, but from a legal point a view, there's no way Shane Homes is going to touch this. This could open them up for all sorts of lawsuits if they 'admit' fault/guilt and repair this for you. They also have no idea if you, or any owner of the home decided to remove the stairs to perform some work, and then replaced it incorrectly.

Honestly, this reeks of a typical Karen post. This didn't start sagging in one day, you should have had this fixed ages ago (likely) so chalk it up to a lesson learned. But now you want a company that built a home, 30 years ago, to fix an issue you probably knew about for years...

[JDMMAN]

Thanks for the reply guys. I ended up getting an Engineer friend of mine to design and draw up remediation plans to get the stairs installed back into a safe manner. Created a 1/16" metal bracket to flow from the joist to the stringers which will serve as one of the "back-stops" to help the transfer of load. Also added an extra piece of wood under the floor header beneath were the top riser is attached to spread out some force. Added some "rails" attached to the framing surrounding under the stairs such that if there's a failure of the top attachment point, the stairs will not "collapse" but slide away.

Zero102 - no idea why they were done this way. I suspect wrong measurements were initially taken and they had to do an on-site fix. Everything that's happened has now been documented. Going to be filing a claim with home insurance first to see what gets done.

npham - This comes to product liability, companies nowadays are still liable for things that had been made many many years ago. The home is a single owner home from new, bought from the builder as a Show/Spec home. The basement stairs, in this case, is used on average maybe once a day as the chest freezer is downstairs. The basement is undeveloped and used for storage and hang drying clothes. There's also a walk-out basement, so there's no need in using the stairs to bring heavy items down. Literally a day before the stairs collapsed is when this issue was noticed. When nails fail via sheering, it's a sudden thing, not a gradual thing. My aunts who own the home know nothing of construction, and it's not something that would have been really noticeable until you take a close look.

In any case, yes I realize the builder did this 30 years ago, however, the issue here is poorly designed and executed construction which is not safe. Had the basement been fully developed when it was bought, this issue would have likely never been caught until a really bad injury occurred. I'm surprised the stairs lasted this long given only 6 nails were used at the top of the stringer to attach to the floor head-out.

[Swank]

I've never heard of a set of stairs falling like that, even on 80 year old homes, so crazy. Glad you have a walk-out, I was wondering if we needed to lower care packages to you until this is fixed.

Based on my research on beyond you should be able to fix it with silicone; if it's strong enough for you to stand in a sink it should work for anything you stand on.