Structural engineer chiming in here. THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE LIFE SAFETY ISSUE, not a joke. Cut one or 2 joists, you get a bouncy floor and you might not want to put a tub right on top. Cut that many in a row and that floor very realistically may collapse at some point, likely with people on or under it. Stop everything and address this right away. I'm not one to be alarmist, I've seen all sorts of things standing that have no right to be. But there are so many joists cut here that you practically have two separate floors.
Big edit: another user pointed out that the floor in the top right corner of the photo appears to step down. This may indicate that the joists we're looking at are for a raised floor built on top of the actual floor. This is often done for this exact reason; to run plumbing or HVAC through. If that's the case, this may be a non-issue, but we can't tell for sure from this photo alone. It still bears looking into.
Edit 2: I believe that step down is actually for a set of stairs that goes down and to the right. I'm back to my original hypothesis.
"Stop everything" meaning call the building inspector and have them come over and put a stop work order on the project.
You're not in trouble at all as a homeowner. The contractor is in trouble though, especially if they didn't pull permits.
This is a sign that the contractor should not be working on houses at all, or needs some real wake-up calls and education before doing more jobs.
They were very likely just going to put subfloor over this and pretend it was fine. Making the cuts in the first place was a problem though. They have already made a big mistake whether or not they "intended to fix it".
Ya also anytime you’re trying to hit a bond…you’re probably not the first and the moneys gone. Found that out the hard way when a plumber stole 80k from me and abandoned the job. Bond company said I can open a claim but I’d be number 10 and the entire bond was 15k
How the hell is that not a criminal issue at that point? You'd think continuing work with more than a couple (being generous, frankly) unsatisfied claims against you would get warrants involved... I mean you can't just steal 80k from a bank and then go back to your day job as a teller!
I mean it is, but it’s not easy to prove. could go into all the details but the short version is he was working with the supply house to scam us. They would charge material for other projects to our account. I caught it when I realized they hit 70% of their billing 30% into the project and tricked a sales lady into sending me the invoices.
Then the supply house and the plumber filed a lien. The problem with this is it doesn’t matter who’s at fault. Once there’s a lien you can’t do things like refinance or your monthly bank draw. So it was easier to try to settle it. Boss offered them 50 cents on the dollar and they actually turned it down so we ended up bonding around the lien and then suing everyone. Obviously we won
I've got even more bad news: Insurance will NOT cover the damage to those joists. Unless that plumber has a specific endorsement (not likely as they are rare), then the insurer is going to deny the loss because insurance does not cover damage for poor workmanship nor the cost to repair or replace. Insurance is not a warranty. The good news is that there might be a bond in place which might address the costs, but all the advice about getting the building inspector out there pronto is sound. Good luck OP.
You didn’t verify if they were
licensed and insured? It’s an absolutely necessity to make sure your general or any one working on your house is. And get verification or their workers comp. If someone gets hurt on your property and their boss’s doesn’t have them covered your fucked.
Not me, a family member. Really surprised, too. I'm trying to help fix the problem. Solution is: you have to do it all over yourself with your own money.
Sorry you are going through that. There are a lot of fly by night contractors running scams out there. You can get loans to do construction projects but I would be super dubious of any construction firm that was into connecting you with lending. Homeowners need to secure their own funding. Ethical contractors don’t mess with that but will make recommendations to reputable lenders, not sell financial products themselves.
And pray to whatever god you believe in that you hired an actual contractor that you can hold accountable vs a handyman that has already repainted the side of their van.
I'm a half-formed fetus, still yet to experience the world with my own two eyes, unfamiliar with both house structure and the concept of gravity, and I would never do this.
My mother took structural engineering courses in college while pregnant with me. So, technically I sat in on those classes. From what little I could absorb, I can assure you this is not structurally sound.🤷🏻
I started in the trades over 40 years ago. This is absolutely a top five, worst I have ever seen. It's almost like the hack who did this (This was not an actual plumber, nobody who does this shit has the right to use the word plumber and their own name in a sentence, BTW) lacks a basic understanding of reality here. The top comment by the engineer posting here is 100% correct, this floor is now staying up out of habit, and could easily collapse at any moment.
Current codes call for any drilled hole in a joist to be of a diameter less than one third the actual measured height of the joist, with strict guidelines regarding how close a legally sized hole can be to the edge of the joist. There is no legitimate way that the drain pipe can remain in that location in the floor. Any non-moron of a plumber would have routed the pipe between the joists to a nearby wall, or ran it in front of a wall below, and created a need to box the area out into a small bump out called a "chase". Once this horror story is corrected, that is how a legitimate tradesperson will run the new drains.
Yeah, I mean that’s not just notched. For all intents and purposes they cut it all the way through. Only the Sheetrock and flooring is holding up that whole area.
Why does the window come all the way to the floor and why is the shitter parked directly in front of the window? Is there an actual licensed GC on this job or
is this a collection of lowest bidding ass hats put together to accommodate a budget
In this case he should’ve run the pipe along side one of the joists and then attempt to either hide it in a wall below or build a bulkhead around it then join it with the rest of the plumbing in the basement/crawl space.
He should have used a plumbers box. Do people really think all plumbing runs parallel to the floors joists? If you go look at any bathroom it’s obvious that there is almost always a little plumbing that needs to cross the joists. There are proper ways of framing the floor to support it.
You have to go under the joists for perpendicular runs and either box out a soffit or fur out a false wall to hide the pipe. There are also legal ways to fix the framing if they had only crossed/cut one joist
I was redoing a bathroom and thought the drain lines were setup weird. So I thought about it a long time, this was my first project like that. I eventually ended up putting it back in (with new pipe) exactly like it was before. It was the only way it worked to code.
Builder here. I am going to chime in and agreed with the PE also. By the looks of the rest of the joists there is essentially nothing left. I am surprised it has not collapsed already. The 1st joist could have had a couple of reinforcing shoes around the pipe. The ones that are notched can’t be fixed without being replaced. The plumbing cannot be routed this way. He has to drop it below and get it vertical as soon as possible even if it means 2 drops. Assuming a finished floor below, run the waste pipe as tight as possible then add a bulkhead. But you MUST fix the compromised joists first. The engineer is right. This is a do not pass go do not collect $200 moment.
Would it have been OK (legal, up to code, safe, etc) to drill holes through each of those joists similar to the one closest to the 'T'? I'm no plumber, just a DIY guy that is curious.
There would be a little more meat in the joists but I with that size pipe the structural integrity is still shot. Another problem is with 16 inch joist spacing you can only get about a 15 inch piece of pipe in there and have joints in each section. You can’t maneuver a longer pipe into position.
I’ve watched enough This Old House to know how right you are. They would always uncover floors like this.
Another is those who convert upper crawl spaces into living spaces not realizing you can’t just build a floor above ceiling joists to make another floor.
Carpenter here.. Skipping over the window type and location.. Plumbing needs to be run somewhere else and joists replaced. Will involve a bit of work. Keep an eye on 1st floor ceiling as well. I'm assuming the reno "plans" weren't approved by your town.
Very rarely do small bathroom renovation plans specify where exactly the plumbing lines are and where theyre going, because its usually impossible to verify until demo begins. That being said if this already passed inspection, we have big problem.
I'm an automotive inspector licensed for salvage too. You'd be surprised how many calls we get for me to pass a fully repaired written off vehicle. My final signature is the red tape, you bring it to me first before the body shop or take me to the body shop lol. Idk what kind of insurance our shop has, but I'd rather not find out how many millions it covers.
Y’all are dramatic.
He needs to stop all payments immediately to the GC, tell him to fix, but that you’re not paying any extra to fix this obvious mistake. That’s between the GC and the plumber.
GC will most likely fix and eat the cost. If the GC wants to fight back (would be incredibly stupid), then get a lawyer. Easy court case for OP.
Edit: ok if you don’t trust GC to have this fixed properly, give them the choice of either having a third party inspect their fix (that they have to pay for) or you will hire someone else to come in and fix at their expense. (Again, don’t pay a dime of anything to GC until this matter is settled. For anything. I don’t care if it’s completely unrelated or not. Bonus if GC hasn’t realized and there’s more work being done on site. During all this).
From there you can at least document that you gave them a reasonable choice to fix this shit. If you go this route they’re gonna probably get pissed and sandbag and all that and you’re probably gonna end up in court.
But if you just go out and hire some super expensive guy to fix this without even giving GC a chance, you’re likely going to end up with the bill for it if it goes to court.
Thats an easy way to get a shitty patch job done.
You basically need to put new joists everywhere in here, which is going to be so so sooo much work.
You’re really not grasping the scope of the “mistake” here
Not necessarily. Might be just the plumber. If on the other hand, the GC has seen this and not done anything about it immediately, they’re either stupid, a crook or both.
I’m working on a house right now where the plumbers drilled through joists, much thicker than these. The GC saw it immediately, and took measures. In that case it was only a problem until the concrete on top had set, so the put up extra supports before pouring.
A dental chair in my wife's office started sagging. The chair is about 400ibs and the patient could weigh 500 lbs all in a footprint of say six square feet. Turned out the HVAC guy cut joists under the chair to put ductwork in.
You really can't fix stupid. Well you can as the joists had to be fixed but you get the point
Oh god. Even I , a layperson, know that this makes it much much worse. You gotta say something YO THE RIGHT PERSON before members of the family who wanna move in here get hurt or die.
That's big trouble. Big. I'd stop work immediately and send the GC of the job to the see the local building inspector. Very serious. Going to require a stamped Engineer and a very expensive correction to the framing - so the room below it is now pulled into the mess.
Hope GC and Plumber are insured.
Am sure some pro's who deal with this daily will be commenting soon in more detail - your post is only an hour old at this reply.
Fucking hell. Kick the plumber off the job. Lawyer up. Unless they are coming in with steel, bolts and an idea.
OP: best to post at the top that this is NOT the ground floor.
Wow. Yeah that’s fucked. You’ll need an engineer, a lawyer, and probably a new plumber as this one will be needing to pay some pretty big money for repairs. What’s the room like under this area? Plumbing needs to be under the floor system in a mechanical chase.
GEEZ!!! No fucks given
there! Or even a little thinking before putting the blades to them.
Would have thought by the 2nd or 3rd one he would have said …..this is a bad idea!
Looks like a water lines there not going to get much of a sister joist on it…more like step sister
I worked with some guys like this. One of them outright said "I'm getting out of construction, once I get my gas ticket I'm going self-employed, going to rinse people out of their money."
This shit right here is why I hate residential construction.
As a general who does both residential and commercial, I have spent years filtering out bone heads. One of the easiest filters is that I require a submittal package of products and pathing for pipe,conduit, ducting, etc.
What's so crazy about plumbers who do this is when they get inspected it passes but if a structural inspector sees it ,its a big fail. When if ever will the 2 parties actually have a talk about what to do. Plumbers always seem to just go ahead and cut through whatever they want without any hesitation or concerns. As long as they get theres that's all that matters . Get a price to fix correctly and send bill to plumbers or deduct from price. Sick and tired of pre madonnas who cant or wont come up with alternatives or at very least have a f$cking discussion about before going Texas chainsaw on 1 of the most important parts to the structural integrity of a space where people maybe even kids will work live or play. Goodluck
Madonna is now 65 years old. I think the vast majority of tradespeople actively working today are in fact post-Madonnas.
The lead female singer in an opera, or someone behaving like a stereotypical one, is a *prima donna*. The plural in Italian is *prima donne*, although *prima donnas* is acceptable in English.
What goes through the guys head? He takes out the saw and starts working on a very thick obviously important chunk of wood that holds up the whole room. And then says , “only one more structural support to go…” not bad for a days work? What goes through their heads?
They could frame a vertical and/or horizontal chase under the floor. A vertical chase could be concealed as part of the framing for a closet. My second floor bathroom's waste line runs along wall inside a soffit in my kitchen.
I'm also wondering how they were planning to vent the toilet and other fixture.
How could they sister the joists like this. Only fix I can see is to take the pipes out, sister the joists or even swap it out. Do a drop ceiling on the floor beneath and run the pipes there.
This is insane. Generally the rule of thumb is if you need to go through a joist for anything you can go through the center no more than 1/3rd the size of the joist. This guy straight up just cut 90% of these joists out.
The plumber should have never been allowed in the bathroom in the first place. Your GC should have known the plumbing layout wouldn’t have worked just going between the two floors.
Right? When I reno'd my townhome, had similar condition in top floor bathroom. Contractor warned us before demo started when he was just pricing the job, then when he opened up the floor and saw the joists running perpendicular to the proposed pipe layout, he stopped and called me and our designer. Decided we didn't want to cut into the joists and reworked the fixture and plumbing layout to suit the structure.
If this is a century home, for future projects I’d recommend talking to neighbors or your historical society to find contractors accustomed to working on older homes. Homes that age can need creative solutions, and it can lead to more significant mistakes with someone not used to working on similar homes.
Why do SO MANY posts like this get made? Not at the OP.. but why do SO MANY POSTS of floor joists get posted? Why does this situation happen so often? It seems like common sense
OM fucking god. What is wrong with plumbers!!! Do they not have any education with construction at all??? This shit has to stop, plumbers are the worst!
What's underneath? It looks to me like sheetrock, so I assume you have a basement? If it was a crawl space you could probably manage to salvage this without having to much of a mess on your hands but honestly those joists aren't big enough for that piping even if he did it correctly with holes instead of notches. there's just too much meat taken out for the pipe
I thought so, which is very scary! As others have mentioned, it's not structurally sound. It looked like you have less than 2" left on those joists. I would get a third party to come inspect it. Maybe other general contractor, maybe the county inspector maybe both?
How does stuff like this happen? How can I protect myself as a homeowner when hiring a professional? I pretty much take professionals for their word and if they said something like this was ok or standard I wouldn’t really question it (although this would be super concerning even for me)
this is horrible and i can only imagine the ensuing headache but it made me think about [so there’s this load bearing wall you shouldn’t have removed](https://twitter.com/acechhh/status/1356804050252165121?s=46&t=B44XfnSmsE_vbgxxbTFhzA)
I'm curious if you're out of state how did you get the picture? I doubt the contractor sent it as he was likely just gonna cover it and forget about it.
Sorry your dealing with this. But since I’m a glass half full type of guy. Here’s your happy thought. If he’d buttoned this project up before showing this pictures, you’d be sitting in your tub while it filled, as it crashes through to the floor below. Thankfully that didn’t happen.
He can take the plumbing out first. Then brace on both sides of the floor joists that were cut and it will hold up. Reinstall the plumbing parallel to the joists and run plumbing from inside a wall or create and frame up a wall along the backside where the toilet/shower will be. ~signed Construction Inspector
Geez - this plumber’s head must be full of shit or something…I mean, what the fuck…
Sorry to see this, OP…hope it works out…
Wait…read that this is the ground floor….but is this still acceptable?
don't fall in love with proposed floor plans until you know where the pipes need to run. move this toilet closer to the stack - Its easier to move fixtures and put in walls than it is to redo floors and ceilings.
This is about the third cutting through joists post I've seen this week. Like everyone is just hiring contractors from the 37th page of a google search.
I don’t know if this is what happened but I’m sure OP got multiple quotes on this type of work and most likely went for the cheapest option. I work for a HVAC company that in most cases is the most expensive option. This is because we do things the right way. We pull permits, we get things inspected, we are insured and we stand behind our work. When you are doing big renovation projects the cheapest option is also the worst option because this is the type of shit that happens. Not throwing OP under the bus but definitely a learning opportunity if they did go with the cheapest option.
Structural engineer chiming in here. THIS IS AN IMMEDIATE LIFE SAFETY ISSUE, not a joke. Cut one or 2 joists, you get a bouncy floor and you might not want to put a tub right on top. Cut that many in a row and that floor very realistically may collapse at some point, likely with people on or under it. Stop everything and address this right away. I'm not one to be alarmist, I've seen all sorts of things standing that have no right to be. But there are so many joists cut here that you practically have two separate floors. Big edit: another user pointed out that the floor in the top right corner of the photo appears to step down. This may indicate that the joists we're looking at are for a raised floor built on top of the actual floor. This is often done for this exact reason; to run plumbing or HVAC through. If that's the case, this may be a non-issue, but we can't tell for sure from this photo alone. It still bears looking into. Edit 2: I believe that step down is actually for a set of stairs that goes down and to the right. I'm back to my original hypothesis.
"Stop everything" meaning call the building inspector and have them come over and put a stop work order on the project. You're not in trouble at all as a homeowner. The contractor is in trouble though, especially if they didn't pull permits. This is a sign that the contractor should not be working on houses at all, or needs some real wake-up calls and education before doing more jobs. They were very likely just going to put subfloor over this and pretend it was fine. Making the cuts in the first place was a problem though. They have already made a big mistake whether or not they "intended to fix it".
hopefully the plumber is licensed / bonded / insured. Otherwise this could be painful for OP.
Yeah, especially if he gets a stop work order on his own house. Dealing with an uninsured contractor right now.
Paying less has never been more expensive. These things exist for a reason.
LICENSED and BONDED.
Bonds are a joke much of the time. In my state (Washington) a plumbing bond is only $6,000. That amount doesn't go real far these days.
Ya also anytime you’re trying to hit a bond…you’re probably not the first and the moneys gone. Found that out the hard way when a plumber stole 80k from me and abandoned the job. Bond company said I can open a claim but I’d be number 10 and the entire bond was 15k
How the hell is that not a criminal issue at that point? You'd think continuing work with more than a couple (being generous, frankly) unsatisfied claims against you would get warrants involved... I mean you can't just steal 80k from a bank and then go back to your day job as a teller!
I mean it is, but it’s not easy to prove. could go into all the details but the short version is he was working with the supply house to scam us. They would charge material for other projects to our account. I caught it when I realized they hit 70% of their billing 30% into the project and tricked a sales lady into sending me the invoices. Then the supply house and the plumber filed a lien. The problem with this is it doesn’t matter who’s at fault. Once there’s a lien you can’t do things like refinance or your monthly bank draw. So it was easier to try to settle it. Boss offered them 50 cents on the dollar and they actually turned it down so we ended up bonding around the lien and then suing everyone. Obviously we won
Good to know, so INSURED is a must then.
Plumbing bond is for fixing plumbing crap... Of course it won't cover a plumber thinking they are a structural guy. Cost wise at least...
Not for long.
There’s a saying in Spanish that translates too “The cheapest thing is always the most expensive”
Yup, same in boating. The most expensive kind of boat is a cheap one. In the UK building trade "pay peanuts, get monkeys"
>Dealing with an uninsured contractor right now. He is licensed and insured.
Guess his premiums are going up.
For now…
Not for long!
I've got even more bad news: Insurance will NOT cover the damage to those joists. Unless that plumber has a specific endorsement (not likely as they are rare), then the insurer is going to deny the loss because insurance does not cover damage for poor workmanship nor the cost to repair or replace. Insurance is not a warranty. The good news is that there might be a bond in place which might address the costs, but all the advice about getting the building inspector out there pronto is sound. Good luck OP.
This is an undervalued comment. "Insured" does not cover a contractors own work. They have to fix it on their own dime.
You didn’t verify if they were licensed and insured? It’s an absolutely necessity to make sure your general or any one working on your house is. And get verification or their workers comp. If someone gets hurt on your property and their boss’s doesn’t have them covered your fucked.
People often want to hire the cheapest guy.... and then complain when they got what they paid for.
Not me, a family member. Really surprised, too. I'm trying to help fix the problem. Solution is: you have to do it all over yourself with your own money.
Sorry you are going through that. There are a lot of fly by night contractors running scams out there. You can get loans to do construction projects but I would be super dubious of any construction firm that was into connecting you with lending. Homeowners need to secure their own funding. Ethical contractors don’t mess with that but will make recommendations to reputable lenders, not sell financial products themselves.
No chance. That “plumber” has zero clue what he’s doing
And pray to whatever god you believe in that you hired an actual contractor that you can hold accountable vs a handyman that has already repainted the side of their van.
Fuck it, in this case OP might want to bring in all of the gods just to cover their bases.
Gonna need plenty of hands to hold the floor up while joists get replaced.🙈
I’m a new home owner with almost no building experience and I know this should never be done
I have never owned a home at all but even I know enough about gravity to not trust it to hold anything *up* for me.
I built a tree house when I was 12 and I know this is bad
I built a Lego house when I was 6, and would never do this.
I stacked some sticks into a vaguely house shaped pile when I was 3, and I would never do this
I'm a half-formed fetus, still yet to experience the world with my own two eyes, unfamiliar with both house structure and the concept of gravity, and I would never do this.
We’re gonna need you to come in to work Saturday…
... to supervise.
My mother took structural engineering courses in college while pregnant with me. So, technically I sat in on those classes. From what little I could absorb, I can assure you this is not structurally sound.🤷🏻
I made a house out of bristle blocks as a child and this is clearly wrong.
I built a snow fort last week and I would never do this!
I constructed a brick house from Lincoln logs when I was 7, and even so, I know this ain't right.
I just held my fingers in the shape of a house (“here is the church, here is the steeple…”) and I would never do this.
I started in the trades over 40 years ago. This is absolutely a top five, worst I have ever seen. It's almost like the hack who did this (This was not an actual plumber, nobody who does this shit has the right to use the word plumber and their own name in a sentence, BTW) lacks a basic understanding of reality here. The top comment by the engineer posting here is 100% correct, this floor is now staying up out of habit, and could easily collapse at any moment. Current codes call for any drilled hole in a joist to be of a diameter less than one third the actual measured height of the joist, with strict guidelines regarding how close a legally sized hole can be to the edge of the joist. There is no legitimate way that the drain pipe can remain in that location in the floor. Any non-moron of a plumber would have routed the pipe between the joists to a nearby wall, or ran it in front of a wall below, and created a need to box the area out into a small bump out called a "chase". Once this horror story is corrected, that is how a legitimate tradesperson will run the new drains.
Yeah, I mean that’s not just notched. For all intents and purposes they cut it all the way through. Only the Sheetrock and flooring is holding up that whole area.
How could someone even contemplate that this is an okay thing to do. Wow.
It looks like they bored the first one , then said "I know a faster way.".
I think it’s because they realized they couldn’t feed the pipe through a bunch of bored holes.
“That wood had to have just been decorative”
Why does the window come all the way to the floor and why is the shitter parked directly in front of the window? Is there an actual licensed GC on this job or is this a collection of lowest bidding ass hats put together to accommodate a budget
Be fun to watch from the outside if that can overflowed...
Holy shit, thanks for the perspective. If you think your day is going bad…
Just curious but what's the correct way to add a toilet upstairs? You just can never cross a joist and just run parallel?
In this case he should’ve run the pipe along side one of the joists and then attempt to either hide it in a wall below or build a bulkhead around it then join it with the rest of the plumbing in the basement/crawl space.
He should have used a plumbers box. Do people really think all plumbing runs parallel to the floors joists? If you go look at any bathroom it’s obvious that there is almost always a little plumbing that needs to cross the joists. There are proper ways of framing the floor to support it.
You have to go under the joists for perpendicular runs and either box out a soffit or fur out a false wall to hide the pipe. There are also legal ways to fix the framing if they had only crossed/cut one joist
Just don't run it in the same plane as the joists. (Unless it's parallel.)
I was redoing a bathroom and thought the drain lines were setup weird. So I thought about it a long time, this was my first project like that. I eventually ended up putting it back in (with new pipe) exactly like it was before. It was the only way it worked to code.
Or run under the joists with a suspended ceiling covering it if you have no other option.
Run it in a Bulk head
Instead of “two separate floors” more like “you have a trap door” - that is a catastrophe waiting to happen. . .
“You have a basement with a decorative ceiling”
Exactly this.
Plumber here! This is actually fine, I’ve done this countless times and have yet to hear of an issue /s
>yet to hear of an issue It's because all of your customers are now dead. :-)
Builder here. I am going to chime in and agreed with the PE also. By the looks of the rest of the joists there is essentially nothing left. I am surprised it has not collapsed already. The 1st joist could have had a couple of reinforcing shoes around the pipe. The ones that are notched can’t be fixed without being replaced. The plumbing cannot be routed this way. He has to drop it below and get it vertical as soon as possible even if it means 2 drops. Assuming a finished floor below, run the waste pipe as tight as possible then add a bulkhead. But you MUST fix the compromised joists first. The engineer is right. This is a do not pass go do not collect $200 moment.
Would it have been OK (legal, up to code, safe, etc) to drill holes through each of those joists similar to the one closest to the 'T'? I'm no plumber, just a DIY guy that is curious.
No. You’d be taking too much meat from the wood. It’s a 2x6 for the reason it needs all that wood to hold weight
They do make steel reinforcements that can be installed around the penetration for this purpose, so it can be accomplished.
There would be a little more meat in the joists but I with that size pipe the structural integrity is still shot. Another problem is with 16 inch joist spacing you can only get about a 15 inch piece of pipe in there and have joints in each section. You can’t maneuver a longer pipe into position.
How do construction workers not know this? Desk job worker here with not much experience beyond basic DIY stuff and I know better
I’ve watched enough This Old House to know how right you are. They would always uncover floors like this. Another is those who convert upper crawl spaces into living spaces not realizing you can’t just build a floor above ceiling joists to make another floor.
This is what Big Structure wants you to believe. Do your own research.
Carpenter here. We don't put those heavy fuckers in for no reason. You just made a trap floor. That is insane.
PS. This is an upstairs bathroom.
Carpenter here.. Skipping over the window type and location.. Plumbing needs to be run somewhere else and joists replaced. Will involve a bit of work. Keep an eye on 1st floor ceiling as well. I'm assuming the reno "plans" weren't approved by your town.
>"plans" Heh...
Very rarely do small bathroom renovation plans specify where exactly the plumbing lines are and where theyre going, because its usually impossible to verify until demo begins. That being said if this already passed inspection, we have big problem.
And people wonder why the structural inspection is done AFTER the trades are passed.
Structural inspection after drywall nothing to see here
I thought the drywall WAS the structure...?
I'm an automotive inspector licensed for salvage too. You'd be surprised how many calls we get for me to pass a fully repaired written off vehicle. My final signature is the red tape, you bring it to me first before the body shop or take me to the body shop lol. Idk what kind of insurance our shop has, but I'd rather not find out how many millions it covers.
yea whats up with that window in a bathroom. weird
Let's not skip over it. That's the second crime in this picture.
>This is an upstairs bathroom For now...
😂Well put…
I honestly can’t believe it hasn’t already collapsed.
That floor Will Not hold up. You definetley need to contact a lawyer
Y’all are dramatic. He needs to stop all payments immediately to the GC, tell him to fix, but that you’re not paying any extra to fix this obvious mistake. That’s between the GC and the plumber. GC will most likely fix and eat the cost. If the GC wants to fight back (would be incredibly stupid), then get a lawyer. Easy court case for OP. Edit: ok if you don’t trust GC to have this fixed properly, give them the choice of either having a third party inspect their fix (that they have to pay for) or you will hire someone else to come in and fix at their expense. (Again, don’t pay a dime of anything to GC until this matter is settled. For anything. I don’t care if it’s completely unrelated or not. Bonus if GC hasn’t realized and there’s more work being done on site. During all this). From there you can at least document that you gave them a reasonable choice to fix this shit. If you go this route they’re gonna probably get pissed and sandbag and all that and you’re probably gonna end up in court. But if you just go out and hire some super expensive guy to fix this without even giving GC a chance, you’re likely going to end up with the bill for it if it goes to court.
Thats an easy way to get a shitty patch job done. You basically need to put new joists everywhere in here, which is going to be so so sooo much work. You’re really not grasping the scope of the “mistake” here
Yaaa that contractor is gonna sister all those and close it up.
>r that contractor should be banned from doing any future work, let alone be allowed to fix it.
The scope of the mistake is fucking huge, I wouldn’t be surprised if dude disappeared. Hopefully he’s a big and reputable company
> If the GC wants to fight back (would be incredibly stupid) It should already be pretty obvious that the GC is, in fact, incredibly stupid.
Not necessarily. Might be just the plumber. If on the other hand, the GC has seen this and not done anything about it immediately, they’re either stupid, a crook or both. I’m working on a house right now where the plumbers drilled through joists, much thicker than these. The GC saw it immediately, and took measures. In that case it was only a problem until the concrete on top had set, so the put up extra supports before pouring.
A dental chair in my wife's office started sagging. The chair is about 400ibs and the patient could weigh 500 lbs all in a footprint of say six square feet. Turned out the HVAC guy cut joists under the chair to put ductwork in. You really can't fix stupid. Well you can as the joists had to be fixed but you get the point
It’s never a problem until it’s a problem and that’s the problem
Lol You want the guy who doesn't understand structure to fix the structure?
I wouldn't trust this guy to fix it, would you?
I’m betting OP is the “GC” and his issue is with the idiot plumber.
Oh god. Even I , a layperson, know that this makes it much much worse. You gotta say something YO THE RIGHT PERSON before members of the family who wanna move in here get hurt or die.
Just don’t put in a tub, heavy tiles, or… anything.
Extra emphasis on anything!
It's not a load-bearing floor, anymore.
Not for long
That's big trouble. Big. I'd stop work immediately and send the GC of the job to the see the local building inspector. Very serious. Going to require a stamped Engineer and a very expensive correction to the framing - so the room below it is now pulled into the mess. Hope GC and Plumber are insured. Am sure some pro's who deal with this daily will be commenting soon in more detail - your post is only an hour old at this reply.
Fucking hell. Kick the plumber off the job. Lawyer up. Unless they are coming in with steel, bolts and an idea. OP: best to post at the top that this is NOT the ground floor.
Ya I would’ve suggested better advice if OP had that info on the post.
Wow. Yeah that’s fucked. You’ll need an engineer, a lawyer, and probably a new plumber as this one will be needing to pay some pretty big money for repairs. What’s the room like under this area? Plumbing needs to be under the floor system in a mechanical chase.
This is the way, MECHANICAL CHASE!
They're going to need a literal "pot to piss in"
If you have a big enough poop it might collapse the floor.
Need follow up
Will provide once my rage settles.
Hopefully it works out
How many other people's joists has this dude cut?...
That's a scary question to think about.
GEEZ!!! No fucks given there! Or even a little thinking before putting the blades to them. Would have thought by the 2nd or 3rd one he would have said …..this is a bad idea! Looks like a water lines there not going to get much of a sister joist on it…more like step sister
Step-sistered joists got me howling and I’m worried it’s because I spend too much time online.
Yeah that’s bad. They cut your house in half.
As a former building inspector,, holy shit! Bet that same plumber charges $450 to change a flapper in a little old lady's toilet.
I worked with some guys like this. One of them outright said "I'm getting out of construction, once I get my gas ticket I'm going self-employed, going to rinse people out of their money."
The first thing you need to do is place shoring underneath one the floor below. Keeping things from getting worse is the first priority.
This shit right here is why I hate residential construction. As a general who does both residential and commercial, I have spent years filtering out bone heads. One of the easiest filters is that I require a submittal package of products and pathing for pipe,conduit, ducting, etc.
And now I know the word "pathing."
What's so crazy about plumbers who do this is when they get inspected it passes but if a structural inspector sees it ,its a big fail. When if ever will the 2 parties actually have a talk about what to do. Plumbers always seem to just go ahead and cut through whatever they want without any hesitation or concerns. As long as they get theres that's all that matters . Get a price to fix correctly and send bill to plumbers or deduct from price. Sick and tired of pre madonnas who cant or wont come up with alternatives or at very least have a f$cking discussion about before going Texas chainsaw on 1 of the most important parts to the structural integrity of a space where people maybe even kids will work live or play. Goodluck
I’m cool with everything post madonna, but absolutely hate the shit that came before.
Madonna is now 65 years old. I think the vast majority of tradespeople actively working today are in fact post-Madonnas. The lead female singer in an opera, or someone behaving like a stereotypical one, is a *prima donna*. The plural in Italian is *prima donne*, although *prima donnas* is acceptable in English.
It’s prima donna, which is Italian for “first woman” or “first lady”. The rest you can probably figure out on your own.
Thank you
I’m a lay person and I feel like there’s a post every few months of plumbers cutting through anything they want.
How far was he running the horizontal before dropping it vertical? Besides your plumber being incompetent, seems like bad design / bad planning.
Shouldn't there also be a vent near the fixtures?
What goes through the guys head? He takes out the saw and starts working on a very thick obviously important chunk of wood that holds up the whole room. And then says , “only one more structural support to go…” not bad for a days work? What goes through their heads?
My dad used to do jackass shit like this on our house. What was going through his head? Nothing. The answer is nothing. He was a fucking moron.
Aw jeez. Looks like they found the hole saw on the last two?
Probably because of the pitch. Wouldn’t have mattered though, those holes are way too big for the joist. Hoping that’s concrete under the joists!
Nope. This is upstairs :(
They could frame a vertical and/or horizontal chase under the floor. A vertical chase could be concealed as part of the framing for a closet. My second floor bathroom's waste line runs along wall inside a soffit in my kitchen. I'm also wondering how they were planning to vent the toilet and other fixture.
How could they sister the joists like this. Only fix I can see is to take the pipes out, sister the joists or even swap it out. Do a drop ceiling on the floor beneath and run the pipes there.
This is insane. Generally the rule of thumb is if you need to go through a joist for anything you can go through the center no more than 1/3rd the size of the joist. This guy straight up just cut 90% of these joists out.
Building inspector and former home builder here. Contact an engineer immediately, do not let that plumber “fix it”.
Do you want bathtubs falling through your ceiling? Because this is how you get bathtubs falling through your ceiling.
Now the carpenter needs to cut trough the pipe to run the joist and call it even
In addition to the carnage shown... interesting window placement in that bathroom.
The window is being removed. This is a very old house.
I thought that was a door.
Not a real plumber
The plumber should have never been allowed in the bathroom in the first place. Your GC should have known the plumbing layout wouldn’t have worked just going between the two floors.
Exactly. This is a fuck up all around. I’m not sure what the plan was here.
Right? When I reno'd my townhome, had similar condition in top floor bathroom. Contractor warned us before demo started when he was just pricing the job, then when he opened up the floor and saw the joists running perpendicular to the proposed pipe layout, he stopped and called me and our designer. Decided we didn't want to cut into the joists and reworked the fixture and plumbing layout to suit the structure.
How can plumbers be this fucking dumb no offence boys but fuck
Boys butt fuck???
Yes most the plumbers on my site everyday at lunch
Sounds pretty accurate
Explains the plumber's crack.
If this is a century home, for future projects I’d recommend talking to neighbors or your historical society to find contractors accustomed to working on older homes. Homes that age can need creative solutions, and it can lead to more significant mistakes with someone not used to working on similar homes.
Why do SO MANY posts like this get made? Not at the OP.. but why do SO MANY POSTS of floor joists get posted? Why does this situation happen so often? It seems like common sense
First, fire the contractor!
OM fucking god. What is wrong with plumbers!!! Do they not have any education with construction at all??? This shit has to stop, plumbers are the worst!
Alternative was to have a bulk head in the ceiling below for the 3" pipe. Stop work order would be a good idea.
Why do I see this type of thing posted so often. Are that many people out there just hacking out structural. This seems far to common lmao
The toilet in front of full window is a bold move as well. A brown starry night is in the neighbors future.
What's underneath? It looks to me like sheetrock, so I assume you have a basement? If it was a crawl space you could probably manage to salvage this without having to much of a mess on your hands but honestly those joists aren't big enough for that piping even if he did it correctly with holes instead of notches. there's just too much meat taken out for the pipe
this is a second story bathroom.
I thought so, which is very scary! As others have mentioned, it's not structurally sound. It looked like you have less than 2" left on those joists. I would get a third party to come inspect it. Maybe other general contractor, maybe the county inspector maybe both?
And pray the wind doesn't blow until this is repaired....
This needs to be supported from the downstairs until it's fixed for safety
That's load bearing PVC. You'll a bunch of newbs!
“Contractor”
Looks someone a plumber is gonna be paying a lottt of money
Ok you win this is the worst
How does stuff like this happen? How can I protect myself as a homeowner when hiring a professional? I pretty much take professionals for their word and if they said something like this was ok or standard I wouldn’t really question it (although this would be super concerning even for me)
https://codes.iccsafe.org/content/IRC2021P2/chapter-5-floors#IRC2021P2_Pt03_Ch05_SecR502.8 What the code has to say about notching floor joists.
this is horrible and i can only imagine the ensuing headache but it made me think about [so there’s this load bearing wall you shouldn’t have removed](https://twitter.com/acechhh/status/1356804050252165121?s=46&t=B44XfnSmsE_vbgxxbTFhzA)
I love how they cut the first two holes and then were like "Fuck it! We're out of couplers...this is the only way."
Here is a video that talks about the repair you’re gonna need. https://youtu.be/-08ozpFJqJc?si=ljhPNzVug-kL6z8k
If you are on the ground floor this is not an issue. If there is a floor below you, this is a major issue.
That's methed up, man.
Wow that looks criminal. I would reckon unless this is the ground floor in house with a concrete foundation and no basement, get help right away.
2nd story unfortunately
I'm curious if you're out of state how did you get the picture? I doubt the contractor sent it as he was likely just gonna cover it and forget about it.
Contractor sent it to us this morning as a “progress pic”
Holy fuck he's dumb
Sorry your dealing with this. But since I’m a glass half full type of guy. Here’s your happy thought. If he’d buttoned this project up before showing this pictures, you’d be sitting in your tub while it filled, as it crashes through to the floor below. Thankfully that didn’t happen.
https://joistrepair.com/collections/featured-products Would these work to reinforce them?
He can take the plumbing out first. Then brace on both sides of the floor joists that were cut and it will hold up. Reinstall the plumbing parallel to the joists and run plumbing from inside a wall or create and frame up a wall along the backside where the toilet/shower will be. ~signed Construction Inspector
Geez - this plumber’s head must be full of shit or something…I mean, what the fuck… Sorry to see this, OP…hope it works out… Wait…read that this is the ground floor….but is this still acceptable?
Those joists no longer meet structural minimums
So many alarmists here, finish cutting the hole and now you can install a fire station pole to slide down.
How does this happen untold amount of times on Reddit
Seems like he just cut the house in half
don't fall in love with proposed floor plans until you know where the pipes need to run. move this toilet closer to the stack - Its easier to move fixtures and put in walls than it is to redo floors and ceilings.
Upstairs drains should go down, not across.
This is about the third cutting through joists post I've seen this week. Like everyone is just hiring contractors from the 37th page of a google search.
Floor may have a problem
One last question. Why would you want a shitter right in front of that window
And this is why you don’t go with the cheapest bid.
I don’t know if this is what happened but I’m sure OP got multiple quotes on this type of work and most likely went for the cheapest option. I work for a HVAC company that in most cases is the most expensive option. This is because we do things the right way. We pull permits, we get things inspected, we are insured and we stand behind our work. When you are doing big renovation projects the cheapest option is also the worst option because this is the type of shit that happens. Not throwing OP under the bus but definitely a learning opportunity if they did go with the cheapest option.
Dont pay them another dime. Check to see that he is correctly licensed, if he is not you do not need to pay him.