I have a frame barn that the hayloft has fallen down and some of the posts have rotted where it set on a log that was held up by rocks. I need to jack up the beam and cut it and put some new wood and reset it but I don't know how I should attach the jack to the beam to lift it up. I was told by an old barn builder that he used a chain wrapped around the beam and put in a grove notch in the jack head. But do I put the jack on the inside of barn or on the out side or on the side, and how would you put attach it to the beam to lift it I don't have a jack with a notch. The Post is about 10" X 10" sq. and about 15' tall. I also have to put a cross beam back up the wood tenon is broke on one side so I thought of nailing a board underneath to hold it or should I use a post.The cross beam is 10' X 10' too. The rest of the buildings on my farm are log and I have no problem making repair to them but a frame barn was put up when the log barn burned and the unburned logs were used to help build the frame barn. I can hew a log but a frame building is a new critter to me I would be thankful for any advice.

gt:
If the post is still hooked good to the beam you can put another post beside the bad one and use a jack to lift the temporary post up and hold it up while you repair the post.



above is a shot of the temporary post with a jack on the top and below is the bottom of the supporting timbers.



There are lots of ways to doing this depending on what you have and/or what's in the way....

Good luck with your project.

Um... I'm sorry Jim, but I feel the following just needs be said. This with the potential that someone will look at that photo/s and take from it how easy such work can be ( it can be ) and how little tooling & equipment ( not so much ) can be gotten by with...

I've posted here on the forum several times about safe and proven technique in Jacking & Shoring ( they go hand in hand ) because the potential for things going sideways ( both figuratively & literally ) is great, and with that, so is the potential for harm, both to the building, and those people in or near it.

Jacking & Shoring should be looked at in much the same way as tree felling. Every potential should be weighed and only then, after careful review with escape routes planned and precautions taken, should the task be started.

When I look at those photos, I see a collection of what not to do – Jacking posts are best avoided, sometimes circumstance does demand their use, and when used, they should be kept short and certainly not built from a just thrown together stack of “what you have” Hydraulic jacks, while valuable and appropriate tools (good ones of recognized known name manufacture) should not be used in conjunction with jacking posts, this is the place for screw jacks. When hydraulic jacks are used they should be followed (by fractions of an inch not their ram length) by shimmed off cribs or structural staging, and they should be used with steel jacking plates. This is not simply to prevent marring of the framing, but to serve as a tool, a visual safety check one constantly refers to to tell if things are jacking and settling (the crib or the post and the floor or the ground it is bedded on) properly. The jack on top of its without question plumb base, should be shimmed so that its ram has full and complete bearing with the steel plate as you begin to engage the jack with its load and watched as you jack. Any change in that relationship helps tell you what is going on around you, and if need be (this happening more often than not) you shim off and then re-bed the jack. If you are simply driving and crushing the ram up into some random cutoff (as is pictured) this incredibly valuable barometer is lost to you.

All such relationships should be watched as jacking continues (as example that open between the lower jacking post and that flustercluck of cut-offs its stands on should be shimmed of and watched, and perhaps whiskey sticks should be bungeed to the jacking posts - Sorry, but this I think greatly helps drive home my point ) It should always be remembered when jacking a wooden structure, that you are potentially bending something, and should that be the case you are storing a huge amount of energy. A jack can spit out at incredible velocity, should that happen you don't want to be in its path or anything else set in motion (the jacking post, the building) when it does.

It can be done in lots of ways. This begins with careful planning, and a survey of how the building is carrying its loads as a compromised structure, and not just how to rig the localized repair of a sub-system/assembly.

Being your best, begins with being careful.

Want to learn about jack and shoring from the authority?

Jan Lewandoski will be leading the PTN/TFG workshop at Shelburne Farms this coming June.

Details: http://www.iptw.org/

Will:
Thanks for your post and I completely agree and understand your points.

And it should be done with safety in mind at all times.

Thanks guy's had an 85 year old fellow who use to build frame barns come over yesterday, He said I could use his barn jack It uses a chain that wraps around the post and jacks it up.But I need to find a jack system of my own for further needs. The cross beam that holds the hayloft up is down too and that post has no beam up higher. On the other cross beams I used the top beam with a winch to lift it up. In a log building repair I just use 2 jacks and use the new brace log shimmed up.but that would be a high shim job so I thank you both the more Ideals I get the better my chance of getting it right. In putting up the hayloft beam do you think I could use boards nailed to gather in stead of a single post it would be easer to Handel then one big post but I don't want my kids to have problems with it after I am gone or when I get older. My back went out yesterday pulling the boards off the hayloft so I have a few days till I start working on it again so any more Ideals would sure be welcome Thanks