Well stated. When done correctly, I often see a copy of the engineer letter stapled to the repair. Is this a GA thing or common practice?
I’ve seen it before but it’s rare… proper fixes and documentation that is.
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What blows me away is that S-Green, Surface Green, lumber is used and does not cause more problems. That crap is often literally dripping water, and will splash your eye if you drive a nail home. They build these homes that then shrink as the lumber dries out.
Really?
Note that’s why for a old house, kiln dried is the way to go for lumber. If it’s going to take load, you don’t want it to get 5% shorter after 6 months.
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Thanks for sharing this repair detail! It was fun to see these repair drawings again. I used to work for MiTek out of St. Louis years ago and did at least 2 dozen of these repairs a week. Whew, the memories came flooding back today. Thanks for sharing an engineers perspective on this forum!
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Yup, it’s much cheaper to put bad wood in trusses. Around here, many truss companies just look at the truss damage and send a repair detail to the builder, who then pays the framer to do it. Sometimes, the builder even pays his engineer of record to come out, look at the damage, and design a repair. Therefore, the truss company gets to save money on engineering, materials, and labor. That’s killing 3 birds with one stone.
Actually, it may even be killing 4 birds with one stone if you count the money that the truss manufacturers are apparently saving on quality control. I mean who cares if multiple truss top chord splices are off center; who cares if the truss plates barely touch the web members; who cares if permanent bracing is even installed on a web that looks like a wet noodle; who cares if trusses get sent to the site with missing web members at the exterior wall bearing; and who cares if gusset plates are undersized, misaligned, and the truss is cut to fit at the same time? Clearly, many truss manufacturers don’t care, the city inspector doesn’t care enough or have enough time to look at the trusses, the framer doesn’t get paid enough to care, and the production builder only cares if it gets caught before closing(since the warranty department gets to deal with it after closing). This is making me hate trusses more than I already do, because I know when I walk into that 120+ degrees F attic, it’ll take forever to come out or I’d have to rest and go through the attic in multiple passes because there is almost always something wrong with the trusses. End rant.
