Wednesday, June 17, 2009

RE: [papercreters] Re: PC and rebar



I read your story with great interest. Back in 1990 when I was married my husband and I built a very nice house in Santa Fe. We had a permit and did it all by the book. We had a mason build our fireplaces, all inspected. We had the trusses built because people said it was cheaper than DIY. Besides it was a hip roof with a gable L and we are not much good with math. Long story short - We got divorced and the house was sold. Not 2 years later the house burned, mostly the roof. My ex went to the insurance adjuster who he knew well and asked what happened to the house. It was a spark from the chimney that lit the trusses on fire. This house was not even 5 years old! and all built to code!

Sincerely, Judith
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To: papercreters@yahoogroups.com
From: donald1miller@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:52:51 +0000
Subject: [papercreters] Re: PC and rebar





This discussion of the merits of building codes and the not so safe code approved trusses put together with the metal clips that buckle and twist off when subjected to heat is very interesting to say the least. It is not the fact that clips are not driven in properly, the fact is they will buckle and come apart when subjected to heat regardless of how they're installed. Those who would defend the building codes and inspectors as being necessary to keep do it yourselfers "safe" need to do a little critical thinking. I notice that some think codes are necessary for minimum standards but in reality the building codes were not instituted for safety at all but as a means of contolling what people can build on their property. If you've bought some nice property out away from the city and lived there for some time, the city has a way of catching up with you and if Mr. Moneybags decides that he really likes the area and buys a lot in the neighborhood and he decides that he doesn't like the looks of your house and buildings or "junk" then you are going to be in for a lot of problems. And the first place the complainers go to is the planning and zoning people and guess whose side they're going to be on? The planning and zoning departments have grown into vast beauracracies and really have to answer to no one as they are not elected officials and they have their own agenda and of course the main purpose of this and any other beaurocracy is the perpetuation of the beaurocracy. If we look around at the sprawl and growth patterns and strip malls and haphazard housing developments then perhaps it's time to ask ourselves is this planning? Do we really need the people and the beaurocracies responsible for this? Do we need to keep making excuses for these people who make up rules on the fly and cause people unneeded stress and grief? How do you fight this when an inspector tells you to replace screws with nails or make the lap on rebar different than specified? It is easy to say one should fight obvious incompetence or arrogant behavior from these people but in reality it is not that easy. You will not find much sympathy at any of the county offices as they are working together and no one wants to rock the boat. It also will potentially cost a lot of money and delays in time and as we all know when you have a building project going, chances are you are pushed for time to get things closed in before winter or whatever the case may be.
I would like to add a bit about trusses. If trusses are made the way they should be with weatherproof glue and plywood gussets they won't collapse in a fire. In 1981 I got a building permit for my house in Kootenai county in North Idaho. I drew up the plans for the house proper and also for the trusses. I knew a lot of people in the building industry and the standard story about trusses was oh you wouldn't save that much money by building your own, you should just buy them. The fact of the matter was no one actually knew anything about building a truss, just buy them from the plant and install them. Well, I was on a limited budget and I needed to save as much as I could by building everything myself, as much as possible. I went to the library and got a book on building which covered trusses and figured out what would be needed to satisfy the county's requirements. Bear in mind that this is an area of a lot of snow and the load factor is much higher than a lot of the warmer areas that many of us live in. I drew up the plans for a 28 foot span and took it to the planning department and the head guy looked them over and stamped them as approved and I built them accordingly and they worked fine. I also wired my house and the state electrical inspector approved it and I had no problem there. I learned this from reading and doing smaller projects down through the years. Electrical wiring is not brain surgery and is within the capabilities of most people if they can read and ask questions.
Fast forward to 2001. Same county, same place I'm living on. I go to the planning and zoning office and they now have their own building with brand new 4 wheel drive pickups parked in front for the inspectors to drive. No longer sharing space in the court house with the rest of the country offices. I have rented my house and want to build a 12X40 ft. stone building by slip forming to use in the summer when I'm home and I could park my converted bus next to it and things would work well. Wrong! I have to get a civil engineer or architect to sign off on the plans before I can build. They won't even talk about this. When I asked about trusses the man says oh we can't have people building trusses. They have to be "engineered". We had all these people slopping glue around and we just can't have this anymore. Very smug. Very arrogant. It would have cost me $1500.00 before I could even drive a nail. What is wrong with this picture?
And trusses? I built a 24X36 ft. shop in the early 70's when I first moved on my property by stacking and nailing together cull 2X4 studs as this was a common practice around sawmill towns in NW Montana and northern Idaho as there was no particle board or OSB board plants to chip the cull lumber for such purposes so the cull stuff was very cheap. I built 24 ft. span trusses by lapping an 8 footer over each joint on both the ceilng joist and the rafters and then glued and nailed them together. I simply nailed the purlins? on the joists and the rafters without placing them inside and gusseting them. Ignorance, but they worked out. In 25 years the roof had sagged maybe an inch or two but no problems. I even doubled and glued and nailed a beam which I put on top of the ceiling joists of the truss and used that to lift engines and transmissions with. I had a fire which started when the block chimney had settled slightly over the years and my flue pipe from inside the shop had rusted through enough for a spark to ignite the cedar siding. When the fire department arrived the fire had spread up into the roof. The Chief asked my wife who had built the building and she was alarmed thinking that there was something wrong but she said well my husband did. The Chief said I'm really impressed. If this had been a normal building it would have been lying on the slab by the time we got here. As it were, they tried to pull some of the trusses in the middle down with hooks but they couldn't pull them apart, only four in the middle that were burned almost through. The roof was still intact but the sheet rock in the ceiling was ruined from the water. The wall only burnt in a small spot right above the chimney and I could have patched up the rafters but as the roof had sagged some over the years and I would have had to patch up the middle 4 they tried to tear apart I decided to build new trusses. This of course was illegal according to the planning and zoning folks but I went ahead and built them anyway. When I took off the roof that summer, we tried to pull it off with a 4 wheel drive pickup but it wouldn't budge. I got up on the roof with a skil saw and my friend who was helping me said be real careful because it might fall in. In the end I had to saw it into 6 ft. square pieces to get it apart. Ironic that regulations made purportedly for my safety would have caused me to built a building that would have burnt to the ground but my building that I had built without a lot of knowledge is till standing and doing fine.

--- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, "slurryguy" <slurryguy@...> wrote:
>
> I had previously heard firemen use the catch phrase, "Never trust a truss." Now I understand why. Thanks.
>
>
> Here is a thought. It seems that it could be of great value to wrap wooden trusses IN PAPERCRETE. Especially if the papercrete is an extremely fire resistant mix. It could provide significant protection at an extremely low cost, especially if a house is being made from papercrete anyway.
>
> I suspect that if it were wrapped properly that roof sheathing and asphalt shingles might burn away before such a truss would fail. (Of course I'm just guessing. I have no scientific data to support that hypothesis.)
>
>
>
>
> --- In papercreters@yahoogroups.com, "imbulljeanne" <imbulljeanne@> wrote:
> >
> > Ditto spaceman,
> >
> > "Codes are minimum safety standards"
> >
> > There is one code you could never pay me enough money to use and that is using connector plates in the building of the trusses. I have seen too many homes in California where the entire roof collapsed because the trusses failed. The beams where charred 1/4" and that was enough for the connector plate to fail bringing down the entire roof.
> >
> > I was dating a fireman and heard all the horror stories about how they would be on the roof cutting access holes, and parts of the roof would collapse beneath them. (not a foot going threw but whole sections) Luckily no one in his department was ever seriously hurt. He brought me to one site to show me just how little the wood had to burn before they failed, it was shocking! He took his finger nail and scarped the burnt truss and you could see good wood. Then he showed me the connector plate that failed. You could see that the metal prongs that are supposed to be hammered or pressed into the wood where either bent in half or only about half the prong had gone into the wood.
> >
> > Due to the nature of wood, knots or even hitting on the grain could prevent the prong from embedding completely into the wood. There is a certain percentage that must be complete, I don't remember now what it was but you can bet that there is not enough time or money saved on a project to warrant that kind of risk. All the plates we found none did not meet code. There was no contractor cutting corners it was all up to code.
> >
> > I don't like the idea of any governing body telling us what we can and cannot do. If I want to live in a tent or a hole in the ground if it makes me happy on my own property who is to say it is substandard!
> > But I guess that would fall under city ordinances more then building codes. But I do have to be alive to be happy so I will build smart above or below ground.
> >
> > I guess what I am trying to say is I would never ride a roller coaster that only met the minimum safety standard why would I live in a house that did.
> >
> > Jeanne
> >
>




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