I am gutting and removing all exterior and interior walls on my 1/2 top floor completely and going with a full story.
My question is this.
When the exterior walls are built by the contractor, is it normal to just nail the exterior walls into the top (header maybe) of the main floor walls? I am wondering if this is typical and enough strength wise since I live in the east coast of Canada and we often get high winds (tail ends of Hurricanes - 90 - 130 km/hr) during hurricane season. We actually were hit directly by Hurricane Juan (Cat 1 - 2) and last hurricane season (summer/fall of 07) we had wind gusts from a tropical depression up to 130 km/hr.
I am wondering if the exterior walls should be bolted down with a big type of lag bolt. Is just nailing the exterior walls typical and enough strength wise?