What they did to our roof!!

[RicodJour]

Where exactly is the truss located? It may be bad or you may have gotten lucky.

R

[Percival P. Cassidy]

After two years in our present home, I finally made it all the way to the far end of the attic.

There I found that, in order to get clearance for the pulley of the whole-house fan, someone had cut a piece out of the underside of the top chord of one of the roof trusses. There is about a 6" section with only half the material left.

On that same truss, the upper end of one of the diagonal braces has obviously been moved: I can see where the metal plate (do I recall correctly that they are called "gang nails"?) *used to be*, but it is now perhaps an inch away from that position -- farther down toward the eaves.

Is this dangerous? How would I remedy it?

Perce

[Edwin Pawlowski]

Trusses are engineered to take a given load, plus a safety factor because some homeowners are idiots and cut things they should not. The engineer that designed the truss can tell you how bad it truly is. Moving one of the braces an inch is probably not a major factor either, but there is a reason it was placed where it was though. Moving it an inch is probably not a big deal either.

What you want though, is some piece of mind that 10 years from now there will be no sagging in the roof. Why was the brace moved? Can you put another piece along side of it? You can add a 2 x 4 to sister the brace and it will take a much heavier load. Depending on where the pulley is, it may be possible to add some extra bracing along side of it also. Removing some of the thickness does make it more subject to flexing so you do want to add some stiffeners. Use a little geometry and see if you can make an angle brace or two that will assist in keeping the truss stiff. Not being able to see it, I can't offer a recommendation, but if you take a photo to someone familiar with trusses they could probably tell you the best way.

[tbasc]

In addition to Rico's question, what chance of heavy snow loads, or high winds? TB

[king-key]

Bolt a 4 or 5 foot piece of 1.5 inch angle iron alongside the missing wood. Bolt every 8 to 10 inches along the whole piece of iron.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 10/13/05 10:29 pm RicodJour tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

It's a ranch-style house, so this is just one of many identical 26+ ft. Fink ("W") trusses. The piece that was cut out is between the first diagonal brace and the eaves.

If they had turned the whole fan unit through 180 degrees, the motor pulley would have been toward the center of the roof ad they wouldn't have needed to cut the truss, but, in the absence of a belt guard, they might have thought there was too much danger of someone coming into contact with it.

And to answer the later question, we're in W. Michigan and often get considerable amounts of snow.

Perce

[Percival P. Cassidy]

On 10/14/05 07:07 am [e-mail] tossed the following ingredients into the ever-growing pot of cybersoup:

We're in W. Michigan and often get considerable amounts of snow.

Perce