DIY cockup

On Saturday I arrived at work to discover this at the customers house

formatting link

Yep he has removed the ceiling joists and the back wall.

This is a photo of the neighbours house to show you what it looked liked before he started

formatting link

More photos of the nice works here

formatting link
formatting link

I call someone with an acro

formatting link

Time to fit the new doors - just needs leveling up on the left hand side

formatting link

All levelled up and you can see how much the wall has moved by

formatting link

Use the acro in reverse - just needs a couple of volunters to hold it iin place until it bites

formatting link

Screw in a few timbers to hold it in place - including a ceiling joist and it looks OK.

formatting link

Dunno what their final solution will be.

Enjoy

Reply to
ARW
Loading thread data ...

Sounds like a couple of tie timbers (aka ceiling joists) would do nicely :)

Just how often do you get sidetracked off the main job? ;-)

Reply to
Tim Watts

On this job - lots of times:-).

At work not so often. Although when the agency labourer f***ed off home at midday I downed my snips and I fire stopped the building before the building inspector arrived. And it passed the inspection with flying colours.

Reply to
ARW

My then neighbour some years ago decided to remove all the downstairs walls and make it open plan, and then build a single storey extension on the back and knocked the back wall of the house out as well. All in a terrace of four on one of the inner houses next to mine. Using mainly mates from the trade he did jack things up and put the right bits of old iron in, but still managed to damage all our roofs cementing and crack the render on the outside walls as the structure moved slightly with the change in weight bearing. Also he came unstuck by burying the soil pipe from the toilet under the concrete floor of the extension and had to have it dug up. Very noisy that was.

I do sometimes wonder if enough consideration is payed to neighbouring property when folk get the urge to do 'home improvements'. Brian

Reply to
Brian Gaff

'kinell, lucky the whole lot did not just splay out at the top and dump the whole roof into the room under it!

Nice recovery...

Would be worth sticking that quick overview into the wiki to go with the photos. Nicely illustrates what the "floor/ceiling" joists do in traditional roof framing.

Reply to
John Rumm

And, for constructional know-nothings like me, it would be useful to have a brief overview of how things would be done differently, if there'd been no extension there and one wanted to build what the DIYer had been trying to convert it to, i.e., an extension with a vaulted ceiling.

I'm curious since the house I owned in California had a vaulted ceiling main living-room.

Reply to
Tim Streater

The main issue is one of "thrust". Nail a couple of bits of wood together to form an apex, and then add weight to the top (tiles etc), you will tend to flatten out the apex - pushing the free ends apart (and if you are unlucky, pushing the walls over into the bargain). Normally a roof truss or framed roof will have cross members that will act in tension to resist the spread of the base. So even if the apex joint is a relatively weak nailed one, it all stays together since the apex joint is only subject to compression rather than rotational moments.

If you want a vaulted ceiling, then you need to deal with the thrust - either eliminate it or cope with it.

One way is to modify the ceiling structure to eliminate the thrust - either with some tie beams across (don't need them on every rafter, and they can be quite high up making an A frame).

You could use a ring frame of some form around the perimeter at the base. This works well for hipped vaulted ceilings with 4 sloping sides. The counters the thrust by placing the 4 hip rafters into compression.

Alternatively with a gable wall at each end you can stick a heavy ridge beam in to transfer the loads from the tops of all the rafters onto the game walls. The loads from the bottom end of the rafters is then carried by the side walls.

All those will eliminate the thrust. An alternative is to design the supporting structure to be able to cope with the outward thrust, such that it can supply the restraint to the roof's thrust. (so perpendicular walls, or other buttress arrangements for the side walls)

Reply to
John Rumm

make that "gable"

Reply to
John Rumm

Did it have a missing gable wall:-)?.

Reply to
ARW

:-)

Thanks - that's a lot clearer now.

Reply to
Tim Streater

In message , Tim Streater writes

A couple of flying buttresses and you are sorteed.

Reply to
Chris French

I'm trying to picture it, sold it more than 20 years ago. Allegedly it had been built in the 20s by a property developer for his mistress. English cottage look to it.

Lathe and plaster everywhere with knob/tube wiring in the walls.

No, the living room had a wall with a gable at the far end, with a loft behind at the top and bedrooms behind, underneath. Then at the other end there was a gable built over a set of doors that led to the entrance hall. I don't think there were any A-frame beams.

Reply to
Tim Streater

You could always try you hand at a flying buttress.Go all gothic

Reply to
fred

Oh, I thought you meant where you hang the dartboard. ;-)

Reply to
Adam Funk

Gothic designed frequently sidestepped the issue with gothic arches, which transfer all the weight downwards and have little or no sideways thrust. (unlike the rounder Norman arches that predated them)

Reply to
John Rumm

Can you remember what the roof was made of? Might it have been covered with felt tiles - or somesuch - which would have been a lot lighter than slates or concrete tiles?

Reply to
Roger Mills

It might have had steel "V" plates at the apex to discourage the rafters from flattening.

Reply to
newshound

I continue to be amazed how many people managed to stay alive well into adulthood with a complete inability to perceive the world around them and notice things like weight at X does stuff to Y, how many digits their town's telephone numbers have, containers cannot have additional contents added until existing passengers depart, etc.

jgh

Reply to
jgh

The traditional alternative is purlins supporting the rafters. There may need to be an intermediate truss/other support.

Reply to
harryagain

Common cause of structural failure in bay windows with more modern flat and segmented arches too, where there's no wall for the ends of the arch to push against.

Reply to
Andrew Gabriel

HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.