I slapped an opening in a thick internal stone loadbearing wall.....the approved plans show RSJs to be installed but I have installed a row of old railway lines.....the problem is they don't want to accept this as I cannot provide calcs ..... surely if a railway line has supported the Flying Scotsman for years it should be OK to support a triangle of stone? ........
Totally unsuitable. Put an RSJ in and do the job properly.
Why can't you provide calcs?
You should have used polystyrene tiles. Much easier to work than old rails.
I have seen this done several times. Railway lines are a bit OTT. Some many decades old, seems to have been a common practice.
Your mistake was in telling them.
They employ shitheads with little practical experience these days. The "cover-my-arse" types.
But it might bend of course, more than the actually specified item. One really needs to know such things in case it cracks the building by its lack of rigidity. After all it is load bearing in a different way. also if you are indeed using old lines, the how do you know metal fatigue has not started? Brian
Yes, this sounds an awful lot like Scrap Heap Challenge to me. So I have this 2CV with a wheel missing is it OK to make up the other one from three bicycle wheels of the same diameter welded to a hub? King of thing. brian
The OP is presumably another troll.
Assuming it is a reasonably normal domestic building the specified RSJs will be a long way from deforming plastically, so all that matters is whether the elastic deformation of the rails is similar to or better than the RSJs. The elastic modulus of RSJs and steel rails will not be very different, so what matters is the second moment of area which is reasonably easy to calculate. Fatigue is a red herring: unless it breaks on installation owing to a large pre-existing fatigue crack, it will be OK because there won't be any more fatigue cycles. Strictly, I suppose, a crack might become jacked open by corrosion, but even then as a lintel it is unlikely to lead to collapse even if it does fail catastrophically.
That's not to say that it wasn't a really stupid thing to do on a build which was going to get inspected.
Showing your ignorance again, Harry? For as long as I can remember it has been a requirement to show simple calculations that any such alteration is up to the job. And just why should the public be required to pay for them?
And for quite a bit of work it's fairly simple to put together the data needed for those calculations. For example, when we replaced our roof in the 1990s it was sufficient to get the data and calculate that X sqm of welsh slate weighed Y, and X sqm of replacement artificial slates weighed less-than-Y, so the replacement would work.
jgh
A railway line is probably about 20 times stronger than needed. The axle loading of a steam locomotive could be over 20 tons.
Your little triangle of masonary wieghs nothing by comparison. Especially if two are fitted side by side as was the normal trick.
If it last carried a steam engine, it could be rusted away by now.
BTW, when will idiots like you learn that 'probably' isn't good enough when it comes such things?
I've seen enough building collapse because some wanker thought 'probably' was ok.
Railway tracks have a pretty small span.
Rust is visible SFB.
*You* don't seem to be able to see most things, so why not rust too?
But just carry on guessing about such things. In your own house. Hopefully well away from others.
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