I will gladly send additional photos to people and if they ask me to add a line or two about something else that's usually fine. If they are expecting a home inspector-ish report then you just explain to them that you are not a home inspector and what we do is different.
I write a lot of home...
Thanks for posting lexpatrie. Good article.
I know our old firm always had a "natural camber up" note for the past 40+ years. We adopted a similar note these days.
We used to do a lot of steel structures and I rarely rarely saw camber noted. Never did it on one of my projects. But as you can...
I am aware, but as I mentioned above, no one ever wants the post at the beginning. But it's typically not that hard to sell someone on it, particularly because it will be above the sight lines and they can make it decorative enough to blend into the design.
I've mentioned this here before (started a thread actually), but last year I got called in on a high end residential project where they specified a ~40 ft long steel beam holding 2 stories above. It was a W18x175 and they also specified 1/2" camber.
Guess what happened when they installed it...
It's a zero member if you can somehow resist the forces at the bottom of the gable end forces. But a H2.5A hurricane clip ain't going to cut it so it's best to just use a structural ridge and post down.
I also use this detail almost daily and you always want to show the wood blocking bearing directly on the bottom flange.
9/10 times I use a 2x nailer on the top flange so the top nail holes in a typical LUS face mount hanger will be nailed into the side of the 2x nailer.
I've never used web...
They never like the vertical posts in the middle, but it is so much better if you are in an area with snow. Sell them on the fact that they can add some decorative webs on either side to make it a nice looking truss. It's up 8+ in the air anyway, it's not like vertical stub post is going to...
For $1500 it's most likely not worth the time or effort to pursue payment, but there certainly are ways to put the pressure back on them. Going to AHJ is a good move, but don't make it specifically about the payment. No building department gives a shit about who got paid or not, but make it a...
Since Forte introduced linking loads and many other material/ size options, I use that primarily now for all sorts of custom complex house projects. Yes it is a bit time consuming to do things individually, but being able to link loads and quickly re-run something is a life-saver.
For other...
They must mean a double nut on the thread side, right? Or washer one side nut on the other. Putting a nut on the head side of a bolt is something my wife might do if she was the steel installer.
Is it trusses or just studs/ 2x's/ LVL's etc? Or both?
I agree with gte and lex, this seems like outside what an SEOR should be expected to know. I think you are right to try to find an expert. Maybe a testing agency to check moisture contents, etc.
Not too surprising; they know there is no upside for them to run all these calcs. Lose 1 sale but waste a boatload of time to get to the same conclusion OP (and we) already know. Easier to just say nah we can't do it sorry.
It varies for us, but for small to medium jobs, we usually provide a flat fee (say around 10%) for shop drawing review and label it as such in the proposal. It hasn't come up in a while, but if we have to review something multiple times (not our fault) we'll charge hourly.
As usual I agree with...
I've never priced a job based on estimated construction costs, but that's a thought to consider going forward. I know houses are a minimum $350 sqft these days, but not sure about commercial/ retail/ multi-family.
It's definitely not one size fits all when it comes to pricing just based on the...
The painful process to change a single letter in general notes at my old office was barely worth the effort. Now as a business owner it is very refreshing to change a note or update a typical detail on the fly and not argue with half the office. Will take me just a second to switch that Gr B out...
I guess I'll change our general notes then to 50 ksi Grade C then. Will be nice to not worry about switching to 46 ksi in a program or calc.
This reminds me when I started working at my old office, right out of college and a plan got rejected for having the wrong timber pile treatment. My boss...
Bump those rates up. I am in a pretty HCOL area, but I haven't seen less than $200/ hr for an engineer in a few years. Most civil or structural firms bill around $300/ hr for principals from what I've seen around here.
