I have a project where we are adding to an existing building and adding on, for all structural intents, an ICC-500 rated shelter. The construction of the shelter is 12" CMU exterior walls, grouted solid, and 12" hollow core planks with 4" composite topping, all designed for 250 mph wind loads...
We currently have a project under construction that has an ICC-500 shelter as part of the project. It's a precast concrete box with a hollow core floor bearing on interior 8" CMU shear walls with #5 @ 24" o.c. and a grouted bond beam at the top of the wall.
The issue is that the CMU walls were...
Our firm has a long-time high school client that had their shop classes construct an "Outdoor Learning Environment" (which is basically a wood shelter house) as part of their curriculum. The shelter has already been built, I believe that they had filed permits, but the city has now told them...
I'm working on an addition to an existing building and during demo, the contractor discovered the situation shown in Photo #1. It's an existing W21x44 bearing at the end of a CMU wall and the CMU under the beam bearing has cracking. There's a 1/2" steel bearing plate below the beam with...
This came up in the thread765-368271, where existing columns were noticed to be under-designed. In discussing how to remedy the issue, I was looking to simply decrease the braced length of the columns by adding a bolted T-C brace in each axis, angled at 45 from the column up to the roof...
I recently started work on a site-adapt project for a public building that has already been used on another site. The structural engineer that did the previous design has since retired and I was tasked with the structural design of the new building. I rechecked the calcs from the previous...
I’m working on a renovation of a PEMB which is having the slab removed and replaced and an interior independent floor put in. We didn’t have any information or drawings on the size or reinforcing in foundations or slab other than an e-mail from the original contractor saying what he thought the...
Has anyone had any experience with a building underpinned with helical piers which then had additional settling? Back in 2003, an existing building built in 1919, experienced several inches of settlement on the north and east sides of the building. The firm I work for recommended helical pile...
I have a project where it appears that the contractor ordered the wrong concrete for a ~2000 ft^2 slab on grade and placed the slab with air entrained concrete.
The air content was 6.5% air, but the slump was only 3". The strength was already over the specified 28 day f'c at seven days. A...
When is one more beneficial than the other? I have specified helical piers on several recent projects and contractors often call asking if they can use push piers instead. All of my projects are in the Midwest (Iowa), where we generally have glacial till soils with clays, sand, and gravel, or...
I'm working on a project where we're putting an elevator in the corner of an existing brick building. The existing footings are not as deep as we had originally thought, based on what few existing drawings we had. So now it looks like we're going to have to underpin a portion of the existing...
On a recent project, we’re infilling an opening in an exterior wall with CMU. The opening is 18’ tall, and the wall is running bond reinforced with #5 @ 24” o.c. We typically use stack bond for the majority of our projects because of architectural preference, so the spec called for truss...
