Working on a new shore house that has the same round 10" butt timber piles supporting both the first & second floors.
The original layout included having the top of the piles with a typical notch at the 2nd floor for a PSL girder.
But at the first floor, since the piles have to run up to the...
Within the last 6-12 months there has been a rush of "lifted house lifts" at the Jersey Shore. Typical house lifts are still happening at a normal pace, but because of the amount of water issues the barrier islands have now, houses that were already up 8'+ are now being raised an additional 1-3...
Went to a house near me to check out a foundation, but snapped some pictures of this random column in the back holding up the 2nd floor deck. What is it?
All the other posts were typical 4x4's, but this was a random, (likely re-used) piece of metal that someone went thru the effort of...
Just got called out to a job because the building inspector noticed some odd construction on an old brick building and it's not something I've ever seen before either.
It's a 3 story building built in 1900; wood-framed floors with triple-wythe load bearing brick exterior walls.
On only the...
Have a potential project where the owner wants to utilize 3D printed concrete walls. We'll have a traditional footing 3 ft deep, then 2 ft of below grade (non-retaining) printed foundation walls plus about 10 ft of ground floor printed walls with a two story wood house on top.
Anyone have any...
Came across a new one. A local registered design professional sized a EDIT: W18x175 to span 32 ft clear across a new house. The problem was they also specificed an additional camber of 1/2".
Well, guess what, they put it up and it was bad. Not sure if the 1/2" camber was in addition to any...
Just went to check out a crawlspace girder because the owner noticed some cracks and a big dip in the first-floor. Double 2x12 spanning approx 8'. Apparently the crawlspace used to be pretty wet and was recently encapsulated.
A contractor had previously installed a 17' attic beam to open up the...
I haven't seen a new wood tie wall (formerly known as a railroad tie wall) in at least ten years, but just got the possible request to design one out of 6x6's.
I believe the last time my office designed one I was an intern and we used a full crib-style layout (deadmen were continuous for the...
Normally when I design roof framing for a house it's all structural ridge/hip/valleys. If it was simple, they wouldn't be hiring an engineer (generally).
Example below of this house with a tradition 6/12 sloped main roof, 46 ft deep front to back, and a matching 6/12 46 ft wide hip roof off the...
Cheap house flipper lowers the floor of a 1910 basement to gain 7' clear and sell it as a full basement. Old brick walls, no footings, just a rubble base.
They cut out the floor slab and dropped it down about 12"-14" then sheetrocked the whole thing to hide it. Never put a slab back in, just...
Pricing is always a hot topic and has been brought up a lot the last few days so figured it's easiest to start a separate thread.
What kind of pricing do people see/charge in their area these days for residential projects? IMO a lot of people here are underselling their work.
As I said in the...
I do a lot of residential projects and find myself approaching the calculations differently for nearly every job. For small jobs, not usually a big deal, but for the bigger ones it turns into a challenge.
I start off a bigger project thinking okay, I'm going to be organized this time and label...
Went to a building today with some classic late 60s/early 70s architecture, the highlight being these precast panels. They are not only the exterior facade, but also in half of the interior side of the building too. Man the 60s must've been weird.
Anyway, on two corners the panels have started...
Went to a mess of a deck earlier that has the front half separating from the back half (bad piles & foundations). This little block of wood was added at some point to try to tie the two parts together. Clearly that didn't work and I got this great shot of cross-grain tension failure.
So I'm...
Came across a very strange condition on the lower level of a parking garage. Plank floor on what appears to be CIP beams.
An entire row of concrete beams down multiple bays appear to be spliced, or maybe not-so-spliced. There are clear cuts with no visible reinforcing spanning the gaps.
The...
As I mentioned in my other thread, the real reason I went out to this house was because they framed the roof ridge 9" too high. We have to cut down the roof ridge and the contractor was throwing out some options on how to do it. It's a low slope roof so 9" of vertical cut is 5'-5" horizontally...
Was just sent a few photos of these pile caps pre-concrete pour. All but one is a single pile cap (the other is a poorly spaced double pile cap as you can see). These are placed along the front of a house supporting a 1st and 2nd floor deck. We're in a flood zone also.
Pretty obvious that not...
Came across a brick basement side wall 7' tall, 45' long, with a bow about 2.5" in the middle; improving to about 1/2"-1" as you approach the front & back corners. I've repaired a million block basement walls over the years, but brick is obviously a lot tougher to repair. I've used walers/...
