Big Holes in Glulam Beam 3

[SarBear]

Hi all, wanted to get some feedback on this. A potential client approached me saying that they are wanting to buy this home, but the inspector noticed that the 5 1/8" x 16 1/2" glulam beam in the garage has some large holes drilled through it for the garage door opener. See the drawing below for the approximate dimensions of what's going on. The beam is about 25' long and is bearing the exterior wall of the second floor above. The selling agent has said that their engineer will provide a design where there are steel plates on each side of the beam that bridge the gap where the holes are and will have bolts going through. That sounds like a fine solution to me, but I'm not smart enough to be able to prove that this fix actually works.

The buyer has asked me to provide a second opinion since he is not sure about the proposed fix. The other engineer hasn't provided any drawings or calculations yet, so I'm not sure whether the fix will be legit or super janky. What do you all think? Is the steel plate idea doable? Is it provable? My feeling is that the solution is doable, but I'm too stupid to figure out how to prove that it works.

 

[HouseBoy]

Looks like you have at least 9" below those holes, maybe more if the door rail does not reach down into the lower hole (so maybe 10" available).
A pair of steel channels with the same IE as the existing "unaltered" glum would be something like 2) C9x20 or C10x15.3.
That seems like the "simplest" approach if they REALLY need to do something. I would consider what the actual stress is in the existing beam (not sure if it was undersized or over sized to begin with so... even adding the "equivalent" in steel is a little risky without checking. Should be able to come up with that though. At 25 ft, I'd want to see if deflection was the controlling factor in the member selection.

Def I'd prop the existing beam up before installing the channels. Arguably, the bearing situation could be worked on based on how easy or difficult it is to achieve bearing. Should be OK to run the new channels nearly full length with thru bolts to get the load back into the glulam.

 

[JAE]

That's nothin'

 

[jerseyshore]

That looks like it was chiseled out by hand. What psycho has the time to do something like that?

 

[wrantler]

@jerseyshore did he chisel that before or after he cut the hole in the one behind

 

[LittleInch]

Both beams at least are cracking.

I like the prop....

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.

 

[jerseyshore]

Holy hell I thought that was a doorway behind haha.

 

[HouseBoy]

The sad thing is that the thing probably stood for a few decades like that. Makes it harder to argue how great the need is (of course no one in their right mind would let it go like that. I'm just saying it leads to interesting conversations about the proper level of "engineering").

 

[DoubleStud]

I would do this and save you a headache. Remove the drywalls. Attach steel channels on each side of the beam with thru-bolts. Just design the steel channels to take 100% of the load. If you are desprate, you can add some capacity from the glulam. But you need to analyze the load the beam is taking.

 

[Enable]

Am I missing something or are these holes not in the compression zone at mid-span so we can use a filler + epoxy as the remedy of choice? AITC Technical Note 14 appears to detail this approach. I don't design with glulam though (or wood really) so not sure if there's a reason why no one else has brought up this as a simple fix. With 6/16 removed shear concerns may govern I suppose in which case perhaps the external reinforcement provides more comfort?