Shear wall design in small residential homes 7

[davidl13]

I've just started out doing my own thing on the side and working on some small residential renovations. In this case, the client wants to take down a load bearing wall and have it resupported with a flush beam (wood). I've designed wood beams before but I was wondering if there are any special considerations in terms of the analysis and the detailing for a flush beam vs. a regular drop beam?

In addition, I was wondering how to approach it from a lateral system point of view. I don't have any existing drawings and the house is inhabited so I can't just request to open probes anywhere I want. I don't have that much experience with residential construction, but I assume that any load bearing wall must also act as a shear wall. Is there any way I can justify that ripping down this wall won't have an impact on the integrity of the lateral system in general? Typically, these homes may have been overdesigned and maybe I can justify it numerically that it would still work if we reduce the total length of the shear walls by like 10% for instance?

I'm asking strictly from a safety point of view, less from a permit standpoint.

Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[KootK]

even got a fight better than Tyson v Paul out of this thread.

Yeah, well, just so long as nobody serves me up one of those condescending "thanks for showing up old man" bows. I'd have been tempted to use that moment to deliver my death strike.

 

[KootK]

I was going to go through a bunch of y'alls thread history to find some pretty stupid questions to prove my point, but that's just me being petty.

I track all of my moments of humiliation using the bookmark feature under the category "Mea Culpa" (which I often misspell Mia Culpa). Basically, all threads where I was wrong enough that I felt compelled to admit to being wrong.

As you might imagine, such instances are among the most valuable threads for me to review every year or so to ensure that I'm not forgetting things that I've been learning the hard way. With the old forum platform, I could have shared the list of threads but, with the new one, I'm not sure how to do that.

25 years on, I still find that I humiliate myself about quarterly, like clockwork.

I'm temped to say that keeps me humble but I'm not sure that anyone here would believe that.

 

[Envelope3]

Coming from a commercial backround with very little residential experience

The fact that this thread is this long and this controversial over residential is insane.

Engineering Ethics doesn't just suddenly stop for residential construction because you think it's trivial.

I would recommend reading the disciplinary actions from the Florida board. Literally one or two pages in they suspended a license for a residential screen wall.

If you're going to ask a technical question here fine, but don't put it on a platter that you're going solo in something you have no background in and asking questions "for safety reasons".

 

[Mark_J]

Don't forget to tell the contractor to nail the sub-floor to the top of the beam when flush. It's the difference between a floor that moves in an uncomfortable way to one that feels sturdy.

 

[rabuilt]

Don't forget to tell the contractor to nail the sub-floor to the top of the beam when flush. It's the difference between a floor that moves in an uncomfortable way to one that feels sturdy.

To add to @Mark_J I recently was call out to a home to help troubleshoot the cause of a squeaky floor. After having the contractor remove some sheathing we found some blocking that was pressured fit and a secondary joist with out sheathing nailing. As you walk across the floor you can see the joist moving independently to the blocking. This was the root of the noise. Additional nailing resolved the issues. See the image attached.