cruzinbear
Structural
- Dec 19, 2012
- 19
I am working on a project to build a 50'x50' walk-in-cooler inside a commercial warehouse structure. The warehouse structure was designed in the late 1980's. The ceiling panels can only span 25 ft and thus I need to provide a support in the middle for the two joining panels. Not having the plans to work off of, I thought one option would be to build a frame inside the cooler to support the ceiling panels. However, the client wants to avoid this and the contractor on the job is suggesting to suspend from the roof trusses above.
This is a viable option if I had structural drawings and/or roof calculations of the original building. The landlord doesn't have any drawings and city is looking in their archives but we have not been lucky yet to locating these drawings and/or calculations. The contractor is keep pushing to suspend from the trusses above. While I don't doubt that it can handle the weight, since the they are foam panels with sheet metal, approx. 2.5 psf, however, I just can't call it out on the plans without understanding the structural system of the wooden roof trusses above and verifying the loads it originally was designed for.
One option I was thinking is to take use a lift and go measure the dimensions of the roof truss elements then conduct an analysis to determine whether loads can be supported from them. Does anyone else have a better idea? Any advice/ recommendations would be greatly appreciated it.
This is a viable option if I had structural drawings and/or roof calculations of the original building. The landlord doesn't have any drawings and city is looking in their archives but we have not been lucky yet to locating these drawings and/or calculations. The contractor is keep pushing to suspend from the trusses above. While I don't doubt that it can handle the weight, since the they are foam panels with sheet metal, approx. 2.5 psf, however, I just can't call it out on the plans without understanding the structural system of the wooden roof trusses above and verifying the loads it originally was designed for.
One option I was thinking is to take use a lift and go measure the dimensions of the roof truss elements then conduct an analysis to determine whether loads can be supported from them. Does anyone else have a better idea? Any advice/ recommendations would be greatly appreciated it.