We sell I-joists, but not the Truss Joist brand.
At the risk of telling many of you things you already know, I hope you don't mind if I list a few things that not everyone reading the thread will know.
Truss Joist brand (TJI) is a brand of I-joists, just like Kleenex is a brand of tissue.
In my experience, Truss Joist is an arrogant company that's difficult to deal with. I try to avoid working with them when possible.
The most common flange width sold around here is 2 1/4" or 2 5/16". They're less than half the cost of the ones with a 3.5" wide (4x2) flange. And much more readily available.
I-joists more than tripled in price during the pandemic, and were sometimes hard to get. Now pricng is softening up a bit.
I have never known the narrow flange widths to be an issue. As IceNine said, they're all wider than 2X lumber.
Someone mentioned kitchen islands.
Floor members of any kind can deflect more than adjacent members under a kitchen island. A lot of time there is nothing sitting in the area on both sides of the island. The deflection under the island may be within the allowable deflection. But the fact that they're setting next to something that's not deflecting nearly as much makes it look bad.
At the place I work at we automatically double up I-joists or floor trusses under kitchen islands for that reason. It doesn't cost much up front, and can save a lot of trouble down the road.
One thing I don't like about the various I-joist suppliers is that they send literature to architects and engineers with every line of I-joists that they can manufacture. But the regional warehouses may not carry but one or 2 product lines, even though they literature shows maybe 4 to 6. So we often get plans with things specified that are not readily available.
I often see the highest line of 11 7/8" I-joist called out. Seems like everyone wants to keep the depth down, and the 11 7/8" depth is what they're after.
But to get that depth, they often go way over the length/depth ratio I like to see. (18-to-1 is my personal limit based on experience. i.e. 18' of span per foot of depth)
Sometimes a series of 14" I-joists is more readily available and less expensive than the super HD wide flange 11 7/8" I-joists. But getting someone to agree to the added depth is often a lesson in futility.
Sorry if I rambled a bit. But I deal with these issues all the time.
