Burying Steel Beams in Wood Stud Wall Volumes 7

I feel that it is the case in that, most people don't flag it as an issue. And when it crops up as an issue on site, which is almost all the time, they end up strapping on of the walls out to accommodate.

I can't imagine getting a 4" wide flange beam to work for anything of that length with any real load on it. Your architect needs to re-think what's reasonable.

KootK said:

is the normal thing to do in these situations to allow the beams to be 5.5" wide and just adapt the architectural system locations to suit? Put the walls wherever the beams wind up laterally? I feel that is indeed the case but I'm not positive.

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I hadn't given it a lot of thought, but yes - that sort of happens by necessity. The trades will fudge things as much as possible to make the finished product look...as good as they're used to producing. So if this is a high end house and they're hiring experienced and conscientious tradesmen, they'll make it work and make it look good. Spec house built with the cheapest labor in town regardless of what it is supposed to look like? Good luck.

What about HSS? You can get up to an HSS16x4x5/8. With a top and bottom nailer, drywall is still reasonable, tolerances are likely better than a custom fab job, and the price shouldn't be too much worse.

The plate girders we have fabricated for bridge superstructures have tolerances that would allow you to use a 5 1/4" flange on a 30' beam, and stay within a straight 5 1/2" wall. You can make the flanges as thick as you need them. Plate girders also provide the opportunity to compensate for vertical deflections, to get whatever shape you want when it's in place under load.

"Cambered Bridge Beams for High-End Homes"

Currently a niche market, but we expect lots of growth!

Tongue firmly in-cheek, BridgeSmith.

Please note that is a "v" (as in Violin) not a "y".

Existing 2x6 wall? If not, can you convince them to go 2x8?

Koot, I have nothing to contribute that 1) others haven't already mentioned and 2) addresses your problem as you have presented it--but just out of curiosity: what precluded you from making the beam multi-span within the 2x6 wall?

I can think of a number of reasons why that would be the case, but perhaps some specifics might guide us to assist you (and satisfy my curiosity in terms of your approach).

By the way, nice to see you post; clearly you are still making it happen out there

In the custom residential projects we do (you may remember what these look like), it is common to have steel beams in the walls, however almost every time the beam has been above the ceiling and therefore easily hidden, or the architect has considered a soffit type system to hide said beam. The architect imposing these kind of restrictions on you IMO says a lot about their experience. For the larger residential (apartment) buildings where needed we will have steel beams, and it's always an issue for the architect, but they always figure out a way to hide it.

There is a part of me that ways to say, give them an option for a custom shape and put that there are 0 tolerances allowed or give a shape that is up to 5.5" (may be some good 5" wide options) and let the builder have that right with the architect during construction. This is honestly an architectural issue to solve, I don't feel like you should be having to deal with this.

You mention even 5.5" beams don't fit, funny enough this was a comment we got from an architect early on on some of the high end residential and it's the reason that we implemented a max solid sawn member size before switching to GLB's based on local fabrication and tendency of certain sizes to have these issues.

This is the reason I started specifying glulam beams. Architecture today is interior design nothing more. They really should not have so much power, they mislead clients with ideas that are not buildable or outside of budget. The kicker is you see these big time architects come up with these crazy designs and then you have a steel base plate sticking 4” into the room, they hid the beams and columns but didn’t embed the base plate.

In these situations I try to switch the beams to HSS sections first. See if I can find a rectangle to fit.

If neither the HSS nor W shape will fit as is, furring out the wall an inch or two is definitely the easiest compromise and my next proposal.

Not sure on the situation here but could you get a story deep truss to work instead of the 30" beams? If someone balks at the cost you have the ability to point to the custom plate girder fabrication to meet the proposed architectural requirements. A bulkhead seems like the sane approach here.

We use HSS 5" wide sections a lot in these scenarios. Also using 3x3 columns buried in walls with nailers on all sides from time to time.

How about some sweet-looking architecturally exposed tubes? Use your legendary power of persuasion.

KootK said:

is the normal thing to do in these situations to allow the beams to be 5.5" wide and just adapt the architectural system locations to suit?

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Unfortunately the "normal" thing probably doesn't even ask this question. Which means, "yes".

Take your statement, replace 5.5" with 5.0" (which gets me a few favorite wood/steel sizes like W14x22 and HSS_x5's) and that would be my approach. More than 0.5" sweep may be likely, but accommodating this by penalizing the structure is outside what I consider "industry standard". I'm willing to accept "low" values of drywall alignment tolerance knowing that 1) it only affects drywall sweep anyway 2) I get a far superior 5" for LTB or out of plane, not 4".

I have a sneaking suspicion that Stanley is now ChatGPT's mouthpiece on eng-tips...

Yep, I see it too pham. Amazing engineering judgement coming from the AI's big ole brain. zzz.

One benefit for now: it's easy to spot. I fancy myself a reasonably eloquent speaker/writer, and I know I don't write that well. I certainly don't respond to forum posts in essay format.

I don't care about the signatures, but sign me up for a mute button.

Hot dog! Looks like management listened, jerseyshore. Mr. Stanley seems to have been muted permanently.

I did report about 20 of his comments right afterwards so I'll accept my award.