Or a home builder or anyting? I am trying to get someone to look at my house, but no one wants to call me back. What I basicly want to know is since I have a Fink Truss roof, I am pretty sure I do not have any load bearing walls on the interior of my house. Is this correct? My shop which is actually wider than my house also has the same truss and there are no walls in it. Sorry for the OT, but I can't get an answer from anyone for some reason.
If your roof is truly built with trusses, then none of your interior walls are load bearing.---But---There is a caveat in that statement. I framed a house I was building in 1975, and used trusses. I wanted to get the outside walls up, sheeted in, and the roof on before the cold weather set in. (one month of summer in Canada). I framed in the outer walls, sheeted them in, and set all the trusses up and put the roof on.---Worked great. Then I went to put up all the interior walls. OH SHIT!!! The trusses sagged enough over a 28 foot span, that I couldn't get a double top plate on the interior walls at the center of the house. The sag was about 3/4" to 1" in the center of the span. I had to custom cut all the top plate 2 x 4's to get my interior walls framed up. It drove the drywall guys totally apeshit!!! Once everything was sheeted in, and taped and plastered, you couldn't notice it. so---Will your roof cave in if you take an interior wall out---no. But---If that interior wall is at the center of the truss span, and runs at 90 degrees to the trusses, then removing said wall could POSSIBLY let the trusses sag a bit in the center, which creates some interesting results with drywall and taped seams in the other rooms.---Brian
Not so fast... Just because you have trusses, doesn't mean you don't have load-bearing interior walls. There are plenty of "3 point trusses" out there that bear on both ends and at some point in between. I'd need to see the plans or the house to know for sure. It all depends on the truss design. I'm a building code official here in Southern Nevada, and we see some very creative truss designs engineered for all kinds of situations.
Vegas Paul---He did qualify his statement by saying that the garage has the SAME trusses with no interior walls.
Its a standard "fink" truss "w" shape. The wall that I want to take out is not in the center under where the 2x4s are connected on the bottom of the truss. I am also not taking out the whole house span of the wall, only about 1/2 of it or so. The house is about 25' wide by 55' long. It is about 1/2 of the length wise wall that I want to remove.
Open the phonebook and call a structural engineer. You should be able to find a guy that works alone that does this very kind of thing. You don't need to call some big firm, and a one-man outfit should only be a couple hundred bucks or so. Make sure they are licensed in your state. They will need to poke their head above the ceiling to see the layout of the chords of the truss. How much will you pay to have peace of mind?
This goes right along with "assume". You know the "makes an ASS out of U and out of ME" word. Make sure you "know" for sure before doing anything 'cause with Murphy's Law out there something is sure to jump up and bite you on the ass. Been there done that. Frank
Around here things are built with positive and negative design pressures. That being said, there are often times shear walls that are interior walls. They are tied to the slab with J bolts, simpson ties etc. Your trusses will have hardware as well that is design specific. When your plan set was drawn up it had to be certified by an engineer. The truss company had to submit their truss design to engineering as well. When all of this was going on that wall was there and the engineer and truss manufactuter counted on it. Depending on when your home was built there will be codes that the builder had to go by. I have to check every home that we work on for the permitting date so we know which set of codes it was built under. It makes a huge difference. Get a structural engineer to look at it and certify it. It will be money well spent.
Sound advice, You may find a local P.E. who does structural inspections and such. Many are independent and able to address the exact issues you need to cover. The more specific your request, the better they can assist you.
If its indeed a truss that looks like this: (If the image doesn't show up, its here.) and the members (pieces of wood that make up the truss) are the same on one half as the other, then its probably a single span truss, meaning it doesn't need support walls in the span. To be really certain, there would not be a wall directly below where the lower points of the "W" connect with the bottom chord of the truss. In other words, a support wall thats required to help support the truss would never be located at a point in the truss that isn't where two diagonal members connect with the bottom chord. What kinda concerns me is that around here, a truss with a span similar to your own (24 to 28 feet) would have 2x4's members arranged like this: \/\l/\/, with a 2x6 top chord and 2x4 bottom chord. We have 80 lb/sq. ft. snow loads, though. Also... if your truss span is indeed about 25 feet, its a single span truss. We don't get into muti-point supports for trusses on spans that short. It simply would make no sense to use trusses that require more than end supports on such a short span. I would be more concerned with removing shear walls running parallel with the trusses. Around here we aren't allowed to have side walls longer than 24 feet without interruptions from shear walls unless we engineer the structure. It sounds like yours may well be 55 feet long... Hope this helps.
Listen to vegas Paul, It all depends on the lay out of your house. Your roof design will tell you more. Most houses don't have trusses that span the whole house like the garage....There are alot of variables here...If you really want to know first hand get up in your attic and look to see what trusses are sitting on what, or where they start and stop.....
Believe me its not that I don't want a structural engineer, its that I can't find one. I know that sounds stupid, but either the phone # I use is a fax or they don't call me back, or they don't do residential. I've been looking for weeks now. The house is a brick ranch style with a full basement. Everything I've been reading about this truss setup leans toward no support walls. It is a single truss that spans the width of the house and sits on the outer walls. The wall I want gone does not sit under the pointy parts of the "w" it is almost in the middle, but a little to the side of the middle.
^^^ I gotta ask a silly question... is the structure really about 50 feet long? If so, you have about 25 trusses. Are the trusses all the same and if so, do they all have that wall under them? And... this is a slam dunk... if you're saying that the wall you want to take out is roughly in the middle of the truss... meaning its roughly in the center of the lower points of the "W", in other words, somewhere near the middle of the unbraced portion of the lower chord, then you have a single span truss, without question. - car guy who spends way to much money at his engineer's office and too much time at the truss company.
Interior wall to interior wall is about 55 feet. I can get an exact measurement later today. All the trusses are the same type, however on 1/2 the house the roof is a little longer due to a porch at the front of the house. So those trusses are the same type, but a little longer. The wall does run down the exact middle of the house and pretty much in the middle of the truss. Long story short... I can likely take this wall out right?
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