Before I ever ventured into the plugin development world I did quite a bit of residential structural work. Since then I’ve pretty much switched hats and now my entire focus is on the extension development.
As a resource to other designers, architects and engineers I may occasionally post a few examples of structural work I’ve done over the years. Most of this work was done about 10 years ago. Note that I’ve removed any private or identifying information. Additionally these examples are for Educational Purposes ONLY and are not intended as a specific engineering solution for any other project or plan. Let me know if any of this is helpful or useful and I might be inclined to post a few more examples.
Instead of the separate shear walls (long walls) I probably should have just opted for a “perforated” shearwall that ran the entire length of the building. This would have saved on having four less hold owns. Hindsight is always 20/20.
Notice the rear wall and how many openings it has, a bit tough to make this design actually work (shear). I also ran into my first real encounter with interior shear walls. With interior shear walls it is important that they extend up into the attic space and complete the load path with the roof diaphragm.
I’ve also attached a related shearwall fix where the contractor did not initially include a double sill plate. Physical, on-site inspections of the framing were always a requirement, a lot of the times there were quality or other issues that needed addressing. Or in some cases the contractor did not fully understand the intent or requirements of the structural plans.
This particular window wall(s) was especially interesting and challenging. What is not shown is the additional strapping that was ultimately required since the V-shaped wall had no sheathing bridging the middle seam between the adjacent walls.
Here is a quick mock up of a window wall in SketchUp (circa. 2016). This is before I had the wall and foundation extensions completed, however the roof was actually drawn using the Medeek Truss plugin (that did save me some time). This model helped visualize what was going on with this specific design and also helped me quickly realize that there were some areas that needed special attention.
The room below the window wall was actually just a rather tall crawl space but note how the load path of the in-wall columns extend down through the crawl space wall and then the resulting spread footings below them. The columns are supporting the roof glulam beams and as a result are relatively loaded.
