Trusses On A Second Story

Dirtywhiteboy

Only the old single wall homes have that Strapping here and I think it was used to nail the interior walls to?

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Brutus

I am unsure. As Kent pointed out, they do it in his area, too (Maine). It's a regional thing. I've never built the interior partitions first, I kind of want to try it, just to see how it works.

Also, there aren't many big places around here. We get into situations where there is 800 sq feet with 3 bedrooms with closets, two baths, laundry and linen closets on one floor. That turns into a lot of 5-8 foot walls. Like up to 24.

With the strapping, this allows us to frame the roof, let the roofer come and shingle it. Then we have rainy day work. You put 2 rows of strapping side by side above the partition walls that run parallel to normal strapping. You can snap lines on the ceiling to indicate where the walls go. We do this for walls that are 7-8' or longer. This way you can have one guy cutting, one guy building and one guy installing the walls.

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dave_k

It wouldn't be in the BC per se roof trusses are engineered. I would suspect it's because of the combined wind/snow load they get down east. You have to design to withstand the 100 year storm and they get some real whoppers down there.

kyle_dmr

Gah!
we strap our ceilings... kinda.. 1 at 10' OC IF there are no walls under it. 1 toenail to a wall is all they need to see to require no strapping.

Commercial span trusses will sometimes require 1x4 @ 10'oc continuous. Thats about the worst case scenario around here.

Also, we always build INTS' first. brace level everything then roof goes up.

JT Wood

iirc, our truss plans always call for strapping too. But when drywall is applied, that is sufficient. Maybe a simple phone call to the truss plant would fix this?

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Kent Whitten

It sucks I was just miffed that I was being forced to do this. So I said "oh yeah? I'll show you!" What a waste of time. Keep it at bearing walls...trust me

The strapping is not for truss design. It's for....what the locals feel....flattening out the ceiling and a few other things. It does have some benefits, but my arguments with others fall on deaf ears. If one is truly trying to flatten out the ceilings, then I would like to see lasers set up and shims applied accordingly. I have rarely seen it. Twice maybe.

My worker and I figured we would be the myth buster on it and set up a before and after laser setup with and without the strapping. The conclusion? It didn't do squat for flattening out the ceiling....if one is directly nailing it to the joist.

My biggest argument is that, again, most use one nail straight up into the bottom of the chord. EVENTUALLY....that hole the nail creates will expand and the nail will eventually wiggle loose. Granted we are talking years. I would much rather screw sheetrock right to the chord. Believe it or not, the material generally used....1x3 #3 spruce. Total garbage.

In the US, I have seen strapping in Maine, NH and northern Mass, like from Boston north. I assume Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. I am going to hazard the long shot guess as to why. I'm thinking the French thought this up years ago. We have a large French community in Biddeford and I have seen strapping used on the walls even. Don't really have an explanation.

I'm sure we all have done some odd things regionally. I have been seeing more and more vertical strapping on the exterior of homes for siding. Then, right at the bottom are horizontal filler pieces. Personally, I would nix the filler pieces and get some type of vent there. I would think moisture would trap there.

Ah well....so is life.

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Brutus

See, our inspectors here aren't like that. If we were to not apply strapping, we'd fail the framing inspection. That is because it calls for it on the truss details.

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kyle_dmr

Call the truss CO. Tell them to smarten up, and redesign. Hand new paperwork in and away you go. Most of the country does NOT strap. No reason you guys should have to. I feel bad for ya, we've done it a couple times (for other reasons). It sucked, a lot. How longs it take you to do an interior wall package on a say 1000 sqft second floor? nothing complicated for layout say couple baths+closets+3 bedroom?

Brutus

hour to 1.5 I guess, if it's already snapped off. Maybe 2 on a bad day or a take it slow and milk it day.

Honestly, strapping is ingrained into their minds here, if there weren't the handful of us on CT, no one around us would know that strapping isn't done elsewhere.

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Dirtywhiteboy

And I have never done it and when you guys come here and work with us we think your nuts What we do, do is what we call cat walks. It's a 2X4 on the top of the bottom cord. it has the layout on it and runs fron one end of the house to the other. We put one every 8' to 9feet.

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Brutus

We run those in the centre for normal homes, and on 1/3 points for longer spans. Gives you a place to attach the angle braces to, and to keep the bottom cords straight for the strapping.

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dave_k

It's easy to say call the truss co and set them straight but the truss designers are the engineers they stamp the drawings they run the design software they take responsibility for the job. Builders aren't stupid, if there were cost saving or if it made the job easier someone would have done it. If you take the strapping out of the design what do you have to do to compensate? You can't just take bracing out of a truss system and expect it to perform as designed. Obviously drywall isn't enough so is it heavier members? More rat runs and bracing through the webs? How to those changes affect costs and /or construction difficulty.

Brutus

1X4 # 2 for strapping here.

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hdavis

Like I said, I can't tell you why it's done now. But if you look at a really old timber framed building, between the first and second floors the floor joists are tree trunks adzed on two sides maybe 3 or 4 feet apart. The strapping was sawn and thicker than a full 1X4, so it gave flat surfaces for attaching the lath. A little adze work just where the strapping went would level it out more or less , so this makes sense to me, but later construction followed the same strapping approach.

Wall strapping was actually recommended way back when as a way to keep a wall in a damp area from rotting out - it allows free airflow, since there are no real bays any more.

There are a couple other reasons why you could run into strapped walls. Interior horizontal strapping (sounds like "whalers" around here, but I don't know how it's spelled) has been done in insulation retro fits and as a way to shim the wall out to bury issues with the underlying (usually plaster) wall in more modern times.

kiteman

So do you have shorter studs for interiors or just pad up the exteriors with 1x's?

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Dirtywhiteboy

Are studs for a 8' wall are 92-1/4"

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ohiohomedoctor

Thats cheating. I like to cut them all with a circular saw using my tape measure as a speed square scoring with a nail because my pencil lead broke and the razor is too dull to sharpen and the new blades are 100 yards away through the mud in the truck..

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Ninjaframer

When I have to chop down a ton of studs I throw on the rip fence.
Our studs in Utah are 92 5/8. In las Vegas they were 92 1/2.
This whole strapping gig sounds fubar to me. I would be on a mission to find an alternative method sounds like yall canukistanians are Rollin with the cards your dealt though. Glad it ain't me havn to do that.

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griz

Standard studs here are 92-1/4".

Specials are usually gang cut on the pile.

In the old days that what the RAS was for....

now replaced by the SCMS...

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Ninjaframer

Stage frame cut & buck crews in Vegas had a small trailer with a RAS on it. Worked great for mass cutting- not as fragile as a SCMS

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