“My Guy Says….. Materials… Design…”
Title inspired by our Wizardress of all things materials – Justine!
I’ve now been in the post frame industry for nearly 38 years, the majority of them spent providing complete building kit packages, most often to do-it-yourselfers. Some new building owners happen to hire contractors to erect some or all of their building packages for them. It is from this last group where I get the infamous report of…..
“My Guy Says….”
This is actually construction short speak for, “We have really screwed something up here, not quite sure what it is, but it must be someone’s fault other than ours even though we have not truly looked at the engineered building plans, or bothered to open your Construction Manual”.
Here is an actual example.
The building in question happens to be 36 feet in width, and 28 feet deep. It has a single prefabricated metal connector plated wood roof truss on each endwall, and a double truss nine feet from each endwall. Roof purlins for the building are on edge joist hung to the top chords of the double trusses and running over the top of the end trusses in order to support a 12 inch endwall overhang.
Sound simple?
Please read on….
Client: “We have an issue with the purlin/joist hangers. We appear to be 24 short of the LU-26, but we have 28 of the ESR2523 (H1) hangers. My guys say the H1 hangers don’t work for mounting to the trusses. I’ve included a picture of the two hangers; the one with the square mounting plate is the H1.”
Hansen Pole Buildings Technical Support: “The purlins go OVER the end trusses and use the H-1 hanger there. Please refer to Detail 9/S-4 of plans.”
Client: “Yes, thanks. We did find that detail. I went ahead and purchased the missing hangers at Menards.”
Tech Support: “Doing a manual count, we come up with 60 LU26 and 28 H-1 needed, which actually provides 2 extra LU26. If you were not short shipped, the concern is your guys may have done something which is going to cause future challenges. Other than at the double trusses, there should be no other LU26 used on the building.”
Client: “We found them… They were installed on the end trusses. OOPS”
