Hello – I’m currently on vacation for the holiday, so will not be posting an entry to the blog this week (except to tell you that I’m not posting to the blog this week.) Stay tuned for an exciting announcement about the blog coming soon!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Paul
Blocking or boundary member?
In my experience traveling across the country observing wood-framed construction, it was apparent that east of the Rocky Mountains, structural wood members in-line with supporting walls between roof framing cease to be installed. Some may call these wood members blocking and deem them as optional. And often in a humid environment, installation of these members may be ardently resisted in order to provide ample attic ventilation and prevent mold growth. It is important, however, to understand that this blocking creates the structural boundary members for the roof diaphragm and it is not optional.
I don’t travel too much for work, so the last three weeks has been a bit different from my normal routine. On August 30, I attended an unreinforced masonry retrofit workshop in Memphis, had a sales meeting the following week in St. Louis, and the annual SEAOC convention last week in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
I have been remiss in not talking about an important summit taking place in California next month. SEAOSC is hosting the 2nd annual Buildings at Risk Earthquake Loss Reduction Summit on October 11 in downtown Los Angeles, California. The summit is a precursor to the “Great California ShakeOut” event that will be held on October 18.The summit will serve as a forum to not only increase awareness of seismic risk, but spur action. This will be an important conference not only for structural engineers working in seismic areas, but for building officials, architects, building owners, insurance companies, and first responders. The sessions will stress the benefits of mitigation and encourage the different stakeholders to work together on solutions.
Early registration for a discounted rate and a chance to win an iPad ends today, but there is still time to register.
– Paul
Welcome to our Structural Engineering Blog! I’m Paul McEntee, Engineering R&D Manager at Simpson Strong-Tie. We’ll cover a variety of structural engineering topics here that I hope interest you and help with your projects and work. Social media is “uncharted territory” for a lot of us (me included!), but we here at Simpson Strong-Tie think this is a good way to connect and even start useful discussions among our peers in a way that’s easy to use and doesn’t take up too much of your time.
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For the first half-dozen years of my professional career, my experience with cold-formed steel (CFS) consisted of sizing studs for non-structural walls and red-marking the bracing details on architectural plans. When the dotcom bubble burst, my firm needed to shift its focus from high-tech commercial and industrial to more multifamily design work. Several developers we worked with built with CFS, so in addition to designing condominiums instead of cleanrooms, I was designing CFS.
Less than 10% of engineers have any exposure to CFS design as part of their undergraduate education. OK – so this is based on an informal survey of about 50 colleagues, but I suspect if I were to hire a market research firm for lots of money, I’d pretty much get the same response.
