Day 178 - Trusses, trusses, and more trusses.

Sun Oct 2nd - 74 days to go...

(click any picture for larger view)

A third load of trusses was delivered on Thursday - that's these massive ones shown on the the left. The trusses enable all of the interior walls to be free standing (not load-bearing).

This is pretty amazing when you think about it. I guess it can be done because there is no floor (with the loading that presents) above.

This is what the cathedral ceiling in the solarium looks like. The peak will be about 12' off the floor. This room was quite difficult for the crew to build because there are more windows than walls in it!

These trusses are tied together with 2x4s (can't really see them in this picture). One of the major causes of roof failure in a hurricane is the failure of the truss structure generally because the trusses are often fastened together only by the plywood sheathing.

I mentioned hurricanes and hurricane clips in an earlier posting. Roofs that are blown off in a hurricane usually fail because the roof itself generates a low-pressure area (due to the Bernouilli effect - the roof acts like an airfoil which makes sense if you think about). This low-pressure zone vaccuums the shingles and plywood sheathing off the roof. Since the trusses in a mass-production houses are rarely fastened together by anything except plywood, a single failure generally causes a cascading failure. You can read more about it in this Nov/96 paper by "Hurricane Damage to Residential Structures: Risk and Mitigation" by Jon K. Ayscue, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.

This is Cyril and Renee Rogers, with their baby boy Jakob who is almost 9 months old. Cyril and Renee came out to the new house today to see it and have a little visit.