Please Check Your Roof!

[Denis Chénard in Ottawa]

A friend of mine sent me the link to this article:

http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Danger+...733/story.html

I had not gone in the attic to check the state of the roof since I bought my current house. That's something I told myself I had to do at some point, but you know, at any given time "there's always a more pressing priority"...

That article finally pushed me to go in the attic and check the state of my roof from the inside...

I'm not at the panic stage yet, but let's say that I'm very concerned... A few roof trusses have twisted out of square to the roof, sign of a heavy load at some point in time, some crimp plates that hold the truss components together are partly detached, bottom line, while I don't think the roof will cave in tomorrow, I'm not spending the winter like that, that's for sure!

So I will be taking time off work to solve the problem, i.e. sister the joists, put bracing between the trusses so that they can't twist, etc.

Another benefit from checking the attic is that I got the confirmation of why the top floor is cold in the winter and hot in the summer... There's only six inches of blown insulation up there, less than that in places, and almost nothing on top of the master bedroom's bathroom... No wonder that room was always f....g cold in the winter...

Do yourself a favor and go have a look in your attic...

DC

[CheapScotsman]

wow ... ouch ... good thing you found it. Some ideas:

• Sister right over the supporting walls.
• Make sure you do at least R40 (if not more) in the attic
• Don't block the airflow the from the soffits into the attic. Use soffit baffles if required.
• Have fun

[ed on manitoulin]

Hi Denis! Definitely something to be concerned about. I,m a carpenter by trade, & although not an expert on trusses, I worked at the local truss plant last year. When we shipped an order, we sent the engineered drawings to the builders/owners. The drawings should show all necessary bracing required. Any chance you could post a few pics?

[billh]

I've always wondered, given the careful engineering that goes into trusses - can you actually weaken the truss by nailing more braces on it? I'm thinking that the forces could be directed by the added brace to a less ideal location on the truss.

billh

[Denis Chénard in Ottawa]

Here's a pic of one of the worst offenders:

Hard to see on the picture, but the truss has twisted (truss not square to the plywood), and the weight over the years (I assume) has deformed the truss (not straight anymore).

What beats me is how they can put a crimp plate to join two 2 by's at an unsupported location, does the code (circa 1983 here) allow that? I would think not...

DC

[Charles in Lorette]

That's nothing Denis! I am doing a renovation right now and when I went into the customer's attic, here's what I found...

I spent a whole day up there adding gusset plates and additional webbing. Not a fun job since it was a low slope roof with not much room to work.

[ed on manitoulin]

Hi Denis. I,ve never seen a situation like that before personally, it,s good you are aware that it is happening. For the truss to twist like that is very odd. Makes me wonder if the sheathing is poorly nailed into trusses among other things. 2x4 blocking installed perpendicular to the trusses could help square things up. Wouldn,t hurt to have a building inspector have a look at it. As for joining 2x4 with crimp plates at an unsupported location, it is a pretty common practice.

[Drew in Victoria]

Hi Denis, A simple fix to your problem is to install a collor tie 1/3 down from the peak at the offending rafter with ply gussets on both sides. I have run into rafters like that up in Northern BC and excesive snow loads are what usually cause that. If it is just the one rafter I wouldn't worry too much about it. Yes this is normal practice to join 2x4's together in this fashion with the plates.

If you are overly concerned about this there should be some record of what company supplied the trusses I would look into who manufacturered the trusses as these are supposed to be engineered and designed to with stand the worst snow loads in your area. You might also want to contact your local building inspector as they do the framing inspections and should have records in regards to this. Also contact your insurance company and see what they can do for you.