The first two Standard of Care articles discussed deferred submittals and truss-to-truss connections. This article explores truss minimum required bearing width issues from the perspective of the design community.
A lot has changed in the components industry over the past two decades, and a new Framing the American Dream (FAD) project would allow us to quantify just how much, as well as detail our product’s benefits over other framing methods.
Beyond FAD, SBCA is also focusing on helping component manufacturers across the country fight an unfair provision in the model building code, R501.3.
As you think about investing in the future of your business, think about how much you’re willing to invest this year in these two projects to ensure a bright future for our industry.
Knowledge is power when it comes to making decisions, so the more knowledge the better. SBCRI unequivocally gives us access to knowledge no one else has.
Even with its many benefits, innovative framing faces resistance. Prescriptive codes don’t directly promote innovative framing, and markets are slow to adopt for many reasons.
The earlier in the process CMs can get in front of building designers, the greater their ability to influence the use of innovative framing techniques to design buildable structural framing.
In order to get innovative framing ideas into the market effectively, you need to have your ducks in a row prior to approaching the building designer.
It takes a creative approach to using material to meet customer’s needs, while still providing good quality structures.
Once innovative framing methods are learned, and framers experience the ease of installation, and discover how all the parts of the framing fit together well, they quickly become comfortable with the techniques.
Framers must be involved in creating industry standard details, because we are the ones most familiar with actual building construction.
Couple the IRC requirements with energy code requirements that are pushing more buildings to utilize a higher heel, and it is apparent the connection of high heels to walls is a key application issue.
The SBC Industry Testing Task Group and the TPI TAC/SBCA E&T Testing Review and Vetting Group has begun to evaluate the needs and priority of testing the performance of assemblies to quantify the effect of heel blocking.
It is clear from the very specific and isolated heel height testing already performed that there is an opportunity to provide revisions to 2009 and 2012 model code blocking requirements to transfer the lateral load resulting from wind and seismic events into braced wall lines.
