![]() Bearing on the outer walls and then two posts down the middle would give you a lot of room. ![]() As has been stated you will never get it wide open but you could easily open up 20' bays. I would personally opt for opening up the interior with some LVL's. We commonly set clear span trusses in the 40' clear range and they still have 2x4 bottom chords though your region (snow loading) will factor in here. This allows for the junctions in the bottom chord to be broken into thirds rather than halves and doesnt concentrate the load.Ĭommon trusses can be sized for massive spans, 50+ feet is not uncommon. Most commonly on a clear span truss you have a common truss design with the "w" shape in the center rather than the queen design you show. They will generally have an answer for you pretty quickly. An easy way around this without the engineer is to simply contact your local lumberyard or truss manufacturer and ask them to tell you. This is evident because they are a modified queen design with the center post (queen post) and have the bottom chord split in the center. Not that it means anything but licensed building contractor here and I would agree with the others that your existing trusses are not designed for a clear span. Very likely there are reasonable "Peter can do it" options.Īlso - gotta ask - You have a good relationship with your FIL? :D :D :D Understand that an engineer could tell you "nope - you can't pull the wall, UNLESS you want to do these things_to beef up the existing trusses". Don't pull the wall without an engineering review.ĮDIT - Peter - your post sneaked in under mine. Those trusses could have been built by anyone. Plus - whenever it was built the rules could have been different than today - if there even were rules for a horse barn - and if they even had engineering design or pulled a permit. Nothing wrong with any of this - but they had the support wall. This just smells wrong to me for a clear-span design. And then - assuming your schematic is conceptually correct - I would expect modern engineered trusses to have at least one more pair of web sections running from the top chord-web joints down to the bottom chord, to carry some load to a point closer to the side wall. They were built with a bunch of 12' lumber for the bottom chords, rather than offsetting the joint. Lumber species, lumber grade, and nail plate size, orentation, & gauge all come into play.Ģx4 is as small as they come for a bottom chord, and by having the chord joint directly under the load point, that adds to any issues. you need an engineer to physically look at the existing trusses. although he was pretty sure of himself), who said that the wall wasn't necessary, and the split chord didn't matter. I talked to my father in law (who isn't really qualified on the topic. I was suspicious that the long interior wall was like the one I took down in that it was only there to create the horse stalls. it wsa really rotted and clearly not under tension. I took the small wall down because it clearly wasn't structural. in which case I'd just be wasting money hiring an engineer to take a look.Īnother point I should've made in my first post- the barn was originally 3 rooms, arranged as follows: I wanted to float the question here first because the answer might have been a glaring "no, don't remove that wall or the roof will fall on you". You guys are right- definitely better safe than sorry here. I'd take pictures for you guys, but the ceiling is now drywalled and insulated. The wall has doorways into the other sections of the shop, but I recently installed a sliding table on my tablesaw and the saw BARELY fits. That wall is really annoying and I'd love to open up the shop into one room. but the web pieces in the strusses in my garage are arranged differently, and the bottom chord is one long 2x4 rather than two pieces. Is the center wall structural? My garage has much larger spans that my shop, and it doesn't have a wall down the middle. The center wall running down the room is right under that intersection (again, running down the length of the building). the bottom chord is two different colors to show how the two bottom chord pieces are arranged. The bottom chord (the piece of the truss running parallel to the ground) is made of two 2x4's butted together and gang-nailed. The trusses span the entire width of the shop (about 25'). There's a wall running down the middle of the shop, perpendicular to the trusses. It has what appear to be standard trusses. Some time ago, I converted a detached building (which was used as a horse barn) into my shop. Hopefully there are some contractors or engineers on the board who can help me out. ![]() I have a structural question about trusses that I can't seem to find an answer for.
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