Truss Repair Due to Shrinkage

A call for a truss repair isn’t the usual type of call that I receive on any given business day. Though really quite unusual it is surprising that I don’t receive more calls for truss repairs considering the current state of the building industry!  As manufacturing has become more fine tuned, the chances for failure seem more likely to me, considering the close engineering tolerances allowed today. Though unusual truss repair is our topic…  so truss repair it will be!

What can happen to a truss that would require a repair… you might be wondering? I guess there are a lot of different issues that can pop up from time to time concerning truss failure but in this particular situation, I believe the primary concern was wood shrinkage and cracking. When I inspected the trusses I didn’t see any evident failure cracks from a typical over loading that would require a truss repair. What I did see though was a lot of longitudinal shrinkage  of the truss members which resulted in horizontal cracking due to years and years of enduring high heat inside the owners attic.

The owner was selling his home and the issue of the shrinkage cracks was brought up by a home inspector. He recommended that a structural engineer have a peek at the situation and give his opinion. Engineers like to… well engineer! So my take is that the trusses would have help up fine had no engineer been contacted but since one was called in, he had to recommend some type of a truss repair. That’s the way it rolls today so.

View the gallery below to see pictures and comments about how this repair was undertaken. The repair itself was straight forward but the conditions were brutal! Have a peek and call us if we can be of service to you. Contact.