House Reinforcing Work

Having spent some quality time in the attic I can relate. Hope your new system is never tested for effectiveness, worth it for peace of mind.

-- Paul, Washington State

Hell of a reinforcing job! Nice work

-- Longovette@alltel.net

Just wondering…did you have an engineer look at you plans to reinforce your roof trusses. I’m no engineer but I’ve always been told that you should never alter roof truss unless you get an engineers sign off because any type of alteration could alter the load calculations adversely. Also, if you sell your house, a house inspector may object to the modifications if you do not have an engineers sign off. In addition, never cut a roof truss (even to install an attic ladder). Cutting a roof truss alters the load calculations and could cause a structural failure. What you did may not cause any kind of problem but I just thought I mention that you need to be very careful when you do anything do a truss without an engineers approval in case someone else reading this is thinking about making a truss modification.

-- DaveH - Boise, Idaho - “How hard can it be? It's only wood!”

The vertical braces all run downward from the top truss (where they are glued and nailed, past the intermediate truss (where they are also glued and nailed), and then down to the bottom truss, which in every case is also sitting on top of an interior header. Consequently, the vertical bracing greatly increses the stiffness of the entire truss assembly and passes the load right down to the interior walls. You can feel this increase in stiffness when you walk and jump on the roof. I used very heavy applications of the PL adhesive, which I assume makes the junctions pretty stiff, even with two nails driven into each. Much of this stiffness also is the result of the multitude of cross braces also attached to the top truss sections and the sheathing.

I can see your point of view regarding the structural mods if I had emoved part of any truss to do the reinforcement work, but I did not. All I did was add additional bracing to the existing bracing. None of the gables had interior 45-degree bracing to increase wind resistance, and more than one builder has told me that gable collapse is one of the reasons that homes are damaged due to high wind loads. Consequently, I figure that the cross braces and additional 45-degree braces will make the gables less likely to collapse inward during storms. To make sure the 45 degree braces were themselves solidly workable at the bottoms, I also installed additional horizontal cross braces to the lower truss sections. As I mentioned before, I also installed hurricane brackets to the points where the trusses sit on interior headers, too.

Nowhere was any truss cut, although I did locate a few spots where the wood was obviously weak due to a large knot, and in those cases I glued and nailed long boards over the areas to stiffen the entire length up.

I know that engineers often know a lot about home construction, but when yoiu see just how often homes fly apart during storms (hurricanes Andrew and Katrina come to mind, as well as some of those tornado storm videos you see on some of the educational and information TV channels), I think that a prudent home owner can do well to add a bit more wood to the place to compensate for cost-cutting and “just barely code” construction policies in the industry.

As for selling the house, the wife and I intend to stay here for the duration. I will say that when an inspector checked out the attic as part of a local energy saving operation sponsored by the city, I could hear the guy say something like “your attic is built like a fortress” when he was checking around up there.

Howard Ferstler

Wow?!?

1. Purlins or knee walls are necessary for rafter support and must transfer weight to a load bearing partition. A knee wall could mimic a purlin, not a prefrered method by many

2. Gusessets or collar beams could be installed at ridge.

3. Thru bolts attaching new support trusses rather than glue and nailes would be more typical to “framing standards”.

-- Ciao, gth.

Interior walls run down almost the entire length of the old part of the house, so the trusses (the purlin parts) run above them at right angles. The only really large area in the house is the 22×18 foot den that we had built on about 25 years ago (we have been in the house 32 years), and where I have my main AV system. I did no extra bracing up there, because the builder who added the room did a better than typical job compared to what one normally gets with a “tract” home. It is also a long walk through the attic to that area. In the older section of the house, nearly all the vertical braces that I installed (the lighter colored timbering in the photos) butt up very close to the interior headers. As much as I could, I also installed heavy “L” brackets to the purlins and the interior headers underneath, to basically augment the hold-down power of the hurricane straps around the perimeter that hold the ends of the purlins to the outer-wall headers and vertical studs.

There are plenty of gussets on those trusses, needless to say (although I wish that some were larger), and I examined each and reinforced a several that were not seated properly by means of overlaid wood braces, both nailed and glued into position. (When doing all of the nailing and gluing I made use of C clamps to pull the glued wood sections tightly together before hitting them with the nail gun.) Incidentally, if you look at the second photo you will see where I attached a three foot board against an existing truss section that had a huge knot in it that was obviously compromising the strength of the timber. Also, in the first photo you can see one of the cross pieces that I installed at the peak of the interior to stiffen up that area and augment the power of the gusset up there. I did that to nearly all of the truss sections.

I realize that thru bolts and new supports would work better at the vertical attachment points, but I figure that the double nailings and that PL adhesive (which is the company’s top-of-the-line stuff, and supposedly very strong) working together in combination just have to increase the vertical push and pull strength of the truss beams that directly support the roof sheathing. Incidentally, the orangish colored pine of those original trusses seems to be MUCH harder than the pine used for the bracing job. Either it is better pine or the stuff gets tougher with age.

I mentioned the den that I had installed above, but I also had a second addition installed three years ago, and in that case the very competent builder custom built additional trusses over most of the existing roof section, and made them out of 2×8s and 2×10s on 16-inch centers. (A huge beam, made of three 2×18 boards sandwiched together and with each 22 feet long, was also installed to replace an existing exterior wall that was removed to expand the area.) Incidentally, the outer walls of both additions were made of 2×6 studs, instead of the usual 2×4s, to better strengthen the rear of the house against west winds. Because of this, roughly 1/3 of the entire perimeter of the house uses those larger studs.

Frankly, if I were wealthy enough to build a new house from scratch I would use 2×6 or even 2×8 studs in the exterior walls (or maybe even insulated concrete), and would use 2×6 or 2×8 truss timbering on 16-inch centers, with double sheathing, rubberized underlayment, and either 50 year shingles or metal covering. Or, I might just build a berm house half underground and banked into a shallow hillside (with access and windows facing down the hill on one side), with a concrete roof covered by several feet of earth.

The sky’s the limit when you dream.

Howard Ferstler

Well, I am a Civil Engineer with a masters degree and have also worked as a trim and frame carpenter. Contrary to popular belief just because you re-enforce something does not make it stronger. However, from the very limited information that I have seen I do not think you have weakened your roof trusses but at the same time I am not to sure that you have gained much. A truss needs some flex in it to carry loads properly and being of wood if it don’t flex it will break, so if it is to stiff then you have caused more harm than good. I do not think that you did that tight of a job so it should still have enough flex in it for that to not be a problem. One more thing, A truss is designed to carry a load across a span. That means that the rest of the house, i.e. the foundation, is designed to carry the roof load around the perimeter of the house NOT FROM AN INTERIOR WALL. My concern now would be the foundation bearing the roof load in a place that it is not appropriate for the foundation design, but like I said I don’t have all the facts! You also need to understand that a home inspector is not an engineer.

-- Jeremy

It is illogical to believe that reinforcing something will not make it stronger. By definition, reinforcing does make something stronger, and adding additional braces certainly should make the roof more resistant to both downward and upward stress. I am working to minimize the effects of both here in a hurricane zone. While stiffening a structure might make it prone to have problems relating to resonances, in my case the idea is to make the roof more resistant to things like large falling tree branches or upward force due to crosswinds. Note also that much of my work also involved stabilizing the gable sections, areas that are notoriously prone to giving way in high winds, even though professional carpenters and design engineers outlined and built those areas. I would be more attentive to engineer criticism if the homes we see getting pummeled by hurricane winds did a better job of surviving.

I am not sure what you mean by a truss carrying loads properly. We have seen scads of pictures on the news of homes with their roofs peeled off by both hurricane and tornadic winds, and so whatever techniques are being used by the engineering community these days do not always seem to be working all that well. Obviously, some other approach is needed, and that is what I used in my modifications. As for “tightness,” I feel that adding additional crossbracing at the peak areas (where the metal gussets were not all that large in my opinion), plus the glued and nailed crosspieces against the sheathing and between many of the truss members, plus the nailed and glued vertical braces that fill the space between the braces that are on the original trusses almost, by definition, have to add strength to the roof framing.

As for a truss being designed to carry a load across a span, maybe so. However, the strength of the truss is only going to be as strong as its weakest points, and for me those points would be the gussets. Over the kind of span you are discussing, I believe the gussets would not hold in a genuinely serious wind (or if a 30 foot tree branch slammed broadside into the roof), and so adding additional vertical bracing seemed like the proper direction to take, particularly with the new verticals terminating against interior headers and wall studs. And it strikes me as weird that anybody would not think that securing the truss cross pieces to interior vertical wall members via their headers would improve the load-carrying abilities of the trusses. Note that at my place the house sits on a slab, and so the interior walls are seated on some pretty solid materials themselves.

Of course, as you noted, you do not have all of the facts, and obviously as we look at ripped apart home roofs on the news we can also pretty much say that the engineers and builders who constructed those places were not always aware of the facts of wind loading, either.

Howard Ferstler

This is not something that you can reason out in your head. There are some fundimental things that you need to understand. Yes, I am sure that it is stronger, but your not look at this the same way that I do because you are not an engineer. When you modify a design you can cause issues with other areas. I went to a school that specilized in wind loads on roofs, matter of fact we had one of the only wind load labs in the country. First, you need to understand that you are talking about two different loads. First, a tree falling on your roof is an impact load. Second, a uniform load is carried across your entire roof, such as the wind blowing against your house. The frist is almost impossible to prevent damage, because the load can be concentrated in one small area anywhere on your roof. All that force concentrated in one small area can penetrate your roof and rip it open like a can opener. Even big limbs can do this when combined with being propelled by the wind. As for wind loads your concern should be securing the roof to the house and the house to the fondation. You also need to understand that the foundation, and I am talking about a slab, has a footer under the walls that are load bearing. In a truss situation your exterior walls are your load bearing walls. Therefore, any non-load bearing walls do not have this critical support and are just sitting on a 4 – 6 inch thick slab and you just put a load on it. Furthermore, screws should have been used rather than nails. Nails tend to weaken wood because they cause a spliting action. As for your distrust in engineers, engineers can design a house that could haddle the majority of these issues, but I don’t think that you would want to pay the price for it!

-- Jeremy

Do not sell “reason” short. It has accomplished a lot over the past 4000 or so years, even when done only in one’s head. Understand one thing, just because one does not have an engineering degree does not mean that they are, ipso facto, unable to understand engineering principles or common sense procedures to add a bit of beef to a minimally strong structure. I published two books on AV and acoustics without having a degree in electical engineering, and published two more dealing with recording reviews and recorded sound quality without having a degree in music or recording engineering. After that, I was contacted by Routledge and ended up doing the technical editing and a great deal of technical writing for the second edition of The Encyclopedia or Recorded Sound. Within the audio industry, I do have a positive reputation of sorts, and I gained it without any kind of degree related to the disciplines. (My primary degrees are in history, humanities, and philosophy, actually, although I did manage to become an electronics technician in the USAF decades ago.) I might also point out that Eric Hoffer, who published two notable books on sociology never even went to college, being a longshorman by trade.) Sometimes, self-taught amateurs can accomplish a lot. Indeed, I would hazard a guess and say that most of the accomplished lumberjocks here are self-taught amateurs.

Getting back to the roof, there is no way I intended to reinforce the roof to the extent that a big branch coming down point first would be repelled. (At one time, prior to having new shingles installed, I entertained having a builder put a second layer of plywood sheathing over the first, but the cost was just too much to fool with.) However, I do believe that a branch hitting broadside is more likely to be successfully dealt with by means of my present roof situation than by what I had previous to the reinforcing work.

Second, I have heard for years that some interior walls are not load bearing (those that run parallel to the truss members) and some are indeed load bearing (those that run 90 degrees to the truss members). With that in mind, I assumed that a truss, in spite of its being designed to carry a roof load across an open area, will still have its load-handling abilities improved by means of those load-bearing internal walls. It seems illogical to think that some improvement would not be occuring. While the 4-6 inch slab under those internal load-bearing walls is not as solid as the exterior walls, which sit on much thicker concrete or concret blocks, it strikes me that they would at the very least still add to the total crush resistance of the roof. And if they were also attached to the multiple trusses by hurricane straps, they would certainly increase the lift resistance of those trusses.

I realize that pre-drilled screws would hold better than nails, but it was a heck of a lot easier to use a framing nailer than a drill and impact wrench. Obviously nails are not all that inferior, because the bulk of the house is nailed together and when builders do a custom (and complex) roof section that does not involved pre-made trusses they do indeed use nails. Well, maybe they are in a hurry, too.

No doubt a proper house could be designed by a good engineer to handle some stiff winds, and no doubt such a house would be more expensive than I would care to pay. (One is reminded of those TV images of the lone house surviving out there on the beach at Galvieston, with the houses that were around it swept away.) Consequently, I am stuck with a tract house that is over 30 years old and that I attempted to reinforce with 400 feet of extra attic timber (including angle bracing the inside of the gables, and also reinforced with a couple of hundred feet of extra fascia wood over the existing fascia wood to stiffen up the overhang of the roof exterior. All of this may have been a waste of time, but, frankly, I rather think not, simply because in most cases more is better, and “more” is what I have put into the attic and roof perimeter.

Thanks for your input, by the way.

Howard Ferstler

As a former touring sound mixer, Howard’s last message peaked my interest about his audio writings.

So I Googled him…

-- - Don't Panic!

people like this are exactly why building codes and mandatory inspections were adopted. Arrogance, hubris, and leisure time are a bad combination.

The contention that “It is illogical to believe that reinforcing something will not make it stronger. ” assumes the qualifier “properly” which in your example is lacking, as well as understanding. You support this statement by saying that you would have added another layer of roof sheathing to the existing but opted out due to the expense. Good. The only thing that would have done is INCREASE the dead load on the roof. This is why there are (often) tear off inspections when re-shingling a house with asphalt for instance. One asphalt shingle on its’ own doesn’t weigh that much but a whole roof full is a huge load. Ask anyone who has ever stocked a roof job without a conveyor.

It is also unclear whether your intention was to shore up your roof from impact or uplift. From the looks of your effort I’d say impact because it doesn’t seem to address the truss/exterior wall interface. Something like a Simpson H1 or H4 given your roof pitch would be appropriate, cheaper and simpler to install, and as an added benefit, actually work to resist uplift. Additional nailing of the roof sheathing to the trusses on the next re-roof would also be beneficial as structures of this age were quite often inadequately nailed.

As for impact, you may have actually INCREASED the potential for damage by creating point loads in the middle of the truss span and in a manner which doesn’t allow it to transfer out to the wall. And by scabbing/nailing them ALONG SIDE rather than directly beneath the top and bottom chords you have effectively HALVED the cross section of the members if struck from directly above. The wood will only support the load in the direction applied and BELOW the nail. If you sister on a “support” to the side of the truss, (instead of directly beneath it as the trusses are actually constructed) about all you’ve done is halved the cross section of the load bearing member. This is why trusses are constructed the way they are, in a single plane, with all elements beneath/above one another. This effectively shortens the span of the top and bottom chords by bracing and sharing the loads. Your effort actually reduces the CROSS SECTION of the top and bottom chords and,given certain circumstances if impacted directly above will likely cause even more damage to the affected truss than if it had been left alone. You’ll certainly see more damage on the interior. It’s just like splitting fire wood, you don’t use just a mallet (spread load), you also use a splitting wedge (point load), and in your case you just stuck a bunch of wedges in your roof . . .

This “debate” needs to end, if only to keep it from getting more out of hand. There is no telling who is correct until the big blow hits, but I suppose, given the mathematics involved and your background, you have the theoretical edge. Hopefully, the wind will never rise much and the situation will remain a mystery and I will never have to post here and say that either you or I was wrong. Still, I do want to make a couple of more points.

The procedure I used is designed to handle both uplift and impact, although I will admit that additional hurricane-type strapping at the circumference would have been a good idea to handle uplift situations. I talked to a contractor about doing that even before I did my own work and he indicated that doing so would require pullling off the outside sheathing from the walls, installing the additional straps, and then installing new sheathing. Expensive, to say the least.

The original shingles on the roof had been 20 year jobs (done twice over the life of the roof), but this time I had them install somewhat heavier 25-year versions. The local code now mandates six nails per strip instead of the previous three or four, and that extra nailing was used. I hope that was not too over the top for you, in spite of the heavier shingle materials.

When that re-roofing job was done later on (by the same contractor) quite a few additional nails were used to better secure the sheathing to the trusses. (There were also some sheathing sections in the old part of the house that had been damaged by shingle leakage, and those small sections were replaced.) This is one reason I felt that doing something about strengthening the hold of the trusses themselves to the house structure below would be a good idea. Hopefully, my vertical braces and the brackets I used to hold the truss cross section bottoms to the interior headers will at least help a VERY small amount in combatting lift.

Note that the underlayment used under the new shingles was something called “titanium,” cloth (the brand name; the stuff is not really titanium), which supposedly does a better job under the shingles than typical felting. I had toyed with having a special, black, rubber-like “goo” underlayment used that supposedly self-seals the sheathing under the shingles, but I decided that it would be a nightmare to deal with when the current layer of shingles needed to be scraped off and replaced in 15-20 years or so. (The contractor agreed that this might be a problem down the line.) I may be dead by then, but my wife is younger than me and I did not want a roofing replacement nightmare to upset her applecart.

You made a very good point about load transferring out to the walls as the result of impact. I can only hope that the vertical braces I installed do not overdo things. The verticals were centered up in the middle of what I considered to be rather excessively long, 8-foot upper truss spans that would bow and break under severe impact, and I can at least hope that the four foot spans on either side will do their work at the transferring process, and do so without the verticals buggering things up. I noted that the verticals I installed also go down and sit on top of interior wall headers (in addition to being nailed/glued to the lower truss cross pieces), which I suppose makes them so stiff that, yes, the roof sheathing might actually be punctured through from below by the new timbers if a huge branch impacts near the attachment point. Hard to say, in this case, but let’s hope no test ever happens.

I understand the single-plane design of trusses, but I also will point out that the gussets used in some joints in mine are about the size of playing cards, meaning that they are in a position to slide loose and let the joints slip. And all the gussets also drive a multitude of short nails into the truss wood, and so I will assume there is some split-related weakening at those junctions, particularly when they are happening at the ends of the boards. Yes, the 3-iinch long nails I used do act as “wedges” and weaken the wood, but as I see it that would only be a serious problem if the nails were driven into the ends ot the original truss boards. In my case, they were driven into the middles of the original timbering. They may weaken the new boards (which are nailed at the ends), but at least the original timbers are not weakened as much as they would be if they were nailed on the ends.

Regarding nails weakening wood, I see the point. Obviously, any time you attack the integrity of a piece of wood it will be weakened. However, I will restate that I also very liberally used that PL construction adhesive (40 tubes of the stuff, actually, at nearly four bucks a tube), and I will assume that where the junctions occur the glue adds consdierable strength to the nailed joint.

I actually tested the PL glue before using it, and did so in two ways. First, out in my shop I glued two short 2×4 test boards together at right angles and the next day attempted to pry them apart. I had to use a hammer and wedge to do so (with a great deal of banging), and when I got them apart the glue had not let go at all. The wood let go. That was a very strong joint, and it was that way even without the help of nails. It was almost as if it was a solid piece of T-shaped wood. I then tried something a bit different. I clamped the wood pieces together and only glued down the seams, caulking style. Again, I pried them apart the next day, and again the glue did not let go. The wood pieces split, and the connection was surprisingly strong, even though it only involved two 2×4 boards glued together at a right angle along the seams. The PL data information indicated that the glue can actually bridge gaps and still deliver a strong bond.

Because of this, I not only used the glue to reinforce all the nail-joint work but also ran beads of it up and down the truss sections that contacted the sheathing above. I did most of the underside of the sheathing this way, in order to add at least a little bit of extra hold-down power to the materials. I am not sure how much good that will do, but as best I can see it should do no harm. The glued areas cover a very large area, indeed. I mean, 40 tubes is a lot of glue.

I had entertained double sheathing as a way to reduce the chance of a limb puncturing the sheathing if it hit it end on. One contractor told me that the interior walls of the roof (the so-called load-bearing ones) would be able to handle an enormous amount of dead weight. Certainly, that dead weight would not be a disadvantage if combatting lift was an issue, and the vertical braces I installed were in a position to pass much of that increased dead weight onto the interior wall headers and studs.

As an aside, one reputable contractor (the one who built my last room addition) told me that one decade-old house he worked on (to repair and upgrade) had an original roof sheathed with 3/8-inch sheathing! (Mine is 1/2-inch, which I assume is the norm in “tract-style” homes.) He corrected that by putting an additional layer of 1/2-inch sheathing over it. I have no idea just how much of an extra load that would have put on the trussing, but getting that additional thickness would have made me feel better.

Regarding weight on the interior walls and original trusses, I will point out that the expanded room built onto the back of my house has 2×6 and 2×8 truss members on 16-inch centers that were made on site (not prefab), and that the whole new-roof section package rests upon a 22-foot long beam that replaced a wall that was removed, and also upon the new outer wall, and upon the existing truss sections right up near the peak. Basically, much of the new roof sits on top of the old roof (which over part of its area still has shingles), and there seems to be no problem at all with that extra weight up there. Additional sheathing would have been light as a feather compared to that entirely new roof section. I was here when the city inspector checked things out and his comment was (the contractor was not here at that time, so he was not trying to inflate the guy’s ego) that this particular contractor is one of the best in the city and builds things solid. Anyway, the inspector obviously thought that my interior walls and trusses were able to handle the additional roof loading.

Anyway, this has been an interesting discussion, and I hope you will forgive me for disparaging the talents of engineers. I know a few (in the electronics business) and most know a lot. Of course, not every engineer is a wizzard, as evidenced by the Tacoma Narrows Bridge failure or the failure of the South Fork Dam that resulted in the Jonestown Flood. The History Channel has even presented an entire program devoted to “engineering disasters” and the like. Hopefully, I will never have to deal with something like that at my place.

Howard Ferstler

Hello, BeachPilotBarry

Re: the Googling of my name as it relates to audio topics. I hope some of the negative comments about me from assorted members of the audio “lunatic fringe” did not unsettle you. Some of those guys have strong feelings about the so-called “sound” of things like wire, decent amps, and digital playback devices. Most such individuals need therapy. If you read enough you will see that quite a bit of the Google comments about me are, well, downright positive. And of course there are items there that are actually written by me instead of about me.

Unfortunately, audio as a serious hobby is dead, replaced by a corporate system that works against sanely priced products in the classic AR, KLH, Boston Acoustics, Advent, NHT, and Allison Acoustics traditions. Too bad.

Cheers,
Howard Ferstler

Howard Ferstler

Looks like a good strong job I think this can only do good when the wind and raidn comes.I built my shop from an old church roof the timbers are way over code but I like it that way good luck Alistair

-- excuse my typing as I have a form of parkinsons disease

Thanks for the complements, Scotsman. Not everybody here agrees with you about the advantages of my work, but, well, maybe we will not have any storms hitting us down the line. I wish I had the money to build a place from scratch. If I had the cash I would hire cutman26 and grumpycarp to do the design work. Well, I would probably want them to do the construction job, too. I am getting too old for that kind of heavy-duty stuff. It was bad enough doing that attic work on my current place.

Howard Ferstler

“Unfortunately, audio as a serious hobby is dead, replaced by a corporate system that works against sanely priced products in the classic AR, KLH, Boston Acoustics, Advent, NHT, and Allison Acoustics traditions.”

I have friends that lost their jobs when Mark Levinson went corporate.

-- - Don't Panic!

Howard,

I know this must seem tedious to you by now but I want to add just an observation or two. I am in Houston and Ike paid a visit just recently. Since the power was out, we had a lot of time to drive around in the car with the air conditioning on and observe the damage we saw. Obviously there were different “bands” of damage that Ike brought. The first band was evident on a peninsula called the Bolivar Peninsula that is part of the Texas barier islands and adjacent to Galvestion Island to the east and north. This area was hit by the dirty side of Ike and suffered water surge damage and consequently virtually all the buildings were 100% losses, even the one that seemed to be the only one standing.

The second band of damage was less water and more wind. The third mostly wind, etc. I’m going out on a limb here(hurricane humor) and I’m going to describe the type of damage you seem to have attempted to secure your home from. First you must understand that Houston is a very densley forrested urban city. That means that there are a lot of trees per square miles I guess. That fact is why there were so many people without electricity, you may remember, after the hurricane. What we observed was that trees were the main cause of the loss of electricity. Trees that fell took out the power lines.

The places that had a lot of trees found their trees had fallen. There were very few limbs disconnected from their trees and the reason seemed to be that as soon as a limb broke, it would be carried to the ground by the shear weight of the limb before it could be blown away by the wind. This falling action seemed to kind of tear the limb from the tree and leave it connected to the trunk. You may have experienced this when attempting to pull a small branch from a tree and ending up stripping the bark from the tree.

I believe your greatest threat given your third picture will be from the trees falling on your house. I would advise an inspection by an arborist and trimming enough limbs from the trees so that the wind can sort of blow through the trees. The well cared for trees in our area were obviously less likely to sustain damage. I don’t think you’ll be seeing any tree limbs blowing through the air and landing on your roof unless they are very small limbs. Your roof will most likely loose shingles if none of the trees fall on it.

Nevertheless, I wish you to be right that we’ll never know.

-- Jim

Hi, Jim,

Thanks for the observations. We all like to speculate, and it is great to get a genuine on-the-site input from somebody who actually took a look at real-world damage.

Obviously, a falling tree of decent size would plow through just about any framed roof, no matter how well reinforced. Actually, in a wet and lengthy storm any kind of major punch-through damage would result in serious interior flooding. One might do well to have plenty of visqueen on hand inside that will allow the owner to get into the attic and do some quick water rerouting work if an attached branch rams through the sheathing. A chain saw and good bow saw on hand is a proper move, too.

We also get regular wind storms in this area and a few nights ago a 20-foot branch (full of green, healthy leaves, but still obviously small by hurricane-wind standards) tore loose from a water oak next to our place and slammed into the garage-area roof. No shingle damage was done, since it hit pretty much broadside, and I pulled the thing off and cut it up the next day. The branch was about 3 inches in diameter at the broken end and it ripped loose from the tree pretty cleanly. I do believe that squirrels had some time ago done damage to the branch at the breakaway point. In any case, it did indeed fly a couple of dozen feet through the air in the 30 mph gusty winds.

Many of the trees around our pl,ace are sweet gums and water oaks. The gums are pretty solid, but anybody who has had experience with water oaks knows that they are notorious for hollowing out while looking healthy at the same time. (I removed a three-foot diameter job a while back to make space for a room expansion and it had a hollow spot inside wide enough for a man to stand up in.) My approach is to give them “mallet” tests at intervals, to see if I can hear them ring like an empty barrel. If they do, I phone the tree-removal people. (The big hollow tree flunked the test, although I was still reluctant to cut the thing until I realized things were getting bad, but which, as a reward, gave me an excuse to expand the house after it was removed.)

Hopefully, I am at least ready for power outages. I have an 8 kW portable generator and it can be connected to the house via a transfer switch. We should even be OK in mid summer, because although it is questionable if the generator is able to happily power our 36,000 btu central air system, I have four 6500 btu window AC units stored out in my shop that can be installed in opposite ends of the house, and they can be selectively used as required. I also have plenty of empty gas cans that I can fill up if a storm swings into the Gulf and looks to be aimed in our direction. They can keep me powered up for a week, which is better than no power at all.

One other thing I did was to install guy wires, extra clamps, and siff braces to the power service pipe sticking up out of the roof area. An electrician said this might help to keep the electrical service from being ripped loose should a big branch or tree fall on the lines. Hopefully, they would rip loose from the utility pole out front before ripping out my circuit-breaker box.

Again, thanks for the input.

Howard

Howard,

I think you may be as ready as anyone for a bad storm. What I found about losing electric service was that if the thing that makes the line unusable occurs “north” of the connection to the house, the electric company pays to make the repair. If the break occurs “south” of the connection to the house, the homeowner pays and the electric company will not do the repair and thus, can’t do the connection until the repair is made. Not a good situation since all the repairmen are kinda busy.

So, if I had a couple of extra bucks laying around, I think I would make sure that anything that puts pressure on the electric line would cause a break “north” of the connection to the house. That way, the line would fall, none of my part of the service would be damaged, like the breaker box or the pole, or whatever, and the electric company would only need to clear the limb, tree, or other stuff and reconnect the line.

-- Jim