Why Structural Engineers are Awesome!

all right in today's video we are going to be vaulting our ceiling that requires two things insulation and structure we are going to go through the whole process how to get this all sealed up and buttoned up but more importantly how to remove these collar ties so you get that great open space one of the most important aspects of doing a vaulted ceiling is when you're converting an old house like this into modern day construction you really want to take consideration of your insulation factor and insulation no matter if it's mineral wool or fiberglass it's really restricted by how deep your cavity is so the original 2x4 inch which is an actual four inch it isn't thick enough to get our 20 and that's really the goal here is to get an R 20 so what we're doing is we're adding two by twos we've put an angle on it so that we can have this here just nice and tight we're gonna continue this down and build out the wall so we have our 20 all the way through our area the other major factor when you're vaulting a ceiling is the collar ties now these pieces here are really design is part of the structure and it keeps the roof from falling apart right now in our situation I'm bringing in a structural engineer we have got a lot of different options that we can implore here we can put in metal brackets of the peak we can remove some of the color ties and double up in certain areas we can also be foe to our wall here which is what we're gonna do with two by fours horizontally so we get a lot more strength in this wall so it doesn't bow and flex and that can reduce this down to needing only maybe two of them so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna frame it the way that I'm pretty sure my engineers gonna approve it and then we'll bring him in and do a quick walkthrough and then he can put his stamp on the work that we've done and if he wants to do any modifications he can let me know at that point but the basic foundation is this you got to get enough enough depth to get our 20 so you need five and a half inches and you want to have a structure that's structure this is kind of the fun where we're dealing with we opened up this ball of wax here should not be able to rip apart your house with your bare hands folks man oh man there's just nothing holding any of this together Wow so what we have to do is we have to cut this out we need to cut this out when you remove this we want to put in a new top plate structure and a lot tied into the existing frame that way when we go to the outside and do our siding we can have something to tie in the new boards because this'll all have to be replaced but a lot easier to do that from the outside and since we're gonna open that up anyway we'll save that for a later date once we get it all reframed then we can insulate we're gonna come over with a plastic six mil of vapor barrier we're also gonna use acoustic sealant to get an air seal nothing about this house was made to control moisture or air so we have a lot of work to do but the steps are simple and if you follow this kind of procedure you're going to be able to reinsulate and seal up any area in the entire house so my goal right now is just to finish restructuring so then I can get into insulating so what we're gonna do and this is the beautiful thing about balloon construction you just cut it back to where the wood is solid and then reattach and laminate everything together it's not that tricky just a little time-consuming a little bit fun I think 48 was about hearing one of the best things about this kind of structure there's just so much wood involved here even if you cut too far there's another layer and another layer another layer so here we go that's good solid wood there we'll save that we've got to cut this out because it's open cavity I can actually stick my other piece of wood all the way down there and then just bring it up to this plate after I've reinstated it so we're just gonna leave that there because it's not in the way and it's something we can stand laminate to just give you an idea so this is the bore the beam that's coming up from the basement and it stops shy of the place so then they just grab another piece just stick it on a couple of nails what we're gonna do they're gonna get rid of that see okay so what's going on is every one of these boards is nailed from the outside into this see the only way to remove it is to peel it off this way but it's also nailed into that and that's where the structural strength is everything is nailed in more than one direction whew we might find that we're actually going to be in better shape leaving it alone and laminating this and then just rebuild understand that what isn't the greatest insulator in the world but it's not terrible and since we don't want to have to tear apart know half the house in order to rebuild this probably our only option at this point the original wood here is actually a 2x4 it's an actual 4-inch so what we did is grab some two by sixes and ran them through the table saw just to create an actual dimension we're using a little bit over three inch clipped head nails so if you put them on an angle it won't fire out the other side so now it's time to put in our new beam and tie it into the old structure oh this is where it gets interesting you can see here the victus difference in the thickness of two pieces of wood old and new we want to do is we want to match the top over here okay it's temporarily in place because it's blue construction they actually put the floorboards and cut around these beams just like doing a deck and they're in our way two reasons it keeps you from getting a consistent thermal break now when I insulate I can actually get right down into this cavity from before and it also gives me a little bit of flexibility for doing all this so beam balloon construction our goal is to transfer load and to tie everything together with good nails and have shear strength that will keep it all stable and then you tie all the the framing lumber together with the siding the original wood siding so we're actually going to bring support up to underneath the new plate here and then way I'm gonna do that is by adding a block here with all those nails cuz it's sheer strength and then I can bring this up right up underneath it yeah I am not liking the twist of that board I'm going to incorporate a lathe believer here I'm having issues with getting enough leverage to twist that board and get it in place so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna add this board on the side and use this as math like PowerPoint here we go this should demonstrate the strength of that shear strength of those nails oh there we go that's taken the weight now there you go so our goal is not to lift the ball houses just to create a nice solid contact now the next last thing we have to do is reintroduce this bad boy here but we're separated from the outside there's just no fighting with that we're gonna lose that battle what I want to do is I want to cut everything back that's separated from the other roof and then reinstate a new one so we'll cut through it first [Music] [Applause] yeah that's awesome great opportunity to see these old original nails okay so it's just a triangular spike and that's it but does the jaw be just a thought when you're working on your house this is a really good time to mention not to be too creative that if you're working with old wood structure use wood to solve your problems you're working with stone Houston don't mix materials and technologies it's really not a good idea when you have something that's let's say 800 years old and you're using a welding torch just saying yeah pretty good I'm just trying to translate my angle there so I can pass my wood right down on top of that plate and get pretty good contact it looks like it's gonna be pretty good I like it so my trace line was pretty close to 45 degrees so I just cut it on 45 degrees I'm looking at the design of this and I'm thinking yeah it kind of has a triangle shape almost like oh this will work I know that in the old days it kept their designs and cuts pretty simple so here we go right that looks pretty good now the heel of this is sitting nice the back is open that's cuz the roof is caved in here so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to start by nailing here I'm gonna slowly lift up here and then a lacrosse as I get a nice and flush that'll straighten the whole thing right out oh you got a few nails left okay now let's remember because of the sheer amount of wood that's been going on here this area of the house completely Rawdon with almost no structural support and yet people have been getting up and down a ladder out here to change our internet service multiple times and not falling through the roof so don't be too hard on yourself here with how much contact you get that goal is to make sure that this is nice and flush outside and then the first nail is the one that you're gonna work off there we go here we go yeah here's my little trick just one nail for this one okay into the existing are starting to the new wood there we go that should give me just enough there then I can lift that whole roof into place and it will all right everybody ever wants to know how to DIY simplest answer it's blood sweat and tears here we go well we're all reinstated I didn't take much effort at all with the roof with the front wall with the exterior perfect that's money in the bank that took us what two hours that somebody done that a long time ago before they put the new siding on the house I wouldn't run into this mess wouldn't be quite as much work either anyway that's what you can expect when you open up these old pigs it's always somewhere in those where something's gone wrong time to insulate so in our plan of course is we're gonna put these two by twos on the ceiling that brings our height down to here so what we're looking at doing is doubling up the strength of this wall by putting this piece across the bottom and this represents a new depth of insulation and we'll put another 2x4 across here around this point all right and that also will become the depth of insulation and then we'll add two by twos in the gap my two by twos are going to be thirty five and a half one of the things you'll find with older tech altar construction is the foundation might have moved around a lot but you know they're the guys that build stuff had a fair amount of integrity so usually the measurement one end is the same at the other even if the end is moving up and down yeah all right let's get suited up and get all this nailed on remember our goal is to set this up so that my structural engineer can come through and agree to get rid of all these collar ties we'll see sometimes that works sometimes it doesn't pens on the engineer depends where you live and sometimes depends on how the sun is shining on the day of the visit yeah nothing about building on old houses is consistent that's for darn sure right so we're just waiting for the structural engineer now so we can have our conversation about the collar ties then we can finalize our plans on the rest of our structure as soon as we have that all finished out then we will finish framing and then we couldn't insulate and get this all vapor barrier it up it'll be so nice to be separated from the old crud in the walls and the bugs in the dirt bail in the clean space I just cannot wait ah but first we got to get the collar ties sorted out so I'm here with my structural engineer Ethan from Starr engineering have been using Star engineering for the last few years Ethan's first time we've met yes okay I usually was working in with East End of Ottawa so I worked with the guys the other office okay okay we're in the loft here and we want to get rid of the color ties and that's these big things up here and I was just having a quick conversation with Ethan about if I want to open the ceiling completely to the top you're suggesting a ridge beam and we can put one underneath all the points of this ceiling yeah your best bet here is to put the ridge beam up right tight to the right underneath the peak okay and then that will run all the way to the outside blue well yeah the outside of the house here that's balloon construction how much do I need to be able to carry that down it depends on the size of the beam okay how much weight is on the beam so if in this case we're maybe 20 feet or so mm-hmm you're probably looking at a 4 2 by 6 post somewhere in that range okay so then I'm gonna have to open up enough this space to get a 4 2 by 6 post down right down to the bottom yeah it's gonna have to be continuous from the peak of the roof all the way down and supported on the foundation foundation so that the last floor joists in this package won't be good enough it has to go right to the foundation so it can be done in two separate posts one get one from the the bottom of the here to here to the lower level and from there down then underneath the floor down to the foundation okay that's a lot of work and then over here we'd bring this over here now I've got plans for a Murphy bed in here and a bookcase okay so if I was to bring up a structural post here in here and then carry it across bring it down as that work so to do a post beneath the B bring a post down and then carry it over to two other point loads onto the not a problem at all okay you can do it that way and there's an opening below us under this wall anyways we have so the structural support for that opening is behind this this cladding here so I actually want to bring all that load on to that part of the wall behind this cladding then directly right yeah that's that's the best I just do I cut open that roof which is the existing roof can you believe this well cut this open find that beam and then bring that load to there yeah same so idea on this side you have a post from the bottom of the beam and it can come right into this wall you have to cut a strip down here yeah yep so you can do that or like you were saying you can do a beam across with two posts okay so I actually want to restore this so I can open up from the other side to get my beam in not a problem okay good now if I wanted to not put in a ridge beam I've actually seen a couple of different options I've seen people put in like Steel ELLs and just tie that all together so that it can't flex and bolt through the wood is that an option it's something we can look at it's a little more design intensive right because essentially right now we have these collar ties nailed into all of the the rafters sure we're asking a lot from this really 140 year old wood exactly under nut-and-bolt and it's a lot it's a lot easier to hold it together when you bring this tie further down okay so the lower it is the more strength you get so the more ceiling I want the more engineering I need basically yeah so if I was to sacrifice let's say moving the collar tie up two feet okay and put the collar tighten at that point I'd be looking at going more like two by ten or two by twelve maybe galvanized bolts two times that that's the ideas that is that a doable option it's something I'd have to design but on the number office but it's it's definitely feasible okay so then I could go with a ridge beam for full exposure yeah it's labor-intensive yeah or we could maximize a little bit of head space and get Mormon 9 or 10 foot ceiling here with something a little bit simpler okay I'm gonna probably look at both options just because I'm curious yeah we can definitely look up and is there anything like what we're doing over here we're basically adding wood so we can get proper insulation and we want to go to our 20 yeah okay but we're adding this 2x4 and this 2x2 here we actually cut on a 45 so that all of this downward force is sitting against that wall we're just trying to give a little bit more rigidity in this thing that doesn't during your equation at all does it it's really not because these so these roof rafters now we're not changing the span at all so it comes to span and load and every term is kind of grandfathered in because we're not adding anything new okay so because it's existing we keep the support essentially the same so it's supported at the top and at the end okay so anything you add whether it's to increase the insulation or or just add some extra nestled change them and rigidity it's not gonna change any design that I'll have to do now quick question because I have crazy plan for the future Ethan I would love to cut a piece of here and open up a dormer okay all right yeah if I'm thinking of doing that in the future is there anything I should do now in advance of that so that the structure is in place like if I was to put in a dormer starting tomorrow what does my structure require obviously two by six doubled up you're gonna need a double up at each side of the dormer that anything across all right where I'm kind of cutting pivot like let's say I want to go to eight feet and then that's where it's gonna live from yeah so you'll have a cross beam wherever the dormer stops right so it'll go let's say for this year here across you go across two or three doubles want to be again it depends on the loads okay it would be something I have to design sure but you're more than likely gonna be good with a double to y8 okay something in that range but it would have to be engineered so if I was to cheat and put in double two by six after the collar ties are gone on both sides and then cut across a double two by six with joist hangers so that next spring I can call you up and say hey this is what I did can I open this up are you gonna need me to pull the ceiling open or if I take pictures is that enough or should I engineer and now it should be engineered now okay most of the time with the permit process you can you can include other items even if it's the work is not to be done right away okay so you can have that included in the package right and be specific and only work on this area or that at a time yeah because the city only cares if you're putting your stamp on it at the end of the day the city is normally very fast at giving you your permit yes whenever we have already taken the responsibility cuz yeah that's pride they have rules right listen to the end of the day the city has certain rules and if you work inside their box you're fine they can approve it as soon as you move outside the box you need guys like Ethan to say yes we're good here's a stamp to prove it we've done the math you're safe so we have the drawings back from our engineer and Ethan was awesome he gave us the design drawings for raising our ceiling up to nine and a half feet which is let's take a look up here this point here is eight feet tall it's our nine feet in the ceiling so a nine and a half feet would take us somewhere up around here now at this point we're gonna be putting in a two by eight all the way across and that is going to replace the existing color ties which are two by six the thing is this we aren't gonna get a full cathedral ceiling out of this because the engineering involved in that was absolutely ridiculous that Holdridge beam would be a solid week of structural framing and I really don't want to bring all this back down to the foundation wall and trust that not to be moving because it's stacked stone and shallow ground on the one side so if this is foundation buried eight feet deep and that's foundation buried two feet deep there's gonna be an unevenness going on with the heaving in the wintertime so the best thing for me to do is to bring it down to the structural wall at the whole addition raise and lower a little bit together in the winter having said that now it's time to figure out what to do with this information so remember in our walkthrough with the engineer he discussed that if we raise the collar ties we have to make them thicker fertile more strength to hold this thing together so we went from a two by six that was here to a proposed two by eight at nine and a half feet but the reality is this that other six inches that half a foot it doesn't provide me any real value in this situation if I'm putting in a flat ceiling across here and nine and a half feet it gives me the same feeling of extra space and openness as it does at nine feet which is what this point is now at this point I need 1/2 batts of insulation to finish I've got two layers of drywall to finish and my life is made really simple if I take it all the way to nine foot six I have to cut a little bit extra lumber here to extend it I've got a cut extra dry insulation to extend it I've got to cut an extra sheet of drywall to extend it plus an extra joint it's an awful lot of work double the work just to get that other six inches so what we're gonna do is we're going to take this structural dimension for a nine and a half foot bring it down the same material to use it in the nine foot which makes that collar tie even stronger and that way we can finish off our ceiling at the same place that building materials will finish off naturally and make this whole process so much more simplified when you're making plans like this sometimes you're gonna be disappointed you won't always get everything you want but if you're going to make changes think through the whole process from the beginning to the end to make your decision as to what you're gonna do because getting rid of that extra six inches okay I lose a little bit of height but what I lose in height I'm gonna save myself in an entire day's work just to get it installed to the drywall plus an extra few hours of taping plus the extra materials I'm telling you right now I'm probably gonna save myself three or four days or the work and the materials that I don't need I'm still gonna have a nine-foot ceiling I still have the option to make this a walk out later it's a win win win so thanks Ethan and start engineering for the information but we're gonna bring it down just a little bit so that everybody can be happy and we can get this job done on time and on budget so the process that I'm gonna use for installing these color ties by myself is pretty straightforward I'm attaching a 2x4 just across the ceiling where all of these are ending up on each side I'm gonna be able to measure across cut my color ties in advance set them all in place and then just bolt them in with lag screws the engineers spec calls for quarter inch thickness three-inch lungs and that's what I picked up today once I've got all that done we're ready to close and I'm also gonna need a level here Maddie let's have a peek of that holy shitake that's so weird I look good Wow here's the thing this has started here and I fell down and it goes back up again the wood is not laminated on any kind of a level plane this says that's level and it offends the mind doesn't it no four and a half that makes sense because the floor is a lot higher here than it is over there okay all right here this will work you hold the marker I'm gonna go to the middle and read the bolt the bubble and then you can work for the top of the next 2x4 goes on the fresh side of this corner here Matt right off the tip dang so let's screw the other 2x4 off of that tip and we'll level that one and then we'll throw this on both extremes and we'll see if it keeps coming up here we go just have the level and we'll try that up using the yellow one all right [Music] like I'm building a floating deck here [Music] all right so what we've done here is we just attached a 2x4 onto the top of the slope on each side at the extension of the one by the two by twos just to give us a reference point remember this foundation has moved a lot and there's nothing here that square level plumb straight flush nothing it's a mess it's like building a floating deck above your head so we just created this level spot here on both sides and we throw the level on these boards and this says hey I'm level but is it really I mean visually it's very disturbed it's really hard to look at this and go everything is normal this ceilings caving down is caming back up oh is this the wood all curved like a hockey stick no it's pretty flat this does not look normal it is very confusing to the eye you really got to get to a point where you trust this if you're reading your level and it looks really messed up flip it over or switch end to end like if it says the same reading every time it's not the level it's just a trick of the eye this is crazy so we're gonna just create a level point across the top at every one of these and then we're gonna cut our color ties in but what a mess eh now we've got our level established dear Lord we know we want to make our collar ties go from the outside of the sheathing to the outside of the other sheathing on the other side so we can measure that distance but then we got to add the angle looking at this place you kind of think yeah the walls are on a 45 degree angle the peak must be a 90 well that's what the square comes in for it's just really easy to double-check we are out 1 or 2 degrees the assumption is it was 90 at one point so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our actual measurements take off a quarter of an inch cut them all in 45 s and Matt you're gonna do this right you're just gonna use this on the lumber cut your angle go from the other side cut your angle so I just got to get my measurements now translate that down to Matt on the saw and then we can stick all these in and bolt them down alright so for measuring a cross we're gonna gently set the tape on both of these and I'm gonna measure the height of the top of this tape and I'm at 56 and a half inches on the top of the tape when you're reading your tape I'm measuring across and this is sitting on my board I'm measuring 56 and a half the tape is one inch thick so if I'm one is thick and it's a 90 degrees I have to add one inch to each side of this measurement this is the trick so it may be same 56 and a half we're gonna cut it 58 and a half we take off the quarter inch for good measure 58 and a quarter and I'll measure all of these first before I get off I can read that from the ground and then we'll start cutting it's hard to believe this is the same place that we were not too long ago and we didn't want to stick our head through the roof that one actually says 58 and a half that one's 60 and a half 60 and a quarter and I wonder if this one here is gonna be 657 in the quarter or is it gonna go back up to 59 in the corner this is the house that insanity though look at that leveled out I feel like I'm a little kid again you know somebody help me with my tie here we go okay so obviously I can't install my collar tie in a place with this brace here so know that we got our measurement that represents the the top of my collar tire alright so I'm gonna make this mark on both sides on all these ties and then we'll move the temporary brace out of the way and we'll have to install it one at a time so our design calls for quarter-inch lag bolts but I'm just gonna install this first with a couple of screws just to set it in place now nothing that we're doing here isn't a perfect size but there is our line I like that so now we got her yeah yeah heartiest piece of wood this house is seen in 140 years we're gonna put it in with these lag bolts just to make sure that this sucker never decides to do anything different than what it's designed to do [Applause] [Music] there we go when you're driving a lag bulb drive it till it won't drive no more alright that is how you attach a color tie by doing that on every color tie all the way across we can guarantee that we can drive a dump truck on our roof so far cry from those two little nails up there we go all right yeah that works last thing we need to do for finishing off our roughing of our ceiling is to put our wiring back no because I live where I am I'm allowed to do my own wiring rough-in we've already passed inspection and generally speaking as a rule the specters have no problem with you installing fixtures like this and leaving it dangling for future consideration so even after they've come and gone you're allowed to move this into place place it where you want it and then mount it okay it's amazing as long as the wires to the functional box safely then where it gets located before or after inspection is really of no concern to them it's the kind of a weird thing but they'll allow you to make movement after the fact they just wanted to come by and do an inspection it's mostly just to make sure they you know what you're doing and they're confident you're not going to be a complete idiot and set your house on fire okay so before I mount my box I got to find my center line because we're gonna hang a pendant I'm 43 and a quarter that's 21 and 5/8 what I'm gonna do is do this 21 and 5/8 right from there okay that's what the end of that thing is for on the tape measure and a couple of good solid flooring screws here we go ready to the drywall first we got to insulate this bad boy that's another video like this got information as far as how to restructure and reframe and vaulted ceiling then please subscribe to the channel we do new videos it's a favorite thing to do if you have questions about this project and asked in the comment section below don't forget the check out here we're working on an 1880s farmhouse if you haven't seen these videos from the very beginning you're missing out so join us on our wild ride as we renovate this whole thing top to bottom

Channel: Home RenoVision DIY

Views: 778,414

Rating: 4.8201632 out of 5

Keywords: homerenovision, renovision, jeff, thorman, structural engineers, structural engineering basics, structural engineering, structural engineering design, structural engineering calculations

Id: WpOHOGpchAk

Length: 35min 47sec (2147 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 12 2019