Open Web Floor Trusses, One Year Review - Would We Use Them Again?

all right guys today we're doing the one year review of the open web floor joist system that we use in our build and i want to talk you through why we decided to basically pay double the price of any other system in order to have these open web joists so i'm going to talk you through the pros and cons and whether or not we would do it again okay guys so this is our own build that we did we've been in here a little over a year my family is a home builder i worked in the production side of building on and off most of my life and we've always subscribed to the construction magazines all the homebuilder all the american magazines a bunch of custom builder magazines we're always looking at that kind of stuff and i would always see these products the open web floor joists and thought why don't we use this why doesn't anybody use this and the answer is pretty simple because a lot of times it's not economically that feasible it's got to be a custom build it's got to be the decision of the owner that they see enough benefits in it to use it so let's talk through the benefits why would we pay double and what was double so first off a normal drop steel beam system using uh either nominal lumber or an ijoy system where they got a wooden top bottom flange and a piece of osb for the joists instead of these it would have ran roughly ten thousand dollars for all the material at the time that we did this give or take a couple grand either way and this is roughly a three thousand square foot house of finish space uh two stories so our cost was closer to twenty thousand so we were very close to being double the price why would we do that what benefits can justify that much of a price increase so first off you can't see totally here but these joists span right from one side of our house 30 feet wide with no bearing walls no beams no post they go right from concrete to concrete and what that allowed us to do is up on our main floor we have a totally open kitchen living dining area and normally the way that people achieve that on a bungalow design is by having a cathedral style trust and it's the trusses that span it it's not the floor joist and it's only in bungalow applications but we had another story up above so we had a floor we had to to support so for us to get that fully open main floor plan with no walls no beams no post this was really the only way to do it to the total extreme degree that we wanted to now did we have to do that in the basement no we didn't but it offered us the flexibility where what you see now is a totally open space we had a rough layout of where we wanted our walls to be in the future but we weren't really committed we didn't know was that going to be a bedroom was this going to be open and so it gave us the flexibility to just say let's not worry about it we'll fill it in later once we know how we're going to use the space if we have another kid etc etc and do i need a home office these kind of things so the times come where i'm going to finish this now so i want to show you guys this stuff before we close it up but in the basement we have found that there wasn't as many benefits upstairs we absolutely love the openness that those joys provided us and the lack of bulkheads and in the basement i think it's very questionable whether our money spent particularly on this floor where i probably could have saved about five grand switching of these joists for another style either nominal uh dimensional lumber or an ijoy's product i think our money might have been better spent down here going ahead and putting a beam in because as it turns out we're gonna end up closing the space off anyhow and we didn't know that at the time but it's not as critical i don't think to have this totally open no bulkhead feel in the basement it is nice but there's lots of things that are nice and it's a trade-off of of limited resources when you're dealing with the amount of money in your budget so all things considered it is great having all of this ductwork hvac electrical run up in these cavities and that's one of the main benefits and it was great not having to commit to our layout down here but all things considered i think we would do it again on our main floor and we would probably highly consider using a steel beam drop beam system or or lvl and and saving the money in our basement area now i'm quickly going to talk over a couple more of the benefits with these things guys is like i mentioned that you can hide it so you have totally no bulkheads whatsoever but that's very labor intensive as well you're gonna get some pushback from the trades because even though the electrical generally runs through here completely seamlessly your plumbing and your ductwork can have a lot of issues the return line on the ductwork especially because of the volumes it's normally bringing back is problem troublesome to carry through these cavities so you're going to get some push back there and you really got to pre-plan how you're going to size your ductwork accordingly and which cavities you're going to run that stuff through or else you might pay all the money for this stuff and still end up with drop duct work and obviously that's just a not a great use of the money there's also certain runs of the plumbing trying to hide it up in here that we had to cut holes in the wall from the outside to slide it all through because we had these big long pieces that were just hard to assemble and elbows and everything that it wasn't really possible to do once all these walls were closed in so in terms of getting all the all the services up in there and having no bulkheads it's possible but it's difficult and it takes some free planning you're probably going to get a bit of kickback from the trades and one other factor that's worth noting i suppose two other factors is that this is a very deep floor this is a 20 inch deep flooring system in order to be able to span that distance and that makes your floor a little bit thicker and it adds a couple risers to your stairs so a normal staircase from the first floor to the second floor with a nine foot ceiling you're normally going to end up with roughly 16 risers we ended up with 18. so we have a very large staircase it looks nice but it's a lot to walk and it's somewhat dangerous we had to break it up with a couple of landings to to fit it all in and it makes it difficult to fit into a floor plan as well so consider you're probably going to add some more stairs to your basement and to your main floor more walking and just more space you got to accommodate for and the last note is that there is a little bit of bounce you'll notice that there's just a slight bit of noise that comes with it it's not as firm of a floor you don't truly feel like it's it's bouncing like a trampoline or something but when someone's in the very middle of this floor if there's any kind of jumping or quick motions going on you do notice there's a little bit of just a little bit of bounce i guess there's no real issues with that we have a vinyl flooring product i don't know how that would really hold up if you had a ceramic or a tile product a grouted product out in the middle there i could see it being problem some because from what i have seen so far this just has a little bit more flex than doing it with a beam system in the middle where you don't have as great of a span so that's it guys thanks for watching all things considered we would do this again on our main floor considering that was the only way to get the open layout with our two-story house and we would definitely reconsider in the basement if you're thinking of using this system just know that you want the open layout for sure you're not doing it as a precautionary measure and make sure you're going to plan how you're gonna hide your services thanks for watching guys if you're new to the channel please hit subscribe i'm putting out new videos every week i'm covering the local peterborough real estate market but i'm really trying to focus heavily on putting out good quality construction content for you guys to help you understand your house help you understand the homes you're buying and potentially the homes that you're gonna build or the renovations you're gonna do to the house that you're gonna buy so anyways thanks for tuning in guys and we'll see you next week if you got any questions or comments put them down below i try to respond to every comment see you guys

Channel: Build Lessons

Views: 90,384

Keywords: truss joist, floor joist, open web joist, open concept, open concept home, construction, new home construction, how to build a house, building a home, I-joist, trusses, bulkhead, bearing wall, no beams, no bearing walls, framing, carpentry, floor framing

Id: -Z3OBb6tBig

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 25 2020