Near Disaster

[scott spencer]

As I walked into my shop yesterday (the garage), a 2 foot long splintered piece of 1x1-1/2" wood fell from above and landed at my feet. I got a sick feeling as I looked up and saw that a piece of the roof frame system had weakened and shed the piece that fell. A 2x6 used to support the edge of the garage loft was now sagging a good 2" from the vertical support that had broken free from the framing above. And, oh by the way, that same 2x6 was also supporting a wood rack that I installed and loaded up with hardwoods in February. As I stood there realizing the ramifications of what had happened, it started creaking every time the wind blew, so I jammed a 2x4 support underneath the sagging structure to buy some time, grabbed a bicycle helmet for protection, and went to work to prevent disaster. After reinforcing everything and removing a couple hundred pounds of lumber, I went into the house and thanked God for watching over us...the timing was amazing. The current overload situation has been in place since February (~ 1500 hours). What are the odds that it gets noticed on my day off and begins to visibly and audibly give way just when I'm walking by?

Less than an hour prior to this, 3 of my kids and 3 neighbor kids were all sitting in the garage playing directly below the main problem area which is the main traffic area to the house door. My shop shares the garage with bicycles and outdoor toys. There's a 4 person bench in the vicinity, so they tend to congregrate in what now appears to be an extraordinarily dangerous place. It should have known, but it never occurred to me how much weight was up there. I've never weighed any of the boards, but most are probably 25-30 pounds....toss 12-15 boards on a rack, and now there's some fresh weight in addition to the loft itself and all the crap that resides up there. Within 4 weeks I was planning on adding a skylight just above the broken piece and reroofing the house and garage. I suspect the modifications to accommodate the skylight, combined with the weight of an additional layer of shingles may have cause to entire roof system to fail. The vacation time that was earmarked for doing a roof will now be spent gutting the garage, repairing the framing, and redesigning the storage layout. A leaky roof is better than crushed kids.

Soooo, I'm sharing this to alert anyone who might have a similar situation. Take a good look at your shop. Think things through and be certain that the structure of your shop is reinforced enough to hold whatever weight you may have "hanging" around.

[Lee Schierer]

Sounds like things ended well, except you'll have to spend some time doing repairs. Hopefully your new lumber rack will be able to hold the weight.

Roofs are generally not made for supporting a lot of weight. I see trusses loaded at places they shouldn't be and then the owners wonder why they have sagging roofs. In the company of a house inspector last year we were looking at a house that my son was interested in buying. The builder had used pre-fabricated trusses for the roof. In the garage, he had place the garage door header back about 3-4 feet from the end of the truss with the truss over hanging. There was a decorative box beam at the ends, but it wasn't made to support any weight. I suspect the orginalk architect plans called for the decorative box to be and actual supporting beam, but someone took a short cut. The roof had nearly 2 feet of snow on it when we looked at it. The bottom member on two of the trusses had snapped, several others were badly deformed. The interior finished ceiling of the garage looked like rolling hills and the doors were difficult to open and close.

When we notified the home owner that the inspection was terminated and the offer was going to be withdrawn, he was in shock as he had no idea that his roof was about to collapse.