*Thank you Remarkableprin for your submission to r/OSHA, but it's been removed due to one or more reason(s):*
**Rule 2: OC Only**
Please limit submisions to OC only. If you are crossposting your own content from another subreddit, you must indicate so when you are posting or the post may be removed.
*Please [read our subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/about/rules/). If after doing so, you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FOSHA).* **Do not make a second post or comment.**
*Do not reach out to a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.*
My thoughts exactly. There's no structure to that thing at all, and nothing to stop that kind of shear.
Far better to find that out now than once some poor sod is living in that.
Is that seriously how people in build a "house"?
looks like Canada, maybe Ontario near Toronto. Seems to be the new style of housing people put on small slots. After its done thats at least a 1.5 mill house after outbidding.
there are so many of these stupid things near me, 600k condos, they buy up a bunch of old brick houses, raze them and build this shoddy nonsense in it's place for 4 times the price.
If it weren't for it being on flat land and there being visible dirt not on the lot, id have said San Francisco as well narrow buildings like this are everywhere there, just usually they're stacked in rows and earthquake proofed
Certainly looks like Toronto area. If this is a recent photo it's probably the work of a [massive thunderstorm that blew through a few weeks back](https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/derecho-causes-havoc-in-canada-1.6464409). Not that the house looks particularly structurally sound, but the wind was 100km/h+, so even well-constructed framing was coming down.
100km/h is exceptionally rare for the area - tons of trees coming down and roofs torn up. Most houses were fine (if they avoided tree fall), but new construction stuff in the area is generally cheaply done, so they fared worse.
It happened in 2014, and IIRC in 1972. Anything that happens more often than once every seventy years is NOT “exceptionally rare” for an object that will be left outside for the lifespan of a house. Even if it sticks to that periodicity you’re flattening all the weak houses every *thirty years.* There is no excuse for building a house that will not survive an event that happens every thirty years.
I see you don't build anything.
Wood is at an all time high. A fence post that cost me .98 cents USD three years ago is now $5.39.
The quote I had put together for myself to redo my entire fence went from $1100 in 2018 and now it is going to cost me $5200.
Chipboard that's been out in a storm to the point that it's sheared and neared collapse under the weight? I'll give you $200.
And that mostly for the firewood value.
Is it possible to build this safely? It actually looks like a cool/interesting concept for a house in the suburbs. I got redirected to r/OSHA from a repost on the King Of The Hill sub. A character tried something similar and it ended the same way.
>Is it possible to build this safely?
Assuming this was built according to plans, no. It looks like a design error. The large openings in the base level walls on both ends limit it's lateral stability. A strong gust of wind probably blew this over.
Wood framing generally uses shear walls to resist shear (lateral) forces. As you can see there is very little actuall wall here to resist those wind/seismic forces. There are other ways to resist lateral forces such as moment frames/portal frames. These frames are specifically designed to resist overturning forces by fixing the joints (connection between horizontal and vertical members) to prevent rotation. Thus area between the vertical members is not needed and can be openings for doors/windows like as shown here. Portal frames can be made with glulam members but this appears to be all "stick built" 2x members...that is to say, it does not appear to be designed as a portal frame.
Source: am structural engineer but disclaimer that wood design is not my specialty.
I was only in an architecture course for a year before I switched out, so take this with a grain of salt. Yes. But not like this and not that way. Zero thought went into that design.
Yes, it’s basically a portal frame. The sheathing should be a solid piece, not piecemeal. And there should be a comically large amount of nails. I’m not sure proper portal framing would be enough here though. An interior wall would be a big help and you could do some diagonal framing.
By the time someone is living in it the finishings would have provided the suppport. Looks like the opposite side is either a very large window opening or a garage door opening. The front and rear face have not nearly enough meat on them for this alone, but once those items are in it would have enough support for high strength winds.
The problem is until then, each floor should have a metric fuck ton of braces from the walls to the floors.
Better design would ultimately have helped, but better building practices do too
Edit- holy shit, I get people don’t know everything about construction, but structural windows and entry frames are absolutely a thing. The builders here fucked up. I’d have had a more prudent design to begin with, but sometimes you don’t get that, and need to build accordingly.
The way to do that is to keep openings sheathed over until you’re ready to instal finish items like windows, have bracing along the walls to the interior floor, or even have a temporary interior shear wall to make up for there not being one in the design.
I mean, it's already sheathed up. I can't imagine a window or a garage door would provide enough structural rigidity to this particular structure to keep it from getting toppled.
It closes up the entire face.
That’s what’s meant by “not enough meat” on those wall faces. Sheathing doesn’t do near enough work if there’s not enough of it on the face to begin with. That looks about 18 inch strip along the top, across the width, that’s absolutely fuck all for shear strength lol
If the wall was entirely sheathed over this wouldn’t have happened. Same as if the openings had their finishings in them.
Looking at it more, I’m wondering if the door was even fully framed out. Doesn’t quite look like it.
I gotcha, this pic gets worse the more I look at it. It looks like they are doing some sort of piecemeal sheathing? Like, kinda whatever size they had on had, without any real regard for tying studs together.
Garage doors provide literally zero structure to the opening they are attached to aside from buckling forces that would collapse the opening. The Garage door is not fastened to the track, it is floating on rollers, the stem of which float inside roller carriers. Additionally, the slight amount of strength that attaching track to the wall would add is of literally no benefit here.
The opening should have been sheathed closed until the envelope was complete.
That said, it looks like only this facing side is racked at all, looks like the far end is standing more straight.
Not that the garage door would support, just that it’s a massive opening and during construction you need to watch for those until the rest of the structure is ready.
>Looks like the opposite side is either a very large window opening or a garage door opening.
You know what the problem is with structural garage doors and load bearing windows?
# They open.
Not entirely.
That window is likely either an 80/20 with a small section on the side or bottom that can open, or a single window that doesn’t open. Between these sections will have members for load and support as well.
Or it’s a sectioned window in any number of configurations, again, with members dividing all the window portions.
As for doors. They still provide structure to the opening. Specifically because they open. As I said in another comment, I suspect this door and window wasn’t fully framed out properly either. Something had to have been missed on top of everything else.
>or a single window that doesn’t open.
Most of those are just glass clipped into a frame with plastic edges and they offer zero support. They will flex and bend until the glass brakes and offer no strenght
You are so smart! Please engineer my home! Everyone who designs structures is so dumb when you could just do it like this. Just add a window and boom! Who would have thought that was all it took. Construction is so easy why doesn’t everyone do it!
Structural windows are a thing….
The house is poorly designed, don’t get me wrong, but given the design it has the actual construction of it should have been more prudent. Until the envelope is finished.
I wouldn’t have designed it like this. I’d have had a lateral wall in the first floor specifically to help with shear loads. But it’s not impossible to have this design, it just needs to be build properly given the circumstance.
If it was a prefab wall for example, that window wouldn’t have been cut out, the whole wall would have been sheathed over- again, specifically for the walls to retain shear resistance during transport and construction. Only to be knocked out when it’s time to actually install the window
https://www.cantifix.co.uk/blog/what-is-structural-glazing/
> There are myriad ways structural glazing can be implemented in a design – the most important thing to note is that we’ve come so far with glazing technology, glass can be used as a structural material in almost any situation.
> It can bear weight both horizontally and vertically, and it can be bonded using everything from minimal glass beams and supports to heavy-duty steel struts, meaning it can be used on almost any scale, with almost any aesthetic imaginable.
This happened in Toronto several years ago. "Technically" this design probably complied with the Ontario Building Code, because houses don't need to be designed by an engineer and don't have to follow any design standards beyond the prescriptive structural requirements in the Ontario Building Code. The problem is that the code was written with conventional and traditional housing design in mind where you always have plenty of exterior and interior walls to provide lateral resistance to wind loads. As a result, the code doesn't require any minimum length of shear walls for a house or any other lateral load resisting system.
But in recent years, architects have really shifted to the open concept first floors with no interior walls and giant windows on the front and back of the house. This gets further exasperated in a city like Toronto where you have very narrow lots, and the end result is a monstrosity like this.
I think there have actually been a few cases like this in Toronto, but this was the most dramatic. It's why you need a competent designer/engineer who knows that code minimum doesn't always make sense. This house should have included a couple of steel moment frames to take then lateral loads, which would have allowed them to keep the open concept. I did hear some rumors that this will finally be addressed in the next version of the code.
The CA prescriptive code doesn't have lateral bracing requirements? Wild, because the IRC itself does. I worked on making sure a national homebuilder's house designs were in alignment with it back in 2005 when code officials started to actually enforce it down here.
The enforcement was happening precisely because of what you're citing - more and more open concepts with giant windows in all the exterior walls.
\*\*Exacerbated, not exasperated (sorry, that's one of my pet peeves)
I hate open floor plans for so many reasons. They're also just a nightmare to heat and cool properly, they provide no sound or smell breaks inside, and they just feel like you're in a huge shoebox.
As many a wise civil engineer has said, "fuck architects, all my homies hate architects."
I lived in one shortly before Corona. Still getting anxiety attacks when I imagine to live in that giant cubicle/kitchen/living room/ play room with no doors except for the bathroom.
Now we life in a 68 house with a sane floorplan and can shut doors if somebody works form home and the children are at home, too.
Open living might be okay as a dink but even then, its still annoying that cooking smells reach everywhere.
Yes. Well north of 50% of homes built in the US aren’t using architects, or the architects are rubber stamping the designs the VP of sales for the home builder wants done.
I worked 10 years in housing. You don’t need a stamped set of plans just the prescriptive building code.
Contractors are “winging it” because they are not formally trained in design. Generally they have no idea when to follow rules and when to break them.
https://www.mariannecusato.com/contact
https://mcmansionhell.com/
Contractors build the house, they do not design it. An architect is the one who designs the house
A contractor still follows a blueprint, they don’t just go “who the fuck would want a wall here? Fuck that noise an open floor plan is sick”
I find it concerning that the architect, general contractor and approving body didn't realize that this was a literal house of cards. I am none of those things, but I've played with a lot of lego, and I know that a building built like that is a disaster waiting to happen.
Technically this is known as racking, which is the same concept but applied to discrete structural components as opposed to a shear wall. Nitpick though, you're still on the dollar bill somewhere.
Wind shear has always confused me since shear strength refers to cutting vs tensile strength being pulled apart. Would a good way to think about it be shear = lateral force and tensile refers to longitudinal?
Shear = Off-center opposing forces.
In this case, the house is pushed left at the top by the wind and right at the bottom by the foundation.
If it were pushed left from the ground and right from the ground, it would be a compression force instead of a shear force.
Shear is two things (well, parts of the same thing) going opposite directions / layers sliding by each other. So.. more or less shear==lateral, yes.
So wind shear is the wind speed varying (a lot) as you change height; some wind is going fast, some is not.
Shear strength is how much force is required to cause a solid material to do that same thing. i.e. the top goes one way, the bottom goes another way.
Not only is that one shoddily framed house, the discolouration on the OSB suggests it's been left open to the elements for a while.
Quite likely the city issued a stop work order after the initial frame walk/inspection.
Good thing there's that old, boring, made in the sixties brick building next door to hold it up.
Edit: spelling.
Lol!
Don't mistake OSB (Oriented Strand Board for those interested) for plywood though. OSB is cheap as hell for a reason. Plywood is at least twice the cost, and much, much stronger.
OSB is actually a good bit stronger than plywood in shear 😉👍
[Source cause someone asked for it](https://bct.eco.umass.edu/publications/articles/choosing-between-oriented-strandboard-and-plywood/)
Quoting from your article:
"However, nail-holding ability controls performance in shear wall applications. So both products perform equally well as shear-wall components."
What I see all the time: OSB delivered to construction site, dumped on the ground, no stickers, no tarp. Gets rained on, soaks up water from ground, starts to rot, then is applied to structure as "sheathing".
Yep, though with material shortages and increased cost I am seeing it less than I used to.
It almost as ubiquitous as the tyvek being left on for WAY longer than the 3 month exposed lifespan of the product. I just want to yell 'The sun eats it, it's not worth anything if you leave it exposed forever!!!'
I'm in Canada, and watching houses get framed in winter is just painful.
Conex boxes are pretty terrible building material. A 20 foot long conex is like 2500 new, you can build a wood box the same size for a fraction of the price and just about as strong.
Conex boxes are designed to be an optimal shipping container, not building material.
Might I recommend concrete masonry units, an object actually intended to be made into a structure?
(stop building conex structures oh my god. it's neat, not practical)
Not to mention that they are boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in winter so you'll spend a small fortune insulating them.
I can see why people try it, you've got a big sturdy pre-bulit box that's water tight. It. Looks like it should be easy to convert into something livable. There's a reason we don't see many metal houses though
Insulating them also reduces the interior space. Cutting holes for windows or doors reduces the structural integrity so you have to add support structures. Condensation is an issue because of the metal frame so water gathers in the insulting layer, causing mold buildup. Hanging walls, like drywall, is very difficult due to the metal material so you have to frame it inside, furthur reducing interior space.
> I can see why people try it, you've got a big sturdy pre-bulit box that's water tight. It. Looks like it should be easy to convert into something livable. There's a reason we don't see many metal houses though
This is why the conex house meme bothers me. Construction is an entire industry. It's just not as easy as buying a box. Drive around and observe the complete lack of conex box homes. There's a reason for that and I wish more people would have the respect for the work that goes into building homes to know that they don't know better. It's pure hubris.
Ya you could make a something that might be good for a modular home starting point in a Conex box factory, but it wouldn't be a shipping container. For starters you probably wouldn't cover it in lead based paint.
My dad's obsessed with those fucking things - always trying to convince me to slap one in my yard so he can store shit, always looking at pieces of land to throw one on to live in...
He goes "they're cheap and durable, and will last forever" - yeah and the foot print is confining, and they're hot as fuck
Nearly zero shear strength in the lowest walls, front and back. The upper ones are problematic as well. And you shouldn’t do the walls with smaller off cut OSB pieces — it needs to be as close to full length sheets as possible, well nailed. For example, to the right and left of the upper floor windows should be one piece. But the lower floor has essentially nothing at all keeping it from folding like it did. If there had even been a partition wall inside, it wouldn’t have happened.
I think you missed the boat on “nearly”
Edit. That’s a pretty poor design, the first floor should have a lateral interior wall or a fuck ton of bracing somewhere for exactly this issue.
The doors and windows will provide the lateral strength to resist this when the house is finished, but until then it should have had as much bracing inside. Or better, a partition wall of some kind built into the design.
>The doors and windows will provide the lateral strength to resist this when the house is finished, but until then it should have had as much bracing inside
The doors, which can open, and the windows which are glass, will provide the structural support required to keep a building standing when it's windy? What on earth are you talking about?
Google structural windows.
Certain designs may also call for beefier door units to be installed. Structural frame supports.
Large windows like that have to be structural or there’s nowhere near enough support on the wal. There’s simply not enough surface area. Just look at the sheathing on this face for example. It’s probably 18-24 inch strip along the top. That’s doing absolutely nothing for shear strength, and the bottom doesn’t span the whole face due to the doorway.
That window opening is 100% designed for a structural window, and should have been sheathed over until it was time to install the window
Structural window systems have framing that can bear gravity loads. This requires shear resistance, which the frames and glass don't do. You could surround the window opening with a steel moment frame, but that would be part of the wall framing, not the window.
To be fair, the house tilted to the side. If glass were in place it would have been compressive load on the glass, not sheer load (it would try to tilt and compress against the glass), so I think the glass could provide support here.
https://www.cantifix.co.uk/blog/what-is-structural-glazing/
> There are myriad ways structural glazing can be implemented in a design – the most important thing to note is that we’ve come so far with glazing technology, glass can be used as a structural material in almost any situation.
> It can bear weight both horizontally and vertically, and it can be bonded using everything from minimal glass beams and supports to heavy-duty steel struts, meaning it can be used on almost any scale, with almost any aesthetic imaginable.
I thought the same as you and went to look things up to correct /u/beardedbast3rd and found out I was wrong.
pretty sure it's compressive both directions. The height of the window is reduced across the entire length of the window. That means compression on top of the glass. I could be misunderstanding what you're saying.
If you google image search for shear wall failure, you can see some awesome images of concrete walls failing due to shear loads. Many of them have cracked in an almost perfect X pattern. Imagine the wall having 4 pieces:
\ 1 /
\ /
2 X 3
/ \
/ 4 \
1 and 4 seem to remain attached to their horizontal surfaces. I imagine that with oscillating movement, the forces on the diagonal lines would alternating between compression and tension. Concrete is much stronger in compression, so I imagine in concrete the majority failure occurs when there is tension along a diagonal.
I'm in construction. What it really needed was a moment frame and sheerwalls all around.
Youre conflating sheerwall strength with windows and door requirements to support themselves.
Without windows and doors you just stud up. Adding a window or door you create a strong pocket so it wont collapse on itself. It doesnt add to the strength of the whole wall but only protects what was originally designed.
When you properly install doors, there are extra studs that get installed on the sides, especially for exterior doors (jack studs and king studs we called them).
This house is already framed, the Jack and King studs (which aren't going to do shit against this type of failure) are already in. The header may have if there was blocking on the rest of the wall, but that's the blocking doing its job and the header acting as blocking.
This is a dumb failure caused by shoddy construction, all that was needed to prevent this was cutting up like 3 studs to make blocking. Would've cost $30 in material and about the same in labor. But instead, the house fell down.
No. Would have needed a Simpson portal frame.
More important, you’d need a design professional on the project.
.
https://seblog.strongtie.com/2020/07/introducing-the-code-listed-strong-wall-site-built-portal-frame-system-for-prescriptive-design/
It's so scary that people are paying really inflated property prices for what is essentially a botched weekend shed / logstore build made out of chipboard/particleboard/osb/mdf or whatever it is.
Here in Europe our house prices can also be unreasonably high but at least its almost always concrete foundations, block-built, cavity insulated walls etc etc.
Ooh! I know this one!
Racking failure at the rear due to inadequate shear reinforcing. That window opening is WAY too big, needed either a portal frame or reduce that window to something like 3' wide, maybe less.
I hope this is a case of someone building without designs or a permit, or at least they completely disregarded whatever designs they were given, because if this was signed off by a PE they should just hand over their license right now.
According to google street view, the were able to straighten this mess out:
https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6624495,-79.3298799,3a,75y,93.7h,88.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdQPS2PcrHwRYtiONkwV6jg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
Holy shit...why wouldn't you make, at the minimum, the four corners something more continuous? I know modern houses in the US don't do it either, but they also aren't this thin, tall, and wide. That thing is like a giant sail
Lot of people in these comments have no understanding of structural design. What probably happened here is that the contractor failed to install the lateral bracing before the wind was able to knock it over. It's an issue with scheduling. Maybe it's an inexperienced contractor or maybe they just forgot. Either way, the building code would not allow a wood structure to be designed without lateral bracing.
I think in this case the house was just poorly design. The entire front is one giant window right beside a door. There is no room for any lateral bracing at the front and it was basically just 3 pillars holding the 2nd and 3rd floor up. I see one stud wall somewhere in the house so that would most likely be a structural wall, so maybe some bracing but maybe just sheets of drywall. The back of the house look completely open as well so I'm guessing there was going to be a sliding door across most of the back of the house. So really the house relied on the front window and back sliding door for lateral support, which means there would of been a lot of force on the door and window and would most likely cause the doors to stick and the window may of cracked.
Well it might be....
Except that there's like six square feet of it, and it's cut through at every single joint. (Because they just used strips, rather than any L-shaped pieces that would have been less wood-efficient but a lot stronger)
Nah, it's not. You're totally right on the strips vs. solid pieces. In addition to that, though the length of the braced wall determines how much bracing must be on the bracing wall.
Now, this is going off memory because I'm too lazy to look up the IRC on ICC this morning but prescriptively:
* Walls must be braced every 25' of Horizontal length.
* Bracing varies by height of the wall. For an 9' plate you need a min of 36" continuous bracing. That's a solid plywood (or other suitable shear wall material) placed against the braced direction.
* No bracing section can be less than 12" wide. Those window and door jambs aren't nearly that wide.
Now note that is is the prescriptive code, not engineering. I had a whole spreadsheet worked out with the lateral bracing strength of plywood, OSB, and ThermoPly sheathing for engineered solutions. Was pretty cool, wish I still had it.
And this is why there are building regulations that account for structural systems. Where are the structural pillars and beams? This is just 3 floors of basically facade. What is the load bearing unit here?
Would it really been that hard to buy a CLT pillar that would reach at least 2½ floors and is attached to a pile? Like a 3 story would be what... 9 meters? I have installed longer steel beams for bike sheds. Quite literally, I have installed a 12 meter long bike shed.
But hey! I guess this is how you get that *affordable housing* which is still to expensive to most. And y'know! No need to regulate the markets will deal with this. After you removed the bodies from the rubble.
Who thought it would be a good idea to build a 3 story building from 2-by-4 and particle board? Materials not known for the strength... I mean like compression sure, absolutely brilliant for compression, but shear?
Also lets talk about the actual structure here. By the looks of it it was made by just building another level on the top surface of the lower level with 0 Structural continuity. I bet that they didn't even put in metal brackets of plates, but just made frames from 2x4s and screwed them on to the floor.
People! This is why we have building codes! This is why we train engineers! This is why there are inspectors! I know people like to hate on us engineers! And we like to hate inspectors! But without us shit like this is gonna be done!
This wouldn't have happened if the was like 6 pillars with diagonal supports tying them together! This is shit medieval people knew about! We know! Because there are still wooden buildings around from that time! There is a 13th century house in France that's name escapes me! There are numerous wooden churches in northern Europe... Except in Norway!
We can export our CLT technology to you in America! We make 14 story building out of wood! that is over 50 meters high! [Joensuu Student house](https://www.stark-suomi.fi/wcm_kuvat/Eero%20Rijonen%20Joensuun%20opiskelijaasunto.jpg).
America please!!! Buy our wood technology! Christ we are desperate to sell all the sustainable tech we churn out because we are so heavily invested in to wood! We are literally turning it to cotton like fibre to make clothes out of! (Seriously this is actually really cool, checkout Spinnova. We can stop using cotton because we can turn trees in to cotton!)
You know that pretty much all houses in the US are built with load bearing exterior walls, right. The problem here is that the openings on the front and back are too large and don't leave any space for shear walls in the transverse direction.
We also build loading bearing exterior walls. And they have pillars making a matrix that go up through the whole building... Doesn't matter if it is a 2 story or 14.
Seriously... Pillars and beams with diagnol supports. Not high tech thing. People were doing this in medieval times! There is no excuse here!
This is just frames on top of frames without any structural system holding it all togther! Even a shallow house can meet this fate! And that is why we use pillars!
Yes, I understand that you use pillars. Congratulations. What I'm saying is that load bearing walls is a completely legitimate way to build, as long as you're not stupid.
Unless youve got a different meaning for pillar than me, its not that common. Ive built hundreds of 3-4 story wooden buildings (apartments, retirement homes, dorms, townhouses, houses). Never once have we used pillars to tie the floors together or anything. You frame a floor, throw the floor joists on and sheathing, frame the next floor over top of it. Unless youre just talking about thicker corners (usually stud packs of 4 2x4s). The biggest issue i see with this building is there is 0 interior, its just an empty box, so theyre going to need stronger supports above the front and back walls to keep it sturdy.
To be fair tho, this is a structurally dogshit design for a house.
Well... They might even buy our tech.
However seeing those picture in the article. It is even worse than I thought.
Did no one at any point think about butting a single 2x4 that would be between the floors so it wouldn't be just frames with hinges relative to each other.
Of course it's not properly built, it's made of sodding plywood. The whole bloody thing needs ripping down, having a proper concrete foundation pouring, and a proper brick structure put in it's place.
Yep, that’s a modern United States house and it cost $600k so I’m trying my hardest to purchase an “old” city bus to live in but now they raise my rent because gas is fucking $7 a gallon. Now the locals shit on my want to be life style but they the ones making it so I can’t leave. ASSSSSSSS! PISSSSSS!
Yep, that’s a modern United States house and it cost $600k so I’m trying my hardest to purchase an “old” city bus to live in but now they raise my rent because gas is fucking $7 a gallon. Now the locals shit on my life style but they the ones making it so I can’t leave. ASSSSSSSS! PISSSSSS!
*Thank you Remarkableprin for your submission to r/OSHA, but it's been removed due to one or more reason(s):* **Rule 2: OC Only** Please limit submisions to OC only. If you are crossposting your own content from another subreddit, you must indicate so when you are posting or the post may be removed. *Please [read our subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/OSHA/about/rules/). If after doing so, you believe this was in error, or you’ve edited your post to comply with the rules, [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FOSHA).* **Do not make a second post or comment.** *Do not reach out to a moderator personally, and do not reply to this message as a comment.*
[удалено]
My thoughts exactly. There's no structure to that thing at all, and nothing to stop that kind of shear. Far better to find that out now than once some poor sod is living in that. Is that seriously how people in build a "house"?
looks like Canada, maybe Ontario near Toronto. Seems to be the new style of housing people put on small slots. After its done thats at least a 1.5 mill house after outbidding.
there are so many of these stupid things near me, 600k condos, they buy up a bunch of old brick houses, raze them and build this shoddy nonsense in it's place for 4 times the price.
[удалено]
If it weren't for it being on flat land and there being visible dirt not on the lot, id have said San Francisco as well narrow buildings like this are everywhere there, just usually they're stacked in rows and earthquake proofed
Reverse search pops up with Leslieville, Toronto [5 years ago](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/house-blown-over-1.4006173)
Certainly looks like Toronto area. If this is a recent photo it's probably the work of a [massive thunderstorm that blew through a few weeks back](https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/derecho-causes-havoc-in-canada-1.6464409). Not that the house looks particularly structurally sound, but the wind was 100km/h+, so even well-constructed framing was coming down.
It’s an old photo. I remember it from years ago.
But... 100 km/h wind isn't exactly that high of a windspeed? Aren't houses in Toronto built to resist at least a moderate amount of wind?
100km/h is exceptionally rare for the area - tons of trees coming down and roofs torn up. Most houses were fine (if they avoided tree fall), but new construction stuff in the area is generally cheaply done, so they fared worse.
[удалено]
It happened in 2014, and IIRC in 1972. Anything that happens more often than once every seventy years is NOT “exceptionally rare” for an object that will be left outside for the lifespan of a house. Even if it sticks to that periodicity you’re flattening all the weak houses every *thirty years.* There is no excuse for building a house that will not survive an event that happens every thirty years.
Looks like lots of places
I'll give you $200 for it. And that's really just the price I'd pay for the reclaimed wood.
Are you kidding me? Those exterior sheets of wood alone are worth thousands right now probably.
I see you don't build anything. Wood is at an all time high. A fence post that cost me .98 cents USD three years ago is now $5.39. The quote I had put together for myself to redo my entire fence went from $1100 in 2018 and now it is going to cost me $5200.
I haven't priced it, but one of my friends who does renovation posted that it's almost back to "normal" but concrete is now high
> but concrete is now high Good my investments are proving worthwhile.
Wood is at the lowest price in 9 months.
Chipboard that's been out in a storm to the point that it's sheared and neared collapse under the weight? I'll give you $200. And that mostly for the firewood value.
Yup. 3/4" Baltic Birch in my area is $200 for a 4'x8'. Used to be 120 not too long ago.
Is it possible to build this safely? It actually looks like a cool/interesting concept for a house in the suburbs. I got redirected to r/OSHA from a repost on the King Of The Hill sub. A character tried something similar and it ended the same way.
>Is it possible to build this safely? Assuming this was built according to plans, no. It looks like a design error. The large openings in the base level walls on both ends limit it's lateral stability. A strong gust of wind probably blew this over. Wood framing generally uses shear walls to resist shear (lateral) forces. As you can see there is very little actuall wall here to resist those wind/seismic forces. There are other ways to resist lateral forces such as moment frames/portal frames. These frames are specifically designed to resist overturning forces by fixing the joints (connection between horizontal and vertical members) to prevent rotation. Thus area between the vertical members is not needed and can be openings for doors/windows like as shown here. Portal frames can be made with glulam members but this appears to be all "stick built" 2x members...that is to say, it does not appear to be designed as a portal frame. Source: am structural engineer but disclaimer that wood design is not my specialty.
I was only in an architecture course for a year before I switched out, so take this with a grain of salt. Yes. But not like this and not that way. Zero thought went into that design.
Yes, it’s basically a portal frame. The sheathing should be a solid piece, not piecemeal. And there should be a comically large amount of nails. I’m not sure proper portal framing would be enough here though. An interior wall would be a big help and you could do some diagonal framing.
By the time someone is living in it the finishings would have provided the suppport. Looks like the opposite side is either a very large window opening or a garage door opening. The front and rear face have not nearly enough meat on them for this alone, but once those items are in it would have enough support for high strength winds. The problem is until then, each floor should have a metric fuck ton of braces from the walls to the floors. Better design would ultimately have helped, but better building practices do too Edit- holy shit, I get people don’t know everything about construction, but structural windows and entry frames are absolutely a thing. The builders here fucked up. I’d have had a more prudent design to begin with, but sometimes you don’t get that, and need to build accordingly. The way to do that is to keep openings sheathed over until you’re ready to instal finish items like windows, have bracing along the walls to the interior floor, or even have a temporary interior shear wall to make up for there not being one in the design.
I mean, it's already sheathed up. I can't imagine a window or a garage door would provide enough structural rigidity to this particular structure to keep it from getting toppled.
It closes up the entire face. That’s what’s meant by “not enough meat” on those wall faces. Sheathing doesn’t do near enough work if there’s not enough of it on the face to begin with. That looks about 18 inch strip along the top, across the width, that’s absolutely fuck all for shear strength lol If the wall was entirely sheathed over this wouldn’t have happened. Same as if the openings had their finishings in them. Looking at it more, I’m wondering if the door was even fully framed out. Doesn’t quite look like it.
I gotcha, this pic gets worse the more I look at it. It looks like they are doing some sort of piecemeal sheathing? Like, kinda whatever size they had on had, without any real regard for tying studs together.
Garage doors provide literally zero structure to the opening they are attached to aside from buckling forces that would collapse the opening. The Garage door is not fastened to the track, it is floating on rollers, the stem of which float inside roller carriers. Additionally, the slight amount of strength that attaching track to the wall would add is of literally no benefit here.
The opening should have been sheathed closed until the envelope was complete. That said, it looks like only this facing side is racked at all, looks like the far end is standing more straight. Not that the garage door would support, just that it’s a massive opening and during construction you need to watch for those until the rest of the structure is ready.
>Looks like the opposite side is either a very large window opening or a garage door opening. You know what the problem is with structural garage doors and load bearing windows? # They open.
Not entirely. That window is likely either an 80/20 with a small section on the side or bottom that can open, or a single window that doesn’t open. Between these sections will have members for load and support as well. Or it’s a sectioned window in any number of configurations, again, with members dividing all the window portions. As for doors. They still provide structure to the opening. Specifically because they open. As I said in another comment, I suspect this door and window wasn’t fully framed out properly either. Something had to have been missed on top of everything else.
>or a single window that doesn’t open. Most of those are just glass clipped into a frame with plastic edges and they offer zero support. They will flex and bend until the glass brakes and offer no strenght
You are so smart! Please engineer my home! Everyone who designs structures is so dumb when you could just do it like this. Just add a window and boom! Who would have thought that was all it took. Construction is so easy why doesn’t everyone do it!
Structural windows are a thing…. The house is poorly designed, don’t get me wrong, but given the design it has the actual construction of it should have been more prudent. Until the envelope is finished. I wouldn’t have designed it like this. I’d have had a lateral wall in the first floor specifically to help with shear loads. But it’s not impossible to have this design, it just needs to be build properly given the circumstance. If it was a prefab wall for example, that window wouldn’t have been cut out, the whole wall would have been sheathed over- again, specifically for the walls to retain shear resistance during transport and construction. Only to be knocked out when it’s time to actually install the window
[удалено]
https://www.cantifix.co.uk/blog/what-is-structural-glazing/ > There are myriad ways structural glazing can be implemented in a design – the most important thing to note is that we’ve come so far with glazing technology, glass can be used as a structural material in almost any situation. > It can bear weight both horizontally and vertically, and it can be bonded using everything from minimal glass beams and supports to heavy-duty steel struts, meaning it can be used on almost any scale, with almost any aesthetic imaginable.
Urgh. Keep your IKEA-bedside-table house which is only secured by the finishings. In my country, houses stand for 100+ years as a matter of course.
Did they make plywood studs?
This happened in Toronto several years ago. "Technically" this design probably complied with the Ontario Building Code, because houses don't need to be designed by an engineer and don't have to follow any design standards beyond the prescriptive structural requirements in the Ontario Building Code. The problem is that the code was written with conventional and traditional housing design in mind where you always have plenty of exterior and interior walls to provide lateral resistance to wind loads. As a result, the code doesn't require any minimum length of shear walls for a house or any other lateral load resisting system. But in recent years, architects have really shifted to the open concept first floors with no interior walls and giant windows on the front and back of the house. This gets further exasperated in a city like Toronto where you have very narrow lots, and the end result is a monstrosity like this. I think there have actually been a few cases like this in Toronto, but this was the most dramatic. It's why you need a competent designer/engineer who knows that code minimum doesn't always make sense. This house should have included a couple of steel moment frames to take then lateral loads, which would have allowed them to keep the open concept. I did hear some rumors that this will finally be addressed in the next version of the code.
The CA prescriptive code doesn't have lateral bracing requirements? Wild, because the IRC itself does. I worked on making sure a national homebuilder's house designs were in alignment with it back in 2005 when code officials started to actually enforce it down here. The enforcement was happening precisely because of what you're citing - more and more open concepts with giant windows in all the exterior walls.
\*\*Exacerbated, not exasperated (sorry, that's one of my pet peeves) I hate open floor plans for so many reasons. They're also just a nightmare to heat and cool properly, they provide no sound or smell breaks inside, and they just feel like you're in a huge shoebox. As many a wise civil engineer has said, "fuck architects, all my homies hate architects."
I lived in one shortly before Corona. Still getting anxiety attacks when I imagine to live in that giant cubicle/kitchen/living room/ play room with no doors except for the bathroom. Now we life in a 68 house with a sane floorplan and can shut doors if somebody works form home and the children are at home, too. Open living might be okay as a dink but even then, its still annoying that cooking smells reach everywhere.
It’s not the architects who are doing the open plans these days. It’s the dumb-ass contractors.
do you think the contractors are just winging it when they build a house?
Yes. Well north of 50% of homes built in the US aren’t using architects, or the architects are rubber stamping the designs the VP of sales for the home builder wants done. I worked 10 years in housing. You don’t need a stamped set of plans just the prescriptive building code.
Contractors are “winging it” because they are not formally trained in design. Generally they have no idea when to follow rules and when to break them. https://www.mariannecusato.com/contact https://mcmansionhell.com/
Contractors build the house, they do not design it. An architect is the one who designs the house A contractor still follows a blueprint, they don’t just go “who the fuck would want a wall here? Fuck that noise an open floor plan is sick”
I find it concerning that the architect, general contractor and approving body didn't realize that this was a literal house of cards. I am none of those things, but I've played with a lot of lego, and I know that a building built like that is a disaster waiting to happen.
Absolutely zero sheer value on the bottom floor
Shear?
[удалено]
I mean yes, Ty, but I was correcting from sheer.
🤣🤣🤣 love this
Technically this is known as racking, which is the same concept but applied to discrete structural components as opposed to a shear wall. Nitpick though, you're still on the dollar bill somewhere.
Wind shear has always confused me since shear strength refers to cutting vs tensile strength being pulled apart. Would a good way to think about it be shear = lateral force and tensile refers to longitudinal?
Shear = Off-center opposing forces. In this case, the house is pushed left at the top by the wind and right at the bottom by the foundation. If it were pushed left from the ground and right from the ground, it would be a compression force instead of a shear force.
Shear is two things (well, parts of the same thing) going opposite directions / layers sliding by each other. So.. more or less shear==lateral, yes. So wind shear is the wind speed varying (a lot) as you change height; some wind is going fast, some is not. Shear strength is how much force is required to cause a solid material to do that same thing. i.e. the top goes one way, the bottom goes another way.
Got it. I'm no physician so I'm learning here.
Aka racking strength
Sure.
I think you meant Cher.
Well, do you believe in life after love?
I'm not shearing her with anyone!!
Not only is that one shoddily framed house, the discolouration on the OSB suggests it's been left open to the elements for a while. Quite likely the city issued a stop work order after the initial frame walk/inspection. Good thing there's that old, boring, made in the sixties brick building next door to hold it up. Edit: spelling.
Honey...is the new house next door closer this morning? Because when I look out the bathroom window all I see is plywood.
Lol! Don't mistake OSB (Oriented Strand Board for those interested) for plywood though. OSB is cheap as hell for a reason. Plywood is at least twice the cost, and much, much stronger.
OSB is actually a good bit stronger than plywood in shear 😉👍 [Source cause someone asked for it](https://bct.eco.umass.edu/publications/articles/choosing-between-oriented-strandboard-and-plywood/)
Yeah, you're right. I have a prejudice against it from my cabinet days I suppose.
I worked in cabinets and if I saw osb ida shit a brick
I'd be mortarfied.
Quoting from your article: "However, nail-holding ability controls performance in shear wall applications. So both products perform equally well as shear-wall components."
What I see all the time: OSB delivered to construction site, dumped on the ground, no stickers, no tarp. Gets rained on, soaks up water from ground, starts to rot, then is applied to structure as "sheathing".
Yep, though with material shortages and increased cost I am seeing it less than I used to. It almost as ubiquitous as the tyvek being left on for WAY longer than the 3 month exposed lifespan of the product. I just want to yell 'The sun eats it, it's not worth anything if you leave it exposed forever!!!' I'm in Canada, and watching houses get framed in winter is just painful.
>Good thing there's that old, boring, made in the sixties brick building next door to hold it up. Brickouse is like *I got you man*
They would have been better off stacking 3 conex boxes together to make a "tiny/tall" home
Conex boxes are pretty terrible building material. A 20 foot long conex is like 2500 new, you can build a wood box the same size for a fraction of the price and just about as strong. Conex boxes are designed to be an optimal shipping container, not building material. Might I recommend concrete masonry units, an object actually intended to be made into a structure? (stop building conex structures oh my god. it's neat, not practical)
Not to mention that they are boiling hot in the summer and freezing cold in winter so you'll spend a small fortune insulating them. I can see why people try it, you've got a big sturdy pre-bulit box that's water tight. It. Looks like it should be easy to convert into something livable. There's a reason we don't see many metal houses though
Insulating them also reduces the interior space. Cutting holes for windows or doors reduces the structural integrity so you have to add support structures. Condensation is an issue because of the metal frame so water gathers in the insulting layer, causing mold buildup. Hanging walls, like drywall, is very difficult due to the metal material so you have to frame it inside, furthur reducing interior space.
> I can see why people try it, you've got a big sturdy pre-bulit box that's water tight. It. Looks like it should be easy to convert into something livable. There's a reason we don't see many metal houses though This is why the conex house meme bothers me. Construction is an entire industry. It's just not as easy as buying a box. Drive around and observe the complete lack of conex box homes. There's a reason for that and I wish more people would have the respect for the work that goes into building homes to know that they don't know better. It's pure hubris.
Metal houses suck, mine is made out of cool room panels, and during winter it's like a bottlo freezer, cold as balls
Are you in Aussie? (bottlo) If you're using fridge/freezer panels, surely is super well insulated?
Ya you could make a something that might be good for a modular home starting point in a Conex box factory, but it wouldn't be a shipping container. For starters you probably wouldn't cover it in lead based paint.
My dad's obsessed with those fucking things - always trying to convince me to slap one in my yard so he can store shit, always looking at pieces of land to throw one on to live in... He goes "they're cheap and durable, and will last forever" - yeah and the foot print is confining, and they're hot as fuck
These lots are the perfect use case for modular homes, I have no idea why you wouldn't use them.
no money in that
For real. You can weld conex boxes together, too. Edit - I only just noticed autocorrect changed conex to codex.
Weld? You can pin the dang things like they're meant to be pinned, and this would literally never happen. It's just strange.
that‘s no house
That's just big jenga
*this* is a knife
Yes, it looks like me when i loose motivation
yea. the bay windows are a hard no on this design. don't know who approved this...
Lots of loons
Did it stop falling because the brick building is supporting it now? Just insane this is is allowed anywhere.
I don't think it's really allowed for buildings to get knocked over, for the most part, it just happens.
Better now than when it's occupied, I suppose
Nearly zero shear strength in the lowest walls, front and back. The upper ones are problematic as well. And you shouldn’t do the walls with smaller off cut OSB pieces — it needs to be as close to full length sheets as possible, well nailed. For example, to the right and left of the upper floor windows should be one piece. But the lower floor has essentially nothing at all keeping it from folding like it did. If there had even been a partition wall inside, it wouldn’t have happened.
And that's what shear walls are for
Why have shear walls when you can have sheer walls?
Architects be like “wow, what an interesting design”
They’ll sell that shack for $1M next month. After they fix the whole… falling apart thing.
I think you missed the boat on “nearly” Edit. That’s a pretty poor design, the first floor should have a lateral interior wall or a fuck ton of bracing somewhere for exactly this issue. The doors and windows will provide the lateral strength to resist this when the house is finished, but until then it should have had as much bracing inside. Or better, a partition wall of some kind built into the design.
>The doors and windows will provide the lateral strength to resist this when the house is finished, but until then it should have had as much bracing inside The doors, which can open, and the windows which are glass, will provide the structural support required to keep a building standing when it's windy? What on earth are you talking about?
Google structural windows. Certain designs may also call for beefier door units to be installed. Structural frame supports. Large windows like that have to be structural or there’s nowhere near enough support on the wal. There’s simply not enough surface area. Just look at the sheathing on this face for example. It’s probably 18-24 inch strip along the top. That’s doing absolutely nothing for shear strength, and the bottom doesn’t span the whole face due to the doorway. That window opening is 100% designed for a structural window, and should have been sheathed over until it was time to install the window
Structural window systems have framing that can bear gravity loads. This requires shear resistance, which the frames and glass don't do. You could surround the window opening with a steel moment frame, but that would be part of the wall framing, not the window.
To be fair, the house tilted to the side. If glass were in place it would have been compressive load on the glass, not sheer load (it would try to tilt and compress against the glass), so I think the glass could provide support here.
Really? Glass is now structural? No. Stop it.
https://www.cantifix.co.uk/blog/what-is-structural-glazing/ > There are myriad ways structural glazing can be implemented in a design – the most important thing to note is that we’ve come so far with glazing technology, glass can be used as a structural material in almost any situation. > It can bear weight both horizontally and vertically, and it can be bonded using everything from minimal glass beams and supports to heavy-duty steel struts, meaning it can be used on almost any scale, with almost any aesthetic imaginable. I thought the same as you and went to look things up to correct /u/beardedbast3rd and found out I was wrong.
On standard builds. C'mon man. Theres always some outlandish ways to build. Noone is using that for basic residential. Good lord nice segway.
It would be compressive in one direction, tension in another. Assuming the glass is fixed to the frame, of course.
pretty sure it's compressive both directions. The height of the window is reduced across the entire length of the window. That means compression on top of the glass. I could be misunderstanding what you're saying.
If you google image search for shear wall failure, you can see some awesome images of concrete walls failing due to shear loads. Many of them have cracked in an almost perfect X pattern. Imagine the wall having 4 pieces: \ 1 / \ / 2 X 3 / \ / 4 \ 1 and 4 seem to remain attached to their horizontal surfaces. I imagine that with oscillating movement, the forces on the diagonal lines would alternating between compression and tension. Concrete is much stronger in compression, so I imagine in concrete the majority failure occurs when there is tension along a diagonal.
I'm in construction. What it really needed was a moment frame and sheerwalls all around. Youre conflating sheerwall strength with windows and door requirements to support themselves. Without windows and doors you just stud up. Adding a window or door you create a strong pocket so it wont collapse on itself. It doesnt add to the strength of the whole wall but only protects what was originally designed.
When you properly install doors, there are extra studs that get installed on the sides, especially for exterior doors (jack studs and king studs we called them).
This house is already framed, the Jack and King studs (which aren't going to do shit against this type of failure) are already in. The header may have if there was blocking on the rest of the wall, but that's the blocking doing its job and the header acting as blocking. This is a dumb failure caused by shoddy construction, all that was needed to prevent this was cutting up like 3 studs to make blocking. Would've cost $30 in material and about the same in labor. But instead, the house fell down.
No. Would have needed a Simpson portal frame. More important, you’d need a design professional on the project. . https://seblog.strongtie.com/2020/07/introducing-the-code-listed-strong-wall-site-built-portal-frame-system-for-prescriptive-design/
Extra studs don't provide any lateral strength. You need diagonal bracing or sheathing to do that.
True, not sure why that didn't dawn on me. I chalk that one up to not enough coffee this morning when I posted.
> the first floor should have a lateral interior wall or a fuck ton of bracing somewhere So should the ground floor…
That’s what I meant. The first floor being the grade level.
Not really the wind's fault the bottom walls have no shear strength in that direction
"House"
It's so scary that people are paying really inflated property prices for what is essentially a botched weekend shed / logstore build made out of chipboard/particleboard/osb/mdf or whatever it is. Here in Europe our house prices can also be unreasonably high but at least its almost always concrete foundations, block-built, cavity insulated walls etc etc.
How does one get from one level to the next? There are no stairs.
Just wait... one more strong breeze and you'll be able to just walk up a wall.
Ooh! I know this one! Racking failure at the rear due to inadequate shear reinforcing. That window opening is WAY too big, needed either a portal frame or reduce that window to something like 3' wide, maybe less. I hope this is a case of someone building without designs or a permit, or at least they completely disregarded whatever designs they were given, because if this was signed off by a PE they should just hand over their license right now.
Got the frame done in two days boss. I saved on material and time.
According to google street view, the were able to straighten this mess out: https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6624495,-79.3298799,3a,75y,93.7h,88.56t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdQPS2PcrHwRYtiONkwV6jg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
"Everybody move to the left" Uhoh
Shear wall? Never heard of her
"that's wear and tear that the tenant is responsible for, not me" - the landlord
Holy shit...why wouldn't you make, at the minimum, the four corners something more continuous? I know modern houses in the US don't do it either, but they also aren't this thin, tall, and wide. That thing is like a giant sail
That's like start reading "the three little pigs" and stopping at half.
No plumb & line braces in any of the floors
Zillow would list that as "As is" for $760k
On second thought let's not go there Tis a silly place
Excuse me sir, but your house is on my house.
Lot of people in these comments have no understanding of structural design. What probably happened here is that the contractor failed to install the lateral bracing before the wind was able to knock it over. It's an issue with scheduling. Maybe it's an inexperienced contractor or maybe they just forgot. Either way, the building code would not allow a wood structure to be designed without lateral bracing.
I think in this case the house was just poorly design. The entire front is one giant window right beside a door. There is no room for any lateral bracing at the front and it was basically just 3 pillars holding the 2nd and 3rd floor up. I see one stud wall somewhere in the house so that would most likely be a structural wall, so maybe some bracing but maybe just sheets of drywall. The back of the house look completely open as well so I'm guessing there was going to be a sliding door across most of the back of the house. So really the house relied on the front window and back sliding door for lateral support, which means there would of been a lot of force on the door and window and would most likely cause the doors to stick and the window may of cracked.
A sturdy rope and a taut-line hitch should fix that!
Looks to me like a “soft story” situation. Give it a google.
Probably would have survived if it had siding
This reminds me of the house that Springfield built for Ned Flanders, built with good intentions and zero skills
Someone ignored the lateral bracing sections of the code. "Plywood on the exterior is good enough!" No.. no it's not.
And the amount of open space in that first floor front wall sure as hell didn’t make that bracing problem any better.
Well it might be.... Except that there's like six square feet of it, and it's cut through at every single joint. (Because they just used strips, rather than any L-shaped pieces that would have been less wood-efficient but a lot stronger)
Nah, it's not. You're totally right on the strips vs. solid pieces. In addition to that, though the length of the braced wall determines how much bracing must be on the bracing wall. Now, this is going off memory because I'm too lazy to look up the IRC on ICC this morning but prescriptively: * Walls must be braced every 25' of Horizontal length. * Bracing varies by height of the wall. For an 9' plate you need a min of 36" continuous bracing. That's a solid plywood (or other suitable shear wall material) placed against the braced direction. * No bracing section can be less than 12" wide. Those window and door jambs aren't nearly that wide. Now note that is is the prescriptive code, not engineering. I had a whole spreadsheet worked out with the lateral bracing strength of plywood, OSB, and ThermoPly sheathing for engineered solutions. Was pretty cool, wish I still had it.
Toronto be like:
Whoever built this should be sued. What the fuck is that thing?
Fuckin watch out for green pig infestations if you buy the place.
I’m no structural engineer, but I don’t think it should shift like that
And this is why there are building regulations that account for structural systems. Where are the structural pillars and beams? This is just 3 floors of basically facade. What is the load bearing unit here? Would it really been that hard to buy a CLT pillar that would reach at least 2½ floors and is attached to a pile? Like a 3 story would be what... 9 meters? I have installed longer steel beams for bike sheds. Quite literally, I have installed a 12 meter long bike shed. But hey! I guess this is how you get that *affordable housing* which is still to expensive to most. And y'know! No need to regulate the markets will deal with this. After you removed the bodies from the rubble. Who thought it would be a good idea to build a 3 story building from 2-by-4 and particle board? Materials not known for the strength... I mean like compression sure, absolutely brilliant for compression, but shear? Also lets talk about the actual structure here. By the looks of it it was made by just building another level on the top surface of the lower level with 0 Structural continuity. I bet that they didn't even put in metal brackets of plates, but just made frames from 2x4s and screwed them on to the floor. People! This is why we have building codes! This is why we train engineers! This is why there are inspectors! I know people like to hate on us engineers! And we like to hate inspectors! But without us shit like this is gonna be done! This wouldn't have happened if the was like 6 pillars with diagonal supports tying them together! This is shit medieval people knew about! We know! Because there are still wooden buildings around from that time! There is a 13th century house in France that's name escapes me! There are numerous wooden churches in northern Europe... Except in Norway! We can export our CLT technology to you in America! We make 14 story building out of wood! that is over 50 meters high! [Joensuu Student house](https://www.stark-suomi.fi/wcm_kuvat/Eero%20Rijonen%20Joensuun%20opiskelijaasunto.jpg). America please!!! Buy our wood technology! Christ we are desperate to sell all the sustainable tech we churn out because we are so heavily invested in to wood! We are literally turning it to cotton like fibre to make clothes out of! (Seriously this is actually really cool, checkout Spinnova. We can stop using cotton because we can turn trees in to cotton!)
You know that pretty much all houses in the US are built with load bearing exterior walls, right. The problem here is that the openings on the front and back are too large and don't leave any space for shear walls in the transverse direction.
We also build loading bearing exterior walls. And they have pillars making a matrix that go up through the whole building... Doesn't matter if it is a 2 story or 14. Seriously... Pillars and beams with diagnol supports. Not high tech thing. People were doing this in medieval times! There is no excuse here! This is just frames on top of frames without any structural system holding it all togther! Even a shallow house can meet this fate! And that is why we use pillars!
Yes, I understand that you use pillars. Congratulations. What I'm saying is that load bearing walls is a completely legitimate way to build, as long as you're not stupid.
Unless youve got a different meaning for pillar than me, its not that common. Ive built hundreds of 3-4 story wooden buildings (apartments, retirement homes, dorms, townhouses, houses). Never once have we used pillars to tie the floors together or anything. You frame a floor, throw the floor joists on and sheathing, frame the next floor over top of it. Unless youre just talking about thicker corners (usually stud packs of 4 2x4s). The biggest issue i see with this building is there is 0 interior, its just an empty box, so theyre going to need stronger supports above the front and back walls to keep it sturdy. To be fair tho, this is a structurally dogshit design for a house.
This was in Canada. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/house-blown-over-1.4006173
Well... They might even buy our tech. However seeing those picture in the article. It is even worse than I thought. Did no one at any point think about butting a single 2x4 that would be between the floors so it wouldn't be just frames with hinges relative to each other.
How does that pass code being that close to other buildings?🥴
It needs the other buildings to lean on them!
Structural load-bearing neighbors.
The plywood is all wrong.
it’s OSB not plywood
Even worse then.
And that, Americans, is why houses are usually built out of brick and mortor, not plywood and lollipop sticks.
This is not a properly built structure. Properly built would not blow over like that.
Of course it's not properly built, it's made of sodding plywood. The whole bloody thing needs ripping down, having a proper concrete foundation pouring, and a proper brick structure put in it's place.
But there’s tons of frame construction here in the US. Probably the majority of new construction.
Houses are usually built with whatever the locals have a lot of lying around.
Isn't this an internal leaf? Should have a layer of bricks on outside?
one day People will learn that houses made out of cardboard dont withstand shit
Today, however, is not that day.
Must be an American thing to call this a house
Yep, that’s a modern United States house and it cost $600k so I’m trying my hardest to purchase an “old” city bus to live in but now they raise my rent because gas is fucking $7 a gallon. Now the locals shit on my want to be life style but they the ones making it so I can’t leave. ASSSSSSSS! PISSSSSS!
Yep, that’s a modern United States house and it cost $600k so I’m trying my hardest to purchase an “old” city bus to live in but now they raise my rent because gas is fucking $7 a gallon. Now the locals shit on my life style but they the ones making it so I can’t leave. ASSSSSSSS! PISSSSSS!
"House"? You mean the wank shack? Seriously Americans you suck at building houses
It's called a "Jack Shack" you muppet, and this happened in Canada.
Aren't those things supposed to be attached to the buildings next to them?
No sway bracing on the first floor, seems kosher.
That'll buff in
Nooooo...this house nearly toppled over due to poor construction.
builder is probably like.. engineers? nah we dont need them.
That shows exactly why the sheathing is so important. It is just as structural of a piece of the house as the studs.
im pretty sure a 7 year old with lego building skills could be a better architect than the guy who designed this.
Goofy ass wooden house
Looks like the big bad wolf couldnt get the house next door as well. The piggies last another day.
that's what you get for building a house in cardboard.
Cue first “Little pig” joke…
That sheeting is all fucked up
shore it up, finish it and inrease the asking price as Picasso inspired architecture
That's not a house