Pie has consulted on catastrophic and large loss events across the United States, including hundreds of projects along the gulf coast following hurricanes Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Wilma and Ike. Pie also assesses damage from tornadoes, snow load, and hail throughout the Rocky Mountain States, Texas and the midwest. Our building science services include: new construction building enclosure commissioning and retro-commissioning, design phase consultation and review, on-site quality assurance observations, large building air barrier testing with infrared diagnostics, fenestration and curtain wall air and water field performance testing, and forensic evaluations. Pie currently consults on the US Army Corps of Engineers projects throughout the country.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Pre-Engineered Metal Buildings: Designs and Installation
Date: April 15-18, 2012 - PLRB Conference
Click here to find more information on PLRB 2012
Matt Blackmer of Pie Consulting & Engineering and Philip Ambrose, Executive General Adjuster of Engle Martin & Associates have been invited back for a repeat performance. This year’s presentation will include all new case studies and more updates.
What Are Metal Buildings and Why Are We Seeing So Many Failures of these Structures?
Attend this class and you will see.
To read the full article on PEMBs click here
The damage to systems by wind occurs not only in the Hurricane prone coastal regions of the United States, but also in a number of additional high wind regions and special wind regions within the United States. The damage is not always associated with just shingle loss, but subsequent damage to the underlying structures and possibly even damage to adjacent buildings.
Gable Wall Construction –
For gable-framed roofs, the gable walls are usually placed on top of the single-story brick veneer, and the 2x studs are then nailed to the adjacent bearing wall and the edge rafters. Unfortunately, the placement of the studs on top of the brick veneer makes the gable wall itself susceptible to lateral movement, especially outward forces against the wall framing. These nails are then more susceptible to withdrawal, with subsequent separation of the gable wall from the veneer and the roof framing.
Vaulted Ceiling Framing –
For homes that are generally older than 20 years, vaulted ceilings were typically achieved with 2x ceiling joists that are nailed at one end to the sloped rafters and then placed on top of an interior-bearing wall. Because of the slope of the vaulted roof assembly, these joists are typically not nailed either to the bearing wall or to adjacent, flat ceiling joists. Therefore, these joists are not fully anchored at the interior end, and once the roof experiences uplift from relatively large wind forces, the ceiling joists als experience upward movement, with some resultant distress to ceiling drywall and adjacent drywall.
Missing Intermediate Rafter Bracing –
Many older homes that have 2x rafter framing do not have the metal clip connection at the bearing ends of the rafters, i.e. “hurricane clips.” These clips help resist uplift on the roof system, and are commonly utilized in new construction. However, this was not a requirement on older homes, and so nailing of rafters to the bearing walls, ridge members and intermediate bracing is needed to resist large uplift loads. However, many older homes have missing intermediate bracing due to the installation of some HVAC systems that required the temporary removal of this intermediate bracing. This bracing should be replaced as part of the complete installation of these conditioned-air systems, but many times this re-installation was not done. Consequently, many ceiling joists experienced some uplift, with resulting damage to the drywall ceiling and adjacent walls.
These are just some of the common items of distress that we have observed during our site observations to many residential structures after high wind events.