Loft truss Repairs / Replacement
Discussion
After finally moving into our new house, i managed to get my head into the loft.
i've just found that the prev occupiers decided that they wanted to move the loft hatch and in doing so, removed part of a single W loft truss.
As you can see from the photo, they removed the bottom part of the first V and then ran a re enforcement across.
i've already making calls to the chaps that did the housing survey but expecting the usual we don't check that, but in the mean time - what do i do now !
i've just found that the prev occupiers decided that they wanted to move the loft hatch and in doing so, removed part of a single W loft truss.
As you can see from the photo, they removed the bottom part of the first V and then ran a re enforcement across.
i've already making calls to the chaps that did the housing survey but expecting the usual we don't check that, but in the mean time - what do i do now !
Don't know what level of survey you had carried out, but whoever did it should go back to flipping burgers. This should have been reported upon. As the previous contributor has said, it appears that some structural precautions have been taken to try and compensate for the removal of the strut/brace and I don't think you have too much to be concerned about.
These roof trusses are CAD and take into consideration wind loading, snow loading, the imposed loads of the roof tiles, etc, but don't have a huge margin of safety to allow DIY alterations.
You have good grounds for a complaint.
These roof trusses are CAD and take into consideration wind loading, snow loading, the imposed loads of the roof tiles, etc, but don't have a huge margin of safety to allow DIY alterations.
You have good grounds for a complaint.
Agree with both previous posters, as well as trimming the bracing out, forming the hatch opening has also cut a section from the ceiling chord. Trusses are designed by standard software and the small size of timbers relies on the whole truss acting as a frame, cutting any bits out renders the truss to failure in design terms. In reality it hasn’t failed because any load is being shared by the neighbouring trusses.
If you had your own homebuyers or full survey done and it wasn’t flagged up, you have grounds to return to them because that’s a proper bodge done by somebody that didn’t realise what they were doing or knew how trussed roofs work. It needs sorting though because it’ll come up the next time it’s surveyed. My advice would be to engage a local structural engineer, and ask them to produce a detail to reinstate the truss back to its original arrangement based on lapping and bolting new timbers to the stubs of what’s left. It’ll be an evident repair, but it will address the current shortcoming.
If you had your own homebuyers or full survey done and it wasn’t flagged up, you have grounds to return to them because that’s a proper bodge done by somebody that didn’t realise what they were doing or knew how trussed roofs work. It needs sorting though because it’ll come up the next time it’s surveyed. My advice would be to engage a local structural engineer, and ask them to produce a detail to reinstate the truss back to its original arrangement based on lapping and bolting new timbers to the stubs of what’s left. It’ll be an evident repair, but it will address the current shortcoming.
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