Monday, January 16, 2017

Garage supports

Luke:
 I'd avoid free-spanning the garage, if the builder wants to use I-joists. They seem like a great thing, but I much prefer a more traditional beam and joist type construction, which would require a post between the cars. I don't care what anyone tells you, long open spans like that flex annoyingly. If you do go with a post, space the doors an extra foot apart, to make it more convenient to open car doors in the middle. That 6" is nice to have, when there's a steel post to work around.

Yeah.  The beam sounds better. Make a drawing of the garage floor plan and a drawing of each car and see where the support posts could be placed so the doors would open easily.  I guess you would need an extra footing under each support post so they are not sitting on just the slab. So, if the original plans called for open span then a redraw might need to be done. What would the engineering look like? A center laminated beam with a support column at both ends and one or two posts spaced down the center of the garage? Do you have enough headroom for a 16 inch beam?  If you carried the beam down the center all the way to the back of the building, it would block the headroom on the stairs. That beam would need a crane to place. How would it get down your drive? What is the cost of that 32 foot beam? Crane rental for the day? I would go back to I-beams or floor trusses. Why does it have to be so complicated? Why does the upper floor bump in? Could it just line up with the lower walls? Why give up space and complicate construction and increase cost?

Sounds like at first you were thinking beam sounds better, but on second thought I-beams are ok.


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