What type of construction is this?
What type of construction is this?
(OP)
Please see the attached, left of the diagonal beam. Construction is from 1920s. I saw 10" deep S sections spaced 10' oc. In between these beams is infill of clay tiles. But what I can't figure out is the thin straps in between the tiles. Could this be WTs used to support the clay tiles?






RE: What type of construction is this?
BA
RE: What type of construction is this?
RE: What type of construction is this?
Maybe it was obvious that those 'lines' are steel when you visited the site, but if I just saw the photo I would have assumed they were grout.
RE: What type of construction is this?
But I can't figure why they'd stuff tiles (heavy, non-structurally-strong, non-mortared bricks, non-insulated bricks?) between the S-beams.
RE: What type of construction is this?
BA
RE: What type of construction is this?
RE: What type of construction is this?
There were a whole bunch of proprietary systems which looked essentially like that, from that era. Most beams in that era were more like today’s S shapes, as were the Tees of that time, so not likely WT’s. The clay tiles were just dropped onto the Tees dry, and then several inches of concrete, with some reinforcing would be cast on top, and btwn. the tiles, depending upon their upper shapes. The whole floor system acted as some sort of a loose composite system, in two directions, but it had good depth and was relatively light with the clay infill. The best thing to do is find someplace with min. loading, and/or min. slab shear and no slab tension; gently open up a 2 or 3' square area from above, and study what you’ve got as you go down. Maybe try to save the bottom half of the clay tiles. Then fill the hole with light weight concrete.
I’d look in a good local engineering library and see if you could find some old catalogs, or some good old structural engineering textbooks or handbooks. Take a look at SlideRuleEras’s web site, here on E-Tips, he has a bunch of good old stuff on file there. Many of those systems had special tiles which fit around and under the steel, because part of the selling point was fireproof floor system construction. So, in that respect, what you show is a bit unusual.
RE: What type of construction is this?
Here is an article from Structure Magazine from their antiquated structural systems series from a few years back.
http://www.structuremag.org/article.aspx?articleid...
M.S. Structural Engineering
Licensed Structural Engineer and Licensed Professional Engineer (Illinois)
RE: What type of construction is this?
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
http://mmcengineering.tripod.com
RE: What type of construction is this?
The project has to do with some renovations to a smoke stack and luckily nothing changes where this tile construction is located. I just want to refer to these on my drawings so that the documents look complete/professional.
BTW this is the third tile construction I have run into in the last few months. The first was a clay tile load bearing wall (had a post here about that), second one was concrete floor construction with tile infill and now this. All are from 1890-1920 era.