Safety factors are required for retaining walls and use ASD combinations which uses allowable pressures, therefore the building official is correct, ultimate pressures need to be converted to allowable and then the safety factor applies on top of that. I don't know what value to use for ultimate...
I'm with the others here, the anchors look like the weak point. I would have at least had heavy hex headed anchors for anything with reasonable tension or moment. J-bolts aren't that great in tension. A single 3/4" dia. J bolt with 12" embed with tension only is going to give you about 3700 lbs...
Going from a flat roof to many rows of open frames in a sawtooth layout will most definitely change roof uplift, however as you have said, probably not a big concern for uplift itself, the issue is in the fact that the OP said it's a ballasted system, which means no physical attachment and they...
Sounds to me like they are just going through a list, looking for something to comment on. I would be pissed I had to waste my time, on the flip side, it's easy to do for 12 pages. I have turned in 5000+ page calculations before without an index (whoops) and had no issue and rarely include an...
As I have done many ballast and non-ballast solar system designs many years ago, including roof checks, I suggest you get the final ballast weights and that they use a company that has a ballast system that relies on wind tunnel testing as many of the larger outfits that make racking do. There...
What orientation are the solar panels? Flat to the roof, sloped to the roof? What are your concerns, solar panels are very light, especially compared to concrete, could the IEBC be used by chance to show you are barely increasing the stresses?
A few thoughts on this:
1. Lock the Y rotation as a reaction on each pinned base, you will then see the reaction is 0, sometimes this is just an annoyance that comes up in RISA 3D.
2. Column M7 is set to pin at the top, remove that as the beams framing in are set to pins this is why N8 wants to...
I have always had an issue with this approach because it seems to me that the old Chapter D checks still apply for side face blowout etc. However I could maybe buy it if you have equal area adjacent reinforcing to lap too that drags down to the foundation, in which case you are really a lap...
This sound like you are creating a tie beam but using the slab reinforcing in lieu of a separate beam below the slab, in which case it's a constant tension member and I believe per code requires mech or welded splices not allowing for lapped.
I don't follow your thought here, are these dowels across a joint only, if so the way I read the code is you would have a constant tension member and therefore require continuous reinforcing or mechanical/welded splices in the zone in which you intend to grade for friction resistance due to slab...
