Interior walls intersecting shear walls

[tajmeaw]

I am designing a multi-family residential wood framed building and am interested to see what other people are doing about a situation that I am having. I am using the tenant separation walls and corridor walls for shear walls. But on the interior of the unit, they are framing the non-load bearing walls before the gyp sheathing is put in place. By doing this I'm thinking they are creating several small shear walls instead of having one long shear wall. There seem to be several options.

1. Make them frame the intersection walls short of the shear wall so you can place the gypsum board behind the wall.
2. Analyze the wall as several smaller shear walls rather than one long shear wall.
3. Transfer the shear from one side of the intersecting wall to the other with nailing the studs together on either side of the wall.
4. Neglect this fact and design the wall as one long wall.

Thanks for the information

 

[MiketheEngineer]

On your design - show the walls that need continous drywall. Or do any of your other suggestions except #4

 

[lsmfse]

Attached is one way to transfer the shear(your item #3)

 

[DHKpeWI]

I had this same issue on a project. I asked an engineer who had been a carpenter and he thought leaving a gap (your option #1) was a not problem. In fact they had to remove interior studs to accoplish this. My carpenter friend thought it was still not a problem.

 

[FSS]

Be careful with the fire ratings as well. They may be messing up the rated wall assemblies with the gaps.

 

[msquared48]

This can absolutely be a fire rating issue if a partition wall intersects a party wall that is also a fire wall which happens very frequently, particularly if the unit layout is symmetrical on both sides of the party wall.

Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
Motto: KISS
Motivation: Don't ask

 

[tajmeaw]

These are all very good points, but which option are you all typically showing on your drawings. And also, what are you guys seeing being done in the field more?