mfstructural
Structural
I'm looking a wood beam that's 19' long amd made up of 3 2x14s. actual depth is 13.5". the beam spans the garage and is parallel to the garage door and off the garage door by about 3'. there is a 3.5" wide x 4.5" deep notch in the beam to allow for the garage door chain and track to pass through. I know, whoever designed this and just cut the beam in the first place are interesting people to say the least. I ran calculations, as the beam is supporting prefab roof trusses that span 30'. there is a wall in the middle of the span which was not meant to be a bearing wall. when i run calcs for 25 psf snow and 10psf DL, I get a w=525 PLF. this is a moment of approximately 23,600 LB*FT. when i ran numbers on the full size beam (unnotched) I found it's capacity was 9,900 LB*FT. yet the beam was not sagging or had not cracked at the notch. this was related to a home sale. I designed a reinforcing fix for the beam, with a full plate on each side of the beam and a channel bolted to the bottom of the beam to increase tensile capacity overall for the beam. I didn't realize the there was a handle for the garage door and because of that they cut the channel. in addition to that they didn't install a full height plate. they only installed a n 8" high plate so it's pretty much entirely in the compression zone. and the channel is cut. I feel like the plate in the compression zone will aid in reducing the stresses at the notch, but I'm not comfortable or ok with it regardless. I am being asked for a fix and they are being difficult as they want to close on the house asap and have it setup. I came up with a solution to either install a full height plate or weld plates connecting the channels to the 8" plate. The client is obviously not liking that as he wont' get it done by tomorrow. One side of me says I am doing my best and I'm sorry but you have to install the fix, but I want to help him at the same time. So I was thinking of installing straps around the beam at 6" on center. They could wrap around the entire beam and be screwed into the side of the beam. It was my last choice after getting pushback from client. What are people's thoughts on this? I think it can work but I am not sure how to calculate the tension that the strap would have to resist.
Thanks,
Thanks,