DIYbanter - View Single Post - "Stick Built," "Engineered Trusses," and Load Bearing Walls

wrote:

Trusses are another 2000's nightmare. In the old days, there was a
thing called an attic. The ceiling joists that were under that attic
floor were well supported 2X8's or 2X10's and were strong. Now,
houses have no attics. Just a wasted hole above the house, clutterred
with all the sticks that hold together the weak trusses, made out of
2x3's or 2x4's held together with flimsy pieces of tin, and they cost
a fortune, and require costly heavy machinery to lift in place.
Trusses were originally designed for barns, sheds, and warehouses,
where there was no need for a person to walk on them, and no heavy
plaster or sheetrock hanging from them, causing them to bow and warp
from the weight. If you want to use trusses in your house, you will
pay the price, over and over and over. If you had used solid lumber
in the first place, you would not have cracking ceilings, no usable
attic, and a house roof that will self destruct in a heavy wind storm.

The only way to permanently solve your problem is to completely remove
the entire roof structure, clear down to the supporting walls, and
start over, building a proper roof using real lumber.
As long as you have a house roof built with trusses, you are living in
a cheap flimsy box which will collapse and be destroyed as soon as
high winds hit. But remember this.... It wont be just the roof that
comes off, the entire house will be destroyed, the same way a storm
destroys a cardboard box.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Yours just happen to be wrong.
Pretty much everyone of your points above is
Chicken-Little-The-Sky-Is-Falling crap.

If you want attic space, you ask that the trusses be designed with an
attic space.
You want stiffer than normal to reduce cracking (psst - not having an
attic reduces the load up there and reduces cracking), ask for more
stringent deflection criteria.

I'd list more reasons why your opinions aren't worth the electrons
they're written with, but I grow bored with correcting such myopia.

R