How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

I'm just tearing into a 12' rotted-out section of exterior wall in the
workshop and the sill plate is completely shot - but I'm not seeing any
signs of how the plate's anchored to the concrete; no J-bolts or wedges.
I'm not seeing evidence of wire ties either, although I suppose they
might have disintegrated.

Maybe it'll become obvious once I tear the rotted plate out (and
hopefully the answer isn't "nothing" ;-) but I probably won't get to that
until later today once I've got the structure well supported. I'll put
wedges in when I shoe-horn a new plate in...

cheers

Jules

"Jules Richardson" wrote in message
...

How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

For Americans, this should probably be documented in National
Bureau of Standards work of the 1920s. Building research was
one of the NBS's main interests in its early years. Besides, some
professors of construction engineering know this sort of thing off-hand.

--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:21:41 +0000 (UTC), Jules Richardson
wrote:


How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

I'm just tearing into a 12' rotted-out section of exterior wall in the
workshop and the sill plate is completely shot - but I'm not seeing any
signs of how the plate's anchored to the concrete; no J-bolts or wedges.
I'm not seeing evidence of wire ties either, although I suppose they
might have disintegrated.

Maybe it'll become obvious once I tear the rotted plate out (and
hopefully the answer isn't "nothing" ;-) but I probably won't get to that
until later today once I've got the structure well supported. I'll put
wedges in when I shoe-horn a new plate in...

It's probably attached using gravity (a lot of it). I've replaced sills
without any ties.

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:32:28 -0400, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:21:41 +0000 (UTC), Jules Richardson
wrote:


How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

I'm just tearing into a 12' rotted-out section of exterior wall in the
workshop and the sill plate is completely shot - but I'm not seeing any
signs of how the plate's anchored to the concrete; no J-bolts or wedges.
I'm not seeing evidence of wire ties either, although I suppose they
might have disintegrated.

Maybe it'll become obvious once I tear the rotted plate out (and
hopefully the answer isn't "nothing" ;-) but I probably won't get to
that until later today once I've got the structure well supported. I'll
put wedges in when I shoe-horn a new plate in...

It's probably attached using gravity (a lot of it). I've replaced sills
without any ties.

Well, having now shored* things up, I cut back a little farther and found
a bolt at 14' - I'm not sure what 'best practice' is for these kinds of
things, but that seems like a lot (although still better than the 'no
ties' scenario that you mention!)

* which technically I probably didn't need to do, given how rotten the
bottoms of the frame uprights are; I don't think this section of wall's
been taking much load for a good few years...

cheers

Jules

On 6/28/2012 1:02 PM, Jules Richardson wrote:
On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:32:28 -0400, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:
On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:21:41 +0000 (UTC), Jules Richardson
wrote:
How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

I'm just tearing into a 12' rotted-out section of exterior wall in the
workshop and the sill plate is completely shot - but I'm not seeing any
signs of how the plate's anchored to the concrete; ...

It's probably attached using gravity (a lot of it). I've replaced sills
without any ties.

Well, having now shored* things up, I cut back a little farther and found
a bolt at 14' - I'm not sure what 'best practice' is for these kinds of
things, but that seems like a lot (although still better than the 'no
ties' scenario that you mention!)
....

The house and barn here (ca 1915) have bolt at corner and roughly 10-12
ft iirc (it's been a while since I paid any attention and I didn't go
out and measure since it's currently 106F and climbing ). Replaced
sill plate on one corner and end of the barn during the restore/reroof;
area along the drains in the corner that held the old milking parlor
were pretty well gone up a foot or more of studs excepting corner...it
had settled an inch or so so raised it all back up to original height
and scabbed in under back to solid material...

I don't know what current Code would call for--that will depend on
region and whether there's hurricane/earthquake/tornado/other extreme
conditions accounted for. We get a tremendous amount of straight wind
and the surface area of the barn walls makes for a lot of force and it's
been adequate for nearly 100 yr at that...

--

On Jun 28, 7:21*am, Jules Richardson
wrote:
How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

I'm just tearing into a 12' rotted-out section of exterior wall in the
workshop and the sill plate is completely shot - but I'm not seeing any
signs of how the plate's anchored to the concrete; no J-bolts or wedges.
I'm not seeing evidence of wire ties either, although I suppose they
might have disintegrated.

Maybe it'll become obvious once I tear the rotted plate out (and
hopefully the answer isn't "nothing" ;-) but I probably won't get to that
until later today once I've got the structure well supported. I'll put
wedges in when I shoe-horn a new plate in...

cheers

Jules

60 years ago for a shop? Probably nothing. Probably wasn't built to
what passed for code in the 40s
and was never inspected. May not even have got on on the tax rolls.

Harry K

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:02:29 +0000 (UTC), Jules Richardson
wrote:

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:32:28 -0400, zzzzzzzzzz wrote:

On Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:21:41 +0000 (UTC), Jules Richardson
wrote:


How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

I'm just tearing into a 12' rotted-out section of exterior wall in the
workshop and the sill plate is completely shot - but I'm not seeing any
signs of how the plate's anchored to the concrete; no J-bolts or wedges.
I'm not seeing evidence of wire ties either, although I suppose they
might have disintegrated.

Maybe it'll become obvious once I tear the rotted plate out (and
hopefully the answer isn't "nothing" ;-) but I probably won't get to
that until later today once I've got the structure well supported. I'll
put wedges in when I shoe-horn a new plate in...

It's probably attached using gravity (a lot of it). I've replaced sills
without any ties.

Well, having now shored* things up, I cut back a little farther and found
a bolt at 14' - I'm not sure what 'best practice' is for these kinds of
things, but that seems like a lot (although still better than the 'no
ties' scenario that you mention!)

* which technically I probably didn't need to do, given how rotten the
bottoms of the frame uprights are; I don't think this section of wall's
been taking much load for a good few years...

cheers

Jules


Check with the local building dept.. They must know the appropriate
code to tell you the spacing. My dad built an extension but I just
don't recall the spacing of his anchor bolts and even if I did, your
code may be different. Of course closer than req'd by code is better
in the sense it won't hurt anything but will be considered overkill
and cost more.

Now I regret I didn't pay much attention but I was about 12 at the
time so I wasn't thinking about construction except for the big pile
of lumber he made me carry to the back of the house. The extension
doubled the size of the original house so you can imagine the amount
of lumber we carried. I think it took us most of the day and I worked
for free

On Jun 28, 7:21*am, Jules Richardson
wrote:
How were sill plates attached to concrete foundations in older (60 years
in this case) construction?

I'm just tearing into a 12' rotted-out section of exterior wall in the
workshop and the sill plate is completely shot - but I'm not seeing any
signs of how the plate's anchored to the concrete; no J-bolts or wedges.
I'm not seeing evidence of wire ties either, although I suppose they
might have disintegrated.

Maybe it'll become obvious once I tear the rotted plate out (and
hopefully the answer isn't "nothing" ;-) but I probably won't get to that
until later today once I've got the structure well supported. I'll put
wedges in when I shoe-horn a new plate in...

cheers

Jules

Sometimes no connection, just the sill placed against wet mud.
Maybe some 16d or 20d nails every once in while pressed into the wet
mud.

Where is the structure located?

SIngle story? A passable bolting would be 1/2" or 5/8" anchors at 6'
o/c and with 12" of ends of sill.
More than enough for a "shop" or garage. In your case sounds like
about 3 anchors.

cheers
Bob