Some Advice on my roof

[voltron]

OK, first let me say that I am trying to design the blueprints to the house I will be building in the fall... I had got the floorplan nearly complete but I can't figure out how to uses trusses to frame a portion of the roof. Now the right side is a simple hip gable so that is fairly straight forward but the left side has that bumpout which is where I am having problems. Now does the truss manufacture design the final roof plans or is it up to me?

Anyways any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

[lbuttery]

While Chief has a Truss tool, it is NOT engineered

It is for suggestions only

Many Chiefers just provide the truss vendor with the floor plans and elevations and the vendor does the rest.

Most vendors would probably ignore your truss plans anyways.

Lew

[tlsapp]

There are other ways do do this, but typically there would be a girder truss where I've placed the red line, and the main 28' trusses would butt into metal buckets attached to that girder truss.

Lew is correct in stating that the truss plant will design and engineer the truss system. However, an awareness of what is possible in a truss design will help you avoid potential problems. For example, I'd bump that window under that girder over a little so the girder sat on the wall rather that the masonry lintel or the wooden header, depending on which you are using.

[Curtis Johnson]

For the actual bumpout portion, you should be able to create trusses as you would expect them to look. Once you get to where your roof planes intersect, you'll need to create a valley truss set, which are built on top of the trusses for the main part. If you go to help, open the manual and start reading on page 498, you will see what you need to do to create the valley truss set. Just remember to run your main building trusses all the way accross before you start work on creating the valley truss base. This should be covered in a video as well, assuming you have X2 and access to the videos. There are probably many ways to build trusses for your design, including those suggested by Leslie. since your trusses will need to be designed by a certified truss design engineer, why not let your local truss manufacturer do the design for you, then, if you want to attempt to recreate their truss layout in your plan set, at least you'll know how they plan to build the actual truss package. Around here, the truss manufacturers typically like to have a project account set up before doing truss designs, but with business being the way it is these days, you probably won't have any problems with getting them to help with the truss design package.

[amddrafting]

Might I make a suggestion to the house layout?

Convince them to swap the laundry room for the bathroom. No one in those two bedrooms would want to be walking out of the bathroom with just a towel and be able to be seen, possibly under the towel, from downstairs by whoever is waiting in the foyer below. Plus it centralizes the laundry to the three rooms. There looks to be equal amount of room just have to rearrange a few things.

And don't spend the money on 6" exterior walls unless your local code requires it. Edit: I noticed you're in Florida so you may need 6" walls for windstorm, but I used to design houses in Houston in an inland 1-3 hurricane zones and we still only used 4" walls... just strapped the crap out of them. LOL You could save some money and space by using 4" exterior walls. Edit again: just noticed you're not in FL, I was looking at the wrong peron.

[Curtis Johnson]

Upon closer examination of your images, I see you have a hip roof on the bumpout. I haven't used the valley truss set for hip roof applications so I am not sure how well, if at all, it will work for you. Bottom line is someone else will design them for you so that is the layout you need to be working with/from. I don't attempt to do complete truss designs in my plans for that reason ... I just provide details on overhangs, roof pitch, gable-ridge-valley locations, ceiling steps or vaults if part of the trusses, energy heel information, etc. Your call but you can consume mass amounts of time working on truss designs that won't mean anything to the builder (you or whoever will do the work) unless you are licensed structural engineer and can stamp the design of each individual truss type.

[Curtis Johnson]

Ditto Aarons suggestion!!!

[tlsapp]

Here's a basic layout similar to your's.

[amddrafting]

I'm also curious... why trusses?

[planman1]

Aron,

Short answer,Time. Get it covered up quick.

Have a great week,Ken

[voltron]

Thanks guys for all your help. I am designing this home for myself, so I figured that going with the trusses would save money in the long run, plus be easier to install? Maybe I would be better off with conventional roof framing???

Thanks again!

[lbuttery]

Maybe I would be better off with conventional roof framing???


you still need to calculate the point loads etc

trusses seem to be the favorite now

on your plan set you can specify "truss specs per vendor" and then when the specs arrive you amend your permit set and that's it

with stick framing you have to show the engineering details etc and that can get costly, etc.

Lew

[amddrafting]

Not necessarily... it really varies from state to state and city to city. Here in Texas, I design all of our framing and even our foundation (due to some amazing stable soil here in the south plains). We only need to submit cross section details of the walls, roof assemblies, and foundations. We never need to submit engineered plans, whereas when I built in Houston we always had to have an engineered foundation plan due to it being a big ol' swamp down there.

I would imagine you would know your requirements being a GC, but I think overall traditional framing may save you some money and give you a lot more usable attic storage.

There are a bunch of other builders here in Lubbock using Trusses because it saves them time and money in the long run. When you're building 15-30 houses any given month it makes sense, but for a single build I'm not sure it will save you other than time. Oh and with trusses, who ever installs them will need a crane or lift which typically increases the price dramatically due to rental costs.

[chuckgar]

"Oh and with trusses, who ever installs them will need a crane or lift which typically increases the price dramatically due to rental costs."

Unless you are using a framer that is not used to using trusses I don't see how the cost would go up. First off I would charge a bit more to cut and stack the roof for obvious reasons. Also i can't imagine using the boom truck for more than the minimum 1 hour to get the trusses up there. Back in 2002 when I was still framing that was $90.00 .......and I would boom my roof sheathing up to second floor as well before setting the trusses.

Also keep in mind that with trusses you don't need any interior bearing on a simple frame such as this. I have also worked for two truss manufacturers and we never charged for the initial designs because we needed to design them to do an accurate bid......which on a house like this would take me less than 30 minutes.

[RooMeat]

A bit off topic but.. are trusses becoming popular in the US??
I personally hate them. Builders here in Aus have lost the "talent" to build a pitched roof. I also LOVE American designs with attics. Makes full use of the space rather than wasting it with trusses