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Don’t Forget! You Saw it in the
November 2017 #10220 Page #86
Introducing the New and Improved Simpson Strong-Tie® Strong-Wall® Bracing Selector By Caleb Knudson, R&D Engineer It’s been said that the World Wide Web is the wave of the future. Okay, maybe this is slightly outdated news, as it’s been 25 years since Bill Gates penned his internet tidal-wave memorandum, but it’s a good lead-in to this topic – web apps. More specifically, those apps that have been developed to address the wall-bracing requirements defined in the International Residential Code® (IRC). Designers and engineers have no doubt noticed that, over the last several code cycles, the wall-bracing provisions in the IRC have become increasingly complex. To help navigate these requirements and calculate the required bracing length for a given wall line, Simpson Strong-Tie introduced the Wall-BracingLength Calculator (WBLC) a few years back, as discussed in an earlier blog post. I’ll also mention that the WBLC has since been updated to the 2015 IRC.
Those familiar with the wall-bracing provisions in the IRC know that there are twelve intermittent wallbracing methods and four continuous-sheathing methods to address wall-bracing requirements. Each of these methods may be used in most applications, and, while some provide advantages over others, the codebased methods provide Designers with quite a bit of flexibility. However, there may be cases where the sitespecific conditions are beyond the scope of the IRC, or there just isn’t enough available full-height wall space to accommodate the required wall-bracing length. These cases are most likely to occur at large window openings or at garage fronts.
Let’s take the following example of a house on Lake Washington – assuming the house is being designed in accordance with the IRC. Presumably, one might prefer to have unobstructed lake views, which of course means lots of large picture windows and not much room left for braced wall panels. Let’s also suppose you’ve got a brand-new Chris Craft that you’d like to protect against the weather when it’s not in the water – this means wide garage doors and, again, not much room for conventional wall bracing.
So what do we do now? Thankfully, the International Residential Code provides some guidance. Section R301.1.3 states that when a building, or portion thereof, is outside the scope of the IRC, the element(s) may be designed in accordance with accepted engineering practice. The code goes on to state that the extent of the design shall be such that the engineered element(s) are compatible with the performance of conventional methods prescribed in the code. That creates some additional options for our tool box. We could design a site-built shearwall; however, due to aspectratio limitations defined in the Special Design Provisions for Wind and Seismic (SDPWS), we still may not be able to PHONE: 800-289-5627
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