Quote:
Originally Posted by dd74
And who is this engineering community? Again, some readable sources would be handy. As you know, many shams travel about L.A. Mold experts, earthquake retrofitters, house bolting. I want credible evidence and credible companies. Not pickup trucks that have "Earthquake Bolting" plastered on their doors beside "Gardening Services Provided."
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Wow, you have dim view on all this. Hey, I'm as critical of shams as anyone and my posts here reflect that.
OK, I'll try to answer the only part of this that will benefit anyone. The plans spent the better part of a year in the city offices. I suppose maybe only 1 or 2 different city engineers looked them over each time they were submitted and resubmitted for corrections. The city inspector overrode all the specs anyway, as any inspector can do. I can't give you readable sources other than the plans themselves.
The first engineer (I'm not going to name these folks because I do not have their permission) did the work on the existing house. This was a major feat in itself costing about 75K to level the house and place new footings as necessary. The chimney was bolted back to the roof and the living room ceiling reworked as it was sagging. New basement walls as well and almost a complete new garage (the four exterior walls were left because of property line location) including floor, ceiling and roof.
Another civil engineer did the plans for the new part and he was a PITA. I came close to knocking out his lights one day when he came by and discovered there was no footing where he had calculated on one being there. This was one of 6 changes that added about 20K to the original cost.
So, just on this job, I experienced the inside city engineers for the jacking and the new addition.I dealt with the two civil cats plus the inspector. That was a minimum of five people telling us what to do next as they discovered the errors.
Now, each time there was a change, the new set of calcs went to the city. It would be silly to think each time the same person stamped them. The only people that remained constant in presence were the city inspector and the project civil, who was brought in by the architect. BTW, neither of them knew what they were doing. What we ended up with was a far cry from what was drawn on the plans. At one point, they lost and entire 10 inches of wall. Just wasn't there to begin with, so nothing fit.
All in all, the plans were resubmitted for changes about a dozen times split between before the work began and after. We spent over 4K in Simpson hardware alone. We used over 40 sheets of struct 1 1/2" ply for shear. We used over 100 linear feet of all thread in 3/4" but mostly 7/8ths. I can't tell you how many 100's of feet of rebar went in the concrete, but there was 10 yards of it placed for a footprint of 200 sq. feet! We put in about 30 of the HD's you show, several of them upside down under the second floor connected to ones above. Talk about overbuild, this was it. But, that's what's going down at the city. Most local jurisdictions are following LA's lead.