| Steeveedee |
04-21-2020 10:18 PM |
Re: Hey Maryland. Put your pants on people!
Quote:
Originally Posted by special-K
(Post 8722143)
That could be a bad thing, too. Bad for the next person, bad for a deep snow, etc. My sister bought a place in Idaho built willy nilly not to codes and it sucks for her. I don't pull permits but I build to code. Better than code actually? I was talking about wearing pants anyway. Do you all have to wear pants there?
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It's easy to exceed the UBC. It's overkill in a lot of cases, though. For seismic bracing (it used to be, it got beefed up after the '94 quake in Northridge) let-in diagonal braces made from 1"X 6" boards in the studs every 25 feet, chicken wire with stucco, and one sheet of drywall nailed onto 4 studs at 7 inch spacing every 25 feet of wall were considered adequate. Also, 2" X 6" boards were allowed on an 18' span, if they were 12" OC. I did all of those things, except that I used drywall screws for every sheet of drywall, instead of nails. When the shaking started in '94, I had full confidence that what I had built would still be standing. I was more worried about the old part of the house, but it was built in the '50s and to code. The only "structural" damage was some cracking due to differential shaking between the slab floor in the garage and the one wall of the addition I had built, as it and the rest of the house was built on a raised perimeter foundation. I had to re-tape and mud the corners of one bedroom and the adjacent hallway where they met the garage wall. There was an apartment building near the epicenter where the first story collapsed and the residents died. The contractor was discovered to have cut a bunch of corners during construction. I hope that he's still in prison. He probably saved $1000 on a million dollar project, if he was lucky. :uhmk: That cost people's live and his personal freedom. I figure I used an extra $100 worth of materials beyond the code. It's never worth it to skimp. |
