Earthquake Retro-Fitting Conundrum

Arrrrrgh!!!!

So, for those of you following along, after we got the basement gutted we realized that there is no earthquake retro-fitting done...

Big, tall, long, skinny Victorian sitting on a great new foundation with no Earthquake retro-fitting...
Super Duper.
Since we plan to grow old and die in this place (we mean it this time REALLY!!!) the chances of a good shaker happening are pretty much 100% so earthquake retro-fitting is not optional.

I took a course in DIY earthquake retro-fitting several years ago...Codes have changed since then but basically for a three story house you need to apply plywood shear walls to oh, 80% of the exterior walls.

Here's a pic of the approved floor plan for the basement 3-2 apartment.

Does anybody see anyway in H-E-double hockey sticks I can do that?
Stupid windows letting in all that light and allowing for egress...

The red lines are the places where I think its possible to apply plywood shear walls.
The green lines are where I think its reasonably possible to do without jumping through ridiculous hoops...
Even if I did all the red areas that still would be far below what I need.

Time To Call In The Pros
I've so far had two well respected Earthquake retro-fitting contractors come in and check out the space...
In a nutshell they both said the same thing....
That because of the existing conditions that they would only want to shear the green areas.
Theres just two much stuff in the way at the red areas.
They also both said that the building is too complicated for them to do the job without an engineered plan....

It Gets Better
Guess what the WAG's from the contractors were?
~$20k plus engineering and permit fee's!!!
I've talked seriously with one engineer so far and he wants $1000 to do the site visit and work up a plan and an additional ~$6k to do the plans for the permit!?!?!?

Holy-Freaking Moly.....where are we going to come up with an additional ~$30k to have the pros do this?

My Ideal Solution
Find an engineer who can figure out a way to strengthen just the green areas and have that magically be enough and have the solution be something that I can do myself....oh, and have the engineers fee's cost A LOT less than $7k.....

No Problem Right? 

Hurray for our Dream House!!

How Best To Build A 1hr Fire Rated Soffit?

I need a good method to build 1hr fire rated soffits. Anybody got any good ideas?

Currently the soffits look like this.

These are wrong because the wall behind and the joist bay above is not fire stopped.
I've talked to my BI and he says to use 5/8" firecode drywall on the underside of the joist bay and on the wall.

Okay, that seems easy enough, but in practice how are things like this done? I've never built one before.

I will have to build at least two soffits, probably on either side of the center load bearing wall to conceal the HVAC trunk lines. Actually, I haven't been able to decide on the best way to run the soffits...got any ideas?

HVAC Duct Diagram

Was that easy to understand? It wasn't for me first couple of times I looked at it.
This is two separate systems. One for the basement apartment and one for the main floor of the house.
How best to proceed?
It seems like I have to remove the existing soffit framing.
Then install the Sheetrock on the underside of the joists and the wall studs, but only the part where the soffit will be.
Then run my HVAC trunk line with top take-offs that penetrate the fire-stopping.
Then run what ever else I need to in the same area.
I would like to use this soffit as a chase for everything I can (no drilling through joists if I can help it). I can envision running water, gas, low-voltage lines (cable, Ethernet, phone) and romex.
As long as I correctly firestop the penetrations of the soffit is there a reason not to do this?

Simple Soffit Construction?
Then after everything is run in the soffit area I would build and attach the bottom and the one side.
I think I remember reading somewhere about a simple method to do this.
No elaborate 2by4 framing but I can't remember where I read about it.
I mean, the 'framing' of the soffit only needs to be strong enough to support the 5/8" drywall right?

Anybody got any helpful ideas?

Foundation Information Overload!!!

I wish....

Went down to the building dept yesterday to try to find any documentation on the foundation redo here at Chez Neumansky 3.0.
Last time I went down, about six months ago, they didn't have anything for it! It was apparently lost in a nether world or something?

This time they had it scanned into the computer and the very, very nice people at the dept printed out what they had for me to look at.......

Behold the super detailed, high-tech document that got you a foundation permit in '01....

Yep, that's it....well, maybe not, but this was the only bit from the finaled foundation permit that was scanned in....so maybe there was more documentation originally and it got misplaced??? I doubt it....

No footing sections, no rebar schedule, no slab section...no nothing...
How, is this enough to get a permit for a foundation redo? Blows me away...

The city has minimum standards for foundations on their website.
http://www.cityofalamedaca.gov/getdoc.cfm?id=168

Lets just hope that with it being inspected and approved by a city inspector that we got at least the 2 story foundation..though I am hoping that its the 3-story version.

Crazy right? The most important thing holding this house up and this is all the docs the city has kept on it....

Some Progress in the Basement

Well, I lied...not all the demo was done.....

I forgot to have this wall to the mechanical room removed.

Now you see it, now you don't.

New Wall.
I've never built a load-bearing 2by6 wall before...
And officially I still haven't as the wall shown below does not have a 'real' footing underneath it. Its just sitting on the 4" thick slab.

There was no room to tilt up the wall so I built it in a way no real carpenter would. Besides, working alone how would I tilt up a 21' 2by6 wall?

How Not to Build a Wall
First, I laid out the bottom plate and made sure it was parallel to the center load bearing wall. I tacked it in place with the ramset.
Then using two 'cabinet jacks' I stuck the top plate roughly in place. Then I used a 'straight' 2by6 and a level to make sure it was exactly in line with the bottom plate. Then I shot the first top plate to the underside of the joists, up from below. Then I nailed the second top plate to the first.
Then I measured and cut each stud separately and nailed them in place.

I also built my first triple 2by8 header. The span table said I could get away with only a double 2by8 header (and two jack studs to span 3-2) but then how would I make up the rest of the space in the 2by6 wall?
So, I used three 2by8's (good for a span of 3-11) and two sheets of 1/2" ply. I used construction adhesive to glue all the pieces together then I nailed the heck out of it with the nail gun. Its a very heavy, solid piece.
If you notice the header is nailed directly to the double top plate...there is just enough room for the door underneath it, as long as I don't get too crazy with the shims.
Putting that bugger in place was a comedy of errors...trying to lug it up there while getting the cabinet jacks underneath it...I picked that thing up, hefted it into place at least 8 times before I got it right....

Its a good thing building the header went well as I have a sinking feeling that there are no code compliant headers over the two doorways in the 'official' load bearing wall...

After I built the wall I swear the floor above feels a ton stiffer.

Built this little wall

To fill in the open area where the kitchen was.

The doorway from the mechanical room into the other kitchen was also filled in and I mounted the units electrical sub-panel in the opening.

I also mounted most of the new electrical boxes in the walls, ceilings.
I will not keep most of the existing electrical it seems...at least the existing in the kitchen has to go...I'm hoping to re-purpose the stuff in the other rooms.

Had some important visits last week.

First up, my building inspector.
I wanted him to come out and take a look at the situation since we uncovered a lot of 'hidden conditions'. He was like, 'Ya, gotta fix all those buried junction boxes.'
He also pointed out a couple of code violations that I had missed.
Its against code for copper water pipes to touch galv gas pipes...didn't know that.
He also said that there needs to be fire stopping between the top of the furring wall and the actual exterior wall. He said that stuffing the hole with Fiberglas insulation would be okay. I also plan on filling all the joist and stud bays completely with Fiberglas insulation....so hopefully belt and suspenders fire stop wise.

The BI also did confirm that the HVAC soffits are not built correctly...

The soffit needs to be uh, enclosed on the inside completely with fire code sheet rock...
So, hurray, more demo, as I will have to yank the existing soffits down and put up the drywall then rebuild it...

Actually, I'm not sure how to do the soffit. I've been puzzling over the HVAC plans and how to implement them in the 'real world'. Right now it seems like I have more HVAC trunk line than I have space for it...
However it works I will make the soffit big enough to conceal the trunk line, plus any number of utilities like the gas lines, the main water lines, electrical, TV-phone lines...If I'm lucky I won't have to drill thru hardly any joists! Course I have to build the fricken thing....

I was also happy about what the BI said about the floor joists. You see, floor joists have specific code specified lengths they are allowed to span. Depending on the type and grade of the wood and its size.
The BI confirmed that they are Douglas Fir and that he would be very comfortable with using the #1 column in the span tables!!! That's really good cause #1 wood spans a lot farther than #3 or #2.
I couldn't get him to agree to let me use the Select Structural (the strongest modern wood grade) column. He said I would have to get a structural engineer for that.

Visit From My Structural Engineer
The next day my engineer could make it out to look over the situation. I wanted him to take a look at three places where I was not sure if I needed to add posts-beams. I wanted him to asses the lack of earthquake retrofitting, and I wanted him to tell me what he thought the joists could span.

You see I thought the joists where old growth redwood, which you can not find in span tables really..

The engineer confirmed that the wood was Doug Fir and he said that it was 'at least' as strong as a modern structural select 2by10!!! Which means now, officially my joists can span 17' with no problem. Actually the farthest span I have now is only 12'-6" so I'm feeling really good about the structure.

Even, better, he confirmed that I could remove the existing post-beam, beam no post, and the load bearing wall in line with the joist situation did not need any re-inforcing.

Which means I can get rid of this post-beam in the new master bedroom!

I can get rid of this beam hanging from the joists.

I am so freaking glad of this development...the other option would of been having to use some sort of fancy engineered beam to span the spaces and I would have to dig-pour new footings for the posts...that would of been a significant expense and a huge time suck.

I was so happy about the results that I cooked everybody a fancy dinner to celebrate.

Earth Quake Retrofitting
Not so good news here... I don't know how to do it.
My simple cook book method of figuring out how much shear walling I need says that I need 23' on each side of the house!!! Because of windows that is pretty much impossible to do....especially on the short ends of the house....

Soooooo, I'm going to have to have my engineer figure out a more clever way to get a safe amount of strength in those cripple walls...

Wow, that was a lot of words wasn't it!?!?

Halloweeeeeen From Spaaaaaaaaace!!!

Say that like 'Pigs in Space' from the old Muppet show....does anybody remember that but me?
Any who, the haunt nerd group I'm a part of sent out an alert that Google maps had updated their satellite pictures of the SF Bay area at the end of October....

Know what that means? It means you can see our Halloween decorations on the satellite photo!!

Check it out!!

See, Halloweeeeeeeeeen frooooom Spaaaaaaaaaace!!!!!!

Not sure exactly when this was taken but it must of been right at the end of October as I didn't have all that stuff out until the last week.

Why, yes I am a huge dork.

Chez Neumansky 2.0 is in Contract!!!

subtitled, ' Disclosures Smosures'

According to the Redfin Page the house was listed for sale on Nov 7th and went pending on Nov 24th!!! For the asking price of $725k!!! Wow, only on the market for 17 days!

I have to say that we were totally shocked that the place was listed for that much...then imagine our shock when it went pending for asking so fast...

We are viewing this as a vindication of our initial take on the house. When it was a rat infested, practically falling down mess and everybody thought we were nuts...this finished product was what we saw. A nice Victorian with a 3 color paint job all fixed up inside and out and pretty. Truthfully, we still wish that we could of been the ones to do it but we've moved on to bigger and better things.

Back when we were trying to decide if we should pull it off the market and do a 203k refi, get it fixed up quickly-cheaply and then put it back on the market, we never, ever projected seriously a selling price of $725k.

I'm looking at the super detailed spreadsheet now and if we had done it and put it back on the market for same amount we would of netted over $60k.....hurray....

I'm sure the current owners stand to net much, much more than that as I bet they have extremely low overhead with the 'contractors' they used.

Disclosures
If you haven't already, take a look at the Redfin page linked above...notice anything strange?
I noticed two things that I don't think I've ever seen on a Redfin page before.

In the spot where there would usually be a Zestimate it says this.

 

Home Value Estimates for 1310 PACIFIC Ave

The seller of this home has requested that home value estimates not be shown. Per MLS rules, Redfin and other public MLS-powered sites may not display any automated valuation for this home.

 

Hmmm....what's the good reason to do this? If you go to the Zillow page it still has the Zestimate..which shockingly is $721k!?!?!?! Almost the exact asking price???

 

Then there is this,

 

Sites Linking to 1310 PACIFIC Ave

The seller has requested that all public comments be removed from this listing. Per MLS rules, we are not allowed to link to blog posts about this home.

 

Hmmmmm.....could the seller possibly be trying to hide the existence of this blog? Hmmm...what's the non-shady reason for this? I can't think of one can you?

 

If you type in the address into google this blog show's up as the #3 result usually....so, its not like it can be hidden...

 

But, I don't know...is it possible that in this day and age people who are going to spend $725k on a house won't do at least a Google search?

 

In an earlier blog post I invite any possible new owners to contact me with any questions that they might have.

 

Yet, no one has? Seriously, how could you not take advantage of a resource like that? I'm not tooting my own horn here but, c'mon.

 

Our old neighbors say that the person in contract is a nephew of another one of our old neighbors who we would see everyday and say hello to....it's not like were complete strangers...

 

I do wish the new, new owners of Chez 2.0 luck.

 

After the close of escrow my consulting fee for helping you figure things out is going to be $100/hr, 3hr min.... Ha, I wish...

 

But Seriously

I think that according to Real Estate disclosure laws not disclosing this blog to potential buyers might be illegal...

 

Couldn't this blog be viewed as one big loooong in depth inspection report? I know you can't hide the existence of an inspection report, especially if its negative.

 

Actually, I think a case can be made that any of my KnifeCatching reviews  constitute a property report and should be included in the disclosure packet. Especially where I note possible serious issues like crumbling brick foundations or leaky roofs or illegal work.

 

 

 

Nobody Speeds in Alameda!

No, I did not just get a speeding ticket in Alameda.

Everybody knows...you don't speed in Alameda. Everybody knows this. Everybody knows that the APD takes speeding seriously.

You may go 28MPH but any faster and 'THEY WILL GET YOU' Everybody knows this right?

Somehow the APD has been able to leave this lasting impression with those of us who live/work/frequent Alameda. Heck, I don't even know if they STILL enforce the speeding limit so strictly...maybe they don't have to because they've convinced us its really, really not a good idea to speed in Alameda.

As a result, we have streets that are safe for kids, safe for bicycle riding, just safer-better.
As a parent, I am very happy about that.

Here's my question.

Why don't people have the same opinion of the Alameda Building Dept???

Wouldn't it be better for our fair city if people had the same opinion on doing work without permits as they do towards speeding?

What if people knew, KNEW that they would most likely get caught and have to pay big fines if they did major remodeling without permits?

Why is there not some sort of fine-administrative judgement that can be levied against contractors who do unpermmited work? Right now, its the HO that shoulders all the burden. Shouldn't there be a fine levied against the builder also? Maybe revoke their business license.

It seems to me that right now the system is set up to encourage illegal builders to do unpermitted work.

Putting the Fear into Home Owners
Here's what I think should happen....

Outreach to Homeowners and Contractors to explain the new reality.

First off, step up code enforcement dramatically. Its human nature, people are not going to toe the line unless they feel like they are going to 'for sure' get caught and that the consequences are going to be severe.

On top of the other code enforcement fee's tack on a FINE to the homeowner for using illegal contractors.

Figure out a way to slap a fine on the contractors that work illegally in Alameda...I mean, its against the law right? Just like having too many chickens.

The Result
No more scary-shoddy-illegal work done on the island. What's that going to do to property values?
No more illegal contractors undercutting the legit guys.
More revenue to the city due to the increase in permits.
More revenue to the city due to houses being correctly valued and taxed by the assessors office.

Now before somebody can say, 'Of course you over there in the republic of CA want to increase taxes.' I'm not talking about adding any taxes. I'm talking about getting people to obey the law which will have concrete benefits to our city.

Yes, doing it illegally will be cheaper than doing it legally....BUT YOU'RE DOING IT ILLEGALLY!!

The current system is broken with illegal contractors ruining it for the legal ones.

I'm going to send this post to all the Alameda elected officials and Building Dept heads. We'll see if I hear anything back.