Earthquake Retrofitting 101

The following is just my opinion as a homeowner who has had two foundations redone and has earthquake retrofitted 2.5 houses himself. I don't pretend that its 'the TRUTH' and neither should you. I just hope that I can save some other people some hassle/time.

Well, not exactly.. more of an introduction or something.Since we had a little earthquake Monday morning I've been asked about earthquake retrofitting by like 37 people (no not really, but several at least).

First off, if you have a brick foundation you can not retrofit it. Not no way, not no how. If a contractor is telling you that they can do it they are FOS. I'm sorry, but step one in this case is, 'get a new modern foundation'.

Doing It Yourself
First I would definitely recommend the Berkeley Building Education Center's earthquake retrofit class.
It's an entire day and you will learn soooo much about how to correctly do your own earthquake retrofitting. It's a one day seminar and it costs $95 and it's very, very worth it. The class is taught in two sections. The first half is taught by a Structural Engineer, where he teaches you how to calculate how much retro-fitting you need (if your house is not too complicated). The second half is taught by an actual earthquake retrofitting contractor and he shows you what tools you need and how to use them. Soooo worth the money.

If the class is not timed correctly for you Simpson has a homeowner how-to that I also found very helpful. The Simpson guide tells you how to do everything (and explains the background and terms and some of the science) and what tools you are going to need, definitely worth downloading and reading. The only thing it doesn't show are the hold-downs which are absolutely required for this kind of work. I asked a Simpson engineer and she said it was because they didn't consider installing hold-downs to be a DIY thing?

Permits And Plan Set A
Even I have to admit that this is sorta a screwy situation. Apparently they can not 'force' you to earthquake retrofit your home. This makes no sense to me...if you are going to say, redo your foundation why shouldn't the city compel you to do the earthquake retrofitting at the same time?

If you choose to earthquake retrofit your house its called a 'voluntary seismic retrofit or strengthening' You can't do it without a permit legally, yet they can't require you to do it?

There is what's called 'Plan Set A' which is sorta a combo how-to and permit application in one.
Download Plan Set A and print it out and see if your house can use it. I've been told that the reality is that most houses can not follow Plan Set A but maybe you'll get lucky. If your house is more than a 2 family and/or the cripple walls are more than 4', or if it's more than a two story, you can't use it.
The good news is, if you submit a 'plan set A' permit application you will get a break on the permit fees.

Plan on this costing you around $2k in materials, not including the tools you will need.

In closing, I suggest you first read the Simpson hand-out then read plan set A...it'll make more sense. If you can understand both of those documents you should have no trouble doing the work yourself.

Having A Pro Do It
Here's where it can get weirder I think...I've talked to the main local contractors who specialize in only doing retrofit work.... Each one spent a while trying to convince me of how all the 'other' guys out there don't do it right....I suspect that they all are just using plan set A as a guideline and submit the permits under those guidelines so they don't typically need/use an SE.

If your house can not use Plan Set A then you will need to hire an SE to figure out the plan for you....well, I think that this is the case but I'm honestly a bit confused. The city employee I talked to about this said that I could still use the Plan Set A guidelines to draw up a plan and then they would check it out to make sure it's sound. This sounds to me like they city will do the engineering for you for the cost of your permit fees if you make a first stab at it....that just can't be right....can it?

Hire A Structural Engineer/ Do The Work Yourself
Here is the middle option: you can hire an SE to analyze the house and draw up the permit documents and then you can do the work yourself. This is for the case when you can't officially use Plan Set A.

I've talked to a lot of SEs in the area.....if they brag about doing hospitals and bridges on their website...you can't afford them, trust me.

I will recommend two engineers that I have dealt with in the past.

Tony Demascole is the SE who teaches the earthquake retrofit class at the BEC. He is great, been around for a long while and has probably more experience than anybody else in the area coming up with reasonable solutions. All his vast experience and knowledge comes with a price though, he won't be the absolutely cheapest guy for sure, but he won't be the most expensive either, but he will probably be the best.

Nate Williams of Mosswood engineering. I believe he charges $2500 for a standard seismic evaluation that includes him coming out to your house and measuring and drawing up the plans for permit submittal. He has been working with me on the issues here at Chez 3.0 and he has a willingness to 'think outside the box' and the patience to deal with all my goofy questions.

If you talk to either of these engineers tell 'em Chez Neumansky sent ya.

Having Pros Do The Entire Thing
There will be local construction businesses that advertise that they do earthquake retrofitting also....I would shy away from them and focus on firms that only do retrofitting.

There are three local firms that I interviewed and even though I didn't use them I think that they would be pretty good bets. They all come out and take a look and even draw up an estimate - all for free.

First there's Jim Gillett at earthquakeconstruction. He actually teaches the second half of the BEC class. He's been doing this kind of work for a very long time and works with Tony on a regular basis. I think if you hire him you will definitely get a top notch retrofit job. Be warned though, he has a bit of a 'rough' personality.

Secondly there is Earthquake Safety. The owner came out to the house and we had a nice long chat. I got a good vibe from him.

Bay Area RetroFit has a much slicker web site than Jim above and they have a lot of information also.
Had the least amount of contact with these folks so I don't have a strong feeling about them either way.

Having the pros do the entire thing will probably run you from $5-$10, if you don't have a super complicated house and they don't need to bring in a SE.

Hope this was helpful.

What You Don't Want To See On A Friday Night....

Soooo, been a long week of working...been an especially long Friday of construction....my ailments are a ailing me and I come downstairs after a nice looooong hot shower and discover this....
Click on video below.

Yep, that's water dripping out of our ceiling light in the kitchen....and I was already in my PJ's too.....
I'm thinking a pipe sprung a leak or the tenants toilet or bathtub is currently overflowing or....

Soooo, back on the work clothes and out comes the ladder...
The kitchen has a dropped ceiling that I can just squeeze my non-petit frame into...this is going to be soooo great for my back.

I shine a light around and there is no water coming from any of the copper pipes....thank jeebus.
None of the ABS DWV piping appears to be leaking either?

After much shimmying I can see a couple puddles of water on the backside of the ceiling drywall.
After much more searching about with the flashlight I discover that the water is actually dripping through the floor from one of the studio units!!!

Off I go to knock on our tenants doors...great, nobody home...now where did I put those keys...we are not the most organized landlords....

I get into one unit and start looking around under the kitchen sink...nothing.
This unit has a fish tank which is of course making a loud dripping water noise that is totally throwing me off. But, the tank is not leaking.

Onto the bathroom...where I discover the source of the leak!
The faucet in the bathroom has a slow drip and the tenant put a pan under it to catch the water which is great as water is included in their rents.
The only problem was is that the pan was full and overflowing onto the counter where it was running off to the caulkless crack between the vanity and the wall.
It wasn't a ton of water and I don't know how long it had been dripping that way but pulling the pan away from the faucet would stop the dripping into our kitchen I hoped.

I checked the other unit just to be sure and it looked fine.

Came back down stairs and crawled back into the dropped ceiling to mop up the puddles.

Success!!!
The next day there were no new puddles and its been dry ever since.

Owww, my back....where's my Scotch?

MC Escher Is My Plumber.

One of the things I've been doing while waiting for the engineer to figure out my earthquake retrofitting problem is trying to uncouple the water supply systems.

Somehow the two units in the basement were plumbed into the same water heater (in the attic 3 floor up) as the main house. My mission, because I had no choice but to accept it, was to figure out how the plumbing was connected and un-connect them.

Here is my super accurate diagram of the existing water supply piping.

Now, there were are a couple of smart-ish things the PO did with the plumbing.
One, was to have a main water supply manifold so that water could be turned off to each unit separately.

The main manifold looks like this.

Except that if you look at my super awesome diagram above the main water line (only 1") comes in at the front corner of the house then travels ALL the way back to the opposite back corner then travels to the various units of the house.
For the main unit it travels from here ALL the way upstairs to the attic where the water heater is, then the hot water flows down from there...

Mapping The Plumbing System
I used a super high tech method to map the pipes.
I turned on a hot water tap and then waited for it to get really hot then turned off the water and starting feeling around the copper water pipes to see what was what, and where it lead.
I did the same thing with the cold water taps but let them run because I could feel the water moving in the pipe with my hand.

Using this method I figured out pretty much where everything went....which is why the map looks so screwy.

Main Manifold From The Inside.

I bought these manila tags from the super awesome Pagano's Hardware Mart. As soon as I figured out where a pipe went and what it was for, I wrote it on the tag and wired it to the pipe.
In the shot above you can see that I've figured out where a couple of the lines go.

One line goes up to the main unit, one is for the basement units (except that they are plumbed with the hot from the main unit also), one is for both studio apartments and one, one is for a hose bib...yep a fancy valve and from there it's a straight run to a hose bib....that doesn't make any sense to me...

Spaghetti Programing

Here's my fav shot. You can see the pipes that go all the way up through a chase to the water heater in the attic. Then you can see the hot water manifold splitting off. As I've said, I've figured out where everything goes except for one line in this shot. The main line for the basement units splits off and goes up this chase and I have not been able to determine to where and for what ...
 
Ladder To Nowhere

That's what I thought when I saw the above plumbing. This is the mess above the laundry room ceiling. The plumbing doubles back on itself like three times in this space...

The most confusing thing for me was this branch pictured below:

It was a hot and cold line that seemed to go nowhere.
I was worried that they went up to the kitchen in one of the studio apartments...which would be super lame, but par for the course.

To determine where the pipes went I had to cut open some drywall to look around.

Nope, still going.

Nope, still going.

Finally in the closet of the small bedroom

I had my answer!

They went nowhere!!! Thank you very much PO for that adventure....

I cut the pipe and removed it from the wall. The water that drained out smelled kinda moldy to me...is that even possible? The pipes did slope downward and they were dead ends so.....

I capped the branch with some super awesome handy sharkbite fittings

Had the water back on in less than half an hour.

Here's the mess of copper pipe I removed from the walls.

This is from the pipe to nowhere and the long branch lines to the bathroom off the kitchen.

The New Water Distribution Plan
Well, I don't have one yet...

But, what I want to do is move the main water manifold to the utility room. It will take like 40' outta the length.
The hot water heater for the basement unit will also be in the utility room and I plan to do a PEX manifold there and run individual lines to the fixtures in the basement.

I also would love to put a small tankless water heater in the utility room for all the fixtures on the 1st floor of the main unit...except that the plumbing for the kitchen comes in from above not below so I can't easily tie into it.
I think it makes sense to try to do this as there will be a kitchen, two full baths and a laundry room on this circuit.
Then, the water heater in the attic would only need to supply hot water for the attic bath, attic laundry room, the master bath and the kid's bath on the second floor.

I'm not 100% positive but I think that the hot water supply for the master bath starts in the attic (one floor above) then travels down to the basement and then back up...cause it takes FOR EVER for the water to get hot...

Yay!!! Plumbing!!!

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!?!?