Are Beams Sized Correctly

[joetheinspector]

As a plan reviewer what responsibility do I have to make sure beams are sized properly?

I am not an engineers and we have no engineers in our building department.

In my state residential construction does not require a design professional so the plans are not required to be signed or stamped and can be drawn up by anybody.

The policy now is that we use a program such as struc calc or calculate it ourselves and if the beam comes up undersized, in our corrections we say “beam is undersized. Resize beam or get a design professional to stamp the beam”.

Comments?

 

[Rider Rick]

I would follow the load path and use the program such as stuc calc. to check the beam sizes.

When you find a beam in question I would have them resize the beam or get a stamp.

That's what I did when I did plan review.

 

[Rio]

As a plan reviewer what responsibility do I have to make sure beams are sized properly?I am not an engineers and we have no engineers in our building department.

In my state residential construction does not require a design professional so the plans are not required to be signed or stamped and can be drawn up by anybody.

The policy now is that we use a program such as struc calc or calculate it ourselves and if the beam comes up undersized, in our corrections we say “beam is undersized. Resize beam or get a design professional to stamp the beam”.

Comments?

The beams don't seem to be nearly the problem that figuring out the various shear wall configurations and requirements can be. Is there any sort of checking of that sort of thing in you place's policy?

 

[Durant]

Joe,

Your way ahead of my office; I only have R502.5, and Tables R502.5 (1) and (2) for girder and beams. If not there Engineered wood beam is required and then, because we do not require complete plans so I had to download Engineered wood products span charts; and pretty-well wing it to the best of my ability. If they sqwack then they can provide engineered sealed and signed drawings and specs.

 

[Alias]

Joe,

Western Wood Products Association has/had a handy pocket calculator called the Span Master. I am a small jurisdiction and use this in my residential plan check along with the CBC span tables. WWPA's site has other good information.

http://www2.wwpa.org/Default.aspx

Sue