Can I remove a knee brace?

[Joel Eisner]

I am woking on a 5 bent 880 Sq ft frame.  It is out of SYP and I cut and sawed all of the timbers within about 200 ft of the building site.  The fram has the full compliment of knee braces but as I work on the posts I noticed that two of them my crowd the door way at the top of the stairs.  Is is okay to remove two of the braces out of the whole frame?

Joel

[Ernie]

Welcome Joel

Myself, I know absolutely zip about that but we have experts in virtually everything here (particularly GRITS) and someone will have an answer for you.

Got any pics of what you'er building?

[Jim_Rogers]

Joel:
With more information or views of the frame or plans maybe we can help you.
But asking such a question, you may get answers that's aren't 100% right or wrong.
Who designed it and what does he/she say?
Are there other braces in the bent/wall plane to compensate for these if they are removed?
Are they opposing braces?

Do you have plans that you can scan in and post?
Do you have photos of plans you can post?
Do you have a plan you can email to someone for review?
Do you have plans?
Is this a barn/outbuilding or house?
What type of enclosure system are you going to use?
Most load paths are figured as if there are no braces in the frame, as braces don't usually carry loads down from timber to timber. But help in making the structure strong when racking in the wind,
Do you have a high wind load in your area?

And I'm sure there are many other questions I can't remember to ask right now.

Jim Rogers

[Joel]

From one Joel to another!

I'm not an experienced timber framer...so take this only as food for thought. Braces are "a good thing". As Jim said, they really help when walls have a side load such as wind. Having said that, with 5 bents, it would seem that there are plenty of places braces can be placed. Leaving out 2 for something as practical as not blocking a door sounds like a very logical approach.

Joel

[floyd]

is it possible to notch the braces so the doorway will fit?

[Greg]

Jim's advice is good, it really depends.

But I will go out on a limb and say removing 1 or 2 braces from a 5 bent frame is NOT a big deal.

Remember, braces are to protect again wind shear and give stiffness to the frame. It sounds like there are lots of braces around your frame, in addition the sheathing on the outside of the house will stiffen the structure. Since they work in pairs, if you take one brace you might as well remove the other side, as it is now useless.

I toured a large white pine TF home in North Carolina, where the homeowners removed 5 or 6 braces in and around the kitchen and living room area to make room for cabinets, pantry, and headroom through doorways. The builder was quite surprised as they just cut them out without even asking, a few years prior. Needless to say the home was still standing. The builder just shook his head and smiled...

Now lopping off 5 or 6 braces is definitely asking for trouble especially if they are all along the same axis - I wouldn't recommend this of course.

So anyway I don't think its a big deal... I am not a pro, just a weekend hack, and remember what you paid for this advice!

Greg

[Joel Eisner]

Thanks for the input.  I guess the best approach is to keep the braces for now and once the place it up I can see what type of impact they actually make and remove them only if necessary.

Joel

[Don P]

We have a really cool mahogany half round arch topped door going in this house, maybe something like that would work?