Is this timber framing ....or safe ?

[chainsaw_louie]

Hi ,

I saw this walkway attached to an old church in Italy, it may have been standing for many years, so I guess its proven itself..... but there is not the usual amount of heavy timbers and bracing that I would expect to see in a 2nd floor timber construction.  There are stone walls on the back and ends, so maybe this is stronger than it looks .  I wonder what the local building inspector would have to say about this . 



 

[beenthere]

With those steel rods in place of lower chords (ties), the outward thrust is indeed minimized.

[mesquite buckeye]

I think in an earthquake it falls down and goes boom.

[Satamax]

no prob whatsoever imho.

Don't know the exact size, but 1 inch rod can withstand about 8000 pounds safe load in tension. Five times that before it breaks if the safety factor is 0-+1 (no load to full load)

From the pic, i can tell there's at least five rods

40000lbs safe working load on that roof ( 200000lbs before it cracks. That's about 90 metric tons. )

Not worried the least I am!

[mesquite buckeye]

The steel doesn't worry me. In an earthquake the square corners start racking back and forth. You can see this in the X patterns of cracking of the masonry walls after one happens. My concern is racking parallel to  the front of the bldg, and failure and/or kickout of the vertical posts.

It is hard to imagine the power of earth movement unless you have seen its effects.

Go to Mexico City sometime and check out the damage still there.

[Satamax]

I don't know about an earthquake, I've only lived one 5.4 or 6, can't remember on Richter's scale.

There's one thing, in modern European buildings made the same, usually there's a St Andrews cross made out of metal, between the central "post" of the trusses.