sdirons
11-04-04, 07:10 AM
My husband and I are in the process of building a house in Northern California. We have gone through a couple of contractors unfortunately due to some problems. Our architect originally designed the roof to be a steel beam with the roof supports bolted to it with no interior load bearing walls. Our 2nd contractor discouraged us from this and had a truss company design traditional wood trusses built in the factory. We were told by this framer that we would need a new structural engineer report to go along with the roof truss spec. report. We are now on our 3rd framer who is discouraging us from the factory built trusses and wanting to do a build on site roof with the original design but using a glue-lam beam instead of the steel beam. He is telling us this is better as it will give us more flexibility on interior ceiling design and will offer more attic space. He says that the factory beams will allow us vitually no attic space at all. He is also telling us that if we do decide to use the factory built trusses, we do not need a new structural report as trusses are built to use the exterior load bearing walls only and the truss company provides any special calc. the city would need anyhow.. This is only a one level house. The widest beam is 48 feet. It is nothing fancey, straight gables and one hip... Any advice on field built roof versus factory built trusses would be greatly appreciated. I have brain melt with all the different stroies we are getting.