Let’s face some facts. Eventually your truss building equipment needs repair or replacement. Exactly when do you pull the trigger? When do you take the big jump? In a perfect world with endless resources, it’s an easy calculation—replace or repair the equipment when there is a reasonable return on investment (ROI). But, should the decision just depend on your resources? Should that be the governing factor?
Well, some decisions need to be made when the lack of a decision can create extremely risky situations. The calculations behind repair/replace decisions should not be limited to dollars—they need to consider hazards too.
Certain risks should always be avoided and must be added to the evaluation. Here is an example of that situation. At the facility where this truss is manufactured, the machinery is incapable of dealing with the situation shown in the photo. This is an end detail of an intermediate bearing floor truss. Because of the size and amount of force necessary to seat the connectors, the machine cannot push the plate in to an acceptable embedment to meet ANSI/TPI 1 requirements. A 3/32” gap is the maximum allowed gap in this situation. Basically, it’s the thickness of a credit card.
The serious concern is, more than likely, there are many trusses that have been built, sold, delivered, installed, and are now in service—trusses that could eventually fail because of this manufacturing defect. What’s more, this defect may not be detected until repairs or remedies will be extremely expensive for the building, fabricator, or homeowner. What is the cost of this scenario?
Even without scary stories or worst-case speculations, we should still consider taking action. What can we do right now? How should these builders handle this concern until the new floor machine arrives?
- Educate your floor builders as to what is acceptable.
- Do not allow bad components to be loaded on the truck!
- Give them a plastic card (credit card thickness) to gauge the embedment.
- Teach them to check EVERY truss when extreme applications are required.
- Review your in-house quality assurance program to make sure your inspector is up to speed.
- Do not rely on remote inspections to detect this sort of defect. They are very difficult to see in a photo or video unless the defect is the focus of the image.
- Do not rely on your customer to notify you. Most contractors are not knowledgeable of ANSI/TPI requirements. That’s your job.
What are the extreme applications?
- Double chorded trusses.
- Thick gauge connector designs.
- Variations of lumber widths. (Sometimes due to remnant wood utilization.)
- Multiple block end verticals. (Consider pre-nailing to eliminate in and out of blocks.)
- Consider adding a floor truss finish roller. (This is a symptomatic treatment not a correction.)
- Worn out, broken floor machinery.
Although repairing and/or replacing equipment can be expensive, these defects can be even more expensive. Allowing these defects can cost you your customers, your reputation, and possibly even your business. Even when the defects may not be detected until repairs or remedies are needed later, can you really afford to ignore your obligations to your client?
An ANSI/TPI 1 3rd Party Quality Assurance Authorized Agent covering the Southeastern United States, Glenn Traylor is an independent consultant with almost four decades of experience in the structural building components industry. Glenn serves as a trainer-evaluator-auditor covering sales, design, PM, QA, customer service, and production elements of the truss industry. He also provides project management specifically pertaining to structural building components, including on-site inspections and ANSI/TPI 1 compliance assessments. Glenn provides new plant and retrofit designs, equipment evaluations, ROI, capacity analysis, and CPM analysis.