Manufactured Roof Trusses

[Redoverfarm]

Thought I would throw this out to anyone using a manufactured roof truss.  Ran into a little problem in finishing off my attic roof truss bonus room.  One would believe that the trusses when manufactured are the same dimensions regardless of there orientation.  Meaning that the bottom cord having a splice plate is placed in the same location when installed truss after truss.  When I had a contractor set my trusses basically all the trusses were set with the splice plate at one particular side of the room with the exception of 4 which were turned with the splice plate to the opposite wall.  No problem if they hadn't been side by side.  So basically I had an area of 4' which didn't seem to line up properly on the bonus room wall.  Don't get me wrong they are all fairly true and level with each other but the position of the knee wall stud varied some. Generally this wouldn't have been a problem if I hadn't used that particular location to draw off of to set another interior wall.  Now that wall is not perpendicular to the other wall which was aligned with the adjoining truss knee wall stud.   Could this just be a flaw in the manufacturing process.  Well I asked a contractor friend of mine and he concurred that it does affect the alignment of the knee wall studs.  He has used various truss companies and it seems a minor but annoying variance.  I will have to tweak that wall some to get it aligned. 

Not sure if this will affect other type of trusses or just trusses that you plan on finishing off such as a bonus room truss or attic type truss.  But you might check when installing to make sure that your splice plate orientation is correct on one side of the room or the other.   

[Don_P]

yup, basically never spin a truss. They should all be set in the same orientation. On some jobs we've spray painted one end of the trusses just to make sure we didn't spin one around.

[rick91351]

Our local truss company marks the orientation with cardboard cards stapled to the point they are to mate up.  .... I never thought too much about it until we sat the trusses on this house.......  It was mainly on the porches where they mated up with the LVL's....  Funny my wife was hooking trusses and she noticed the cards....  She 'shut the job down' made sure they were swinging the right way.  BTW She got a lot of compliments  from everyone. 

[Redoverfarm]

yup, basically never spin a truss. They should all be set in the same orientation. On some jobs we've spray painted one end of the trusses just to make sure we didn't spin one around.

Now you tell me.  .  Like other misalignments in building in that it seems the problem will carry on throughout as you continue.  Yesterday I was putting the drywall up on the knee wall and in that area the bottom piece was protruding out at the joint by probably 1/4" from the other sheet.  Should have taken note before putting up that last piece in that the subfloor had to be notched that 1/4" around the knee wall studs.  So basically those three trusses were off by some 1/4".  Well plane & sand on the stud and I am good to go.  I guess nothing a good "mud man" can't take care of.   

I mainly wanted to bring this to light for others who might cross this bridge sometime.  Not much I can do about it now but deal with it. 

[Don_P]

I've learned the hard way more than once. I like the plants that really mark things out well like Rick was talking about. We were taking a break on one job and looked up. The tag that was dangling over our heads pretty much said "You shouldn't be seeing me from there". Break was over