Hi Everyone,
I have a buddy who recently had his kitchen redone. He had two walls removed (one that was load bearing) and the ceiling plaster was removed and drywalled was installed. The load bearing wall had a header installed, but he is noticing the formation of cracks in the new ceiling. His contractor told him to install 2x4s connecting the ceiling joists with the roof. I told him he may need to sister the ceiling joists. What is the best method to strenghten the ceiling joists so that the ceiling cracking is minimized? Fyi the second floor of the home is finished, but I do not know the size of the ceiling joists. The area above the kitchen on the second floor is currently being used for storage of small items. Thanks for any advice you can pass on.
Replies
You realize we dont have any idea which happened .
Was the support that was reinstalled done correctly ?
Was there weight added to cause it ?
We dont have any span lenghts using what size lumber .
Impossible to correctly guess on such limited information .
One thing raises a flag to question.
Was the ceiling doing ok before the forsaid carpenter work?
I think a professional needs to look at this one in person.
Tim
My buddy just called me this morning so I don't have span information or the size of the header. He has talked to two other contractors other than the contractor who originally performed the work and one suggested tying the ceiling joists to the roof with 2x4s and the other suggested building a kneewall on the second floor ceiling (again to connect the roof to the ceiling joists). Both solutions presented by the contractors seemed questionable to me, which is why I posted. I will find out more later this week when I go to his house and check out the problem.
I have some cracking in my ceiling as well. The beam & connections were engineered and installed to spec. Our inspector spends a lot of time looking at those details here in earthquake country so I am confident it was done right.
We (GC and I) are pretty sure that it is just the beam (4x12x16' doug fir) moving as it dries. The other three sides of this structure are paralam and no problems at all with them. Just something to consider before doing all kinds of jury-rigging - of course after confirming that your friend's job was sized and built correctly ;-)
thanks for the advice, I will pass it on. I know that he said that the header was dimensional lumber and not engineered.
The whole question is questionable. Somebody on site needs to be able to tell what the cause of the cracking is. Can be from shrinking lumber, undersized members, poor SR work...You can't fix a poroblem until you know what the problem is caused by.
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