I’ve had a couple of situations lately where trusses were installed wrong. Got to thinking about it, and thought a “truss bearing primer” might be a good idea. I’m sure many of you already know this stuff. But there are new framers every year, and stuff like this needs to be repeated once in a while.

The jobs where we’ve had problems have been where there was no web at bearing points. This might happen for several reasons – The trusses may have been ordered wrong, installed backwards, engineered wrong, or built wrong.

The picture attached shows an example of a truss installed backwards. The red web on the right is a “cantilever web”, and should have been over a bearing. On the left, you’ll see a bearing with no web over it. I don’t know why, but framers often don’t recognize this as a problem and leave the trusses this way. Often the cantilever web will be hanging out in the middle of a room with a tag attached to it that says: “Bearing here”.

I was out on just such a job Wednesday morning. The house was finished and occupied. The “cantilever” was on an interior wall, which was unusual. Since there was no web over the bearing the trusses had settled and they had drywall cracks. Now they’re looking at a difficult, expensive fix which could have easily been corrected during framing.

So please keep in mind that every bearing point on a truss should have a web joint above it. If it doesn’t look right, ask questions.