Charlie:
Pat in Sugar Land did that. She wants to know, can you recommend a structural engineer to look at my ceiling? I have too much deflection in my living room and I need options to fix it.
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Tom:
I do not know a structural engineer that would go look at that. I don’t know if there’s going to be many choices. Structural engineers work on commercial projects, bridges, things like this. This is a framing issue … so if you have a framing problem even a good framing carpenter or whatever would be able to know if there’s a problem and the only way to know how to fix it is going to be rip it open. The idea that an engineer can walk in, Charlie, and just look at something and say, “Okay, this is everything you have to do,” they can’t. What they can do, especially on a foundation inspection or something saying, “As I look at it right now it’s either good or something’s wrong,” and so if you already know that you don’t need someone to tell you.
The fix would be when you tear the ceiling out to see what’s going on up there. The only way you can do that is to have someone do some investigation and even a good carpenter can go in there and say, “You know what, you got sagging, your joists are too small, they’re too far apart,” I don’t know but you’re at the point now if you’re going to have to do some investigation and I don’t know anybody that would just go in and do that. There’s not a big market for it.
Charlie:
The bottom line is that to fix this somebody’s going to have to tear it open, see what’s going on in there and-
Tom:
If you have a ceiling that’s sagging, you have a floor on top, you have sheet rock on the bottom, let’s say for instance, the only way to know is tear the sheet rock out and see what kind of deflection you’re getting, what’s up there and how to strengthen it and can you stop it from happening anymore. It happens a lot. When we talk to Due West and they go out and they look at foundation problems, one of the things that Jim Dutton told me years ago is, “Tom, a lot of it is framing problems that looks like foundation problems and it’s not the foundation,” so they would tell people that many times. “Hey, you’ve got a framing problem. We don’t work on that. We work on foundations,” so that’s usually where get confused sometimes but framing can cause a real problem and sometimes it’s really difficult to fix.
Charlie:
You need a framing contractor, then, to come look at it.
Tom:
Yeah, if you can find one who’s competent, yes.
Charlie:
All right.
Tom:
They could troubleshoot that.