We Have a Structural Engineer

I met with Chris Bernards of SideSway Engineering this morning at Walnut St. Coffee in Edmonds. He worked at C-G Engineering for I think he said 12 years. We went over the drawings and he's going to design the Trees Room to handle it's own lateral, and we'll leave the existing house alone. Trying to bring the existing house up to current standards would be a can of worms. We discussed whether the "crickets" on the roof might trigger that--they represent 2-3 PSF surcharge on the existing framing, and there's a 5% rule.

He said the city is just asking for some straps around the brick chimney, tying the roof framing to the bricks so that they don't shake. The bricks falling through the roof is still a problem, but the city doesn't require a fix for that.

He said that if we run a concrete wall up on either side of the garage door, we can use a plywood shear wall instead of a StrongWall. This is cool. Oh, and he can start working on it this weekend and we're talking ten days or two weeks, not forever.