Chopped a truss for a loft ladder or 'Oh feck'

[childsandalbert]

1972 mid-terrace house, truss roof. Installed a big drop-down loft ladder a couple of years ago, which meant chopping a section out of a (just one!) Fink truss chord, in the middle bit, between any diagonals. Fitted the ladder with the chopped truss ends bearing on the frame, one side of the frame screwed to the adjacent truss, the other side with metal L plates to short stringers to the other nearby truss.

Anyhow, I now knows this is a bad thing and the roof's weakened, although it's stood solid through wind, rain and snow for the last 2 years. The thing is I might (will) have the building inspector coming over for other things, involving going up the loft - is he liable to p*ss himself and slap me down? Can it be fixed easily without spending a ton getting extra trusses in either side and all sorts of bracing? Structual engine-er time?

Worms, can of.

 

[mattylad]

Existing trusses etc - photo of ?

 

[dextrous]

So you're going to tell him it wasn't like that when you bought the house? Interesting.

 

[Shytalkz]

Depends on your selection of structural engineer...one who is a slave to the calculation would have you doing all sorts of things to rectify your reprehensible behaviour; one who's more pragmatic may suggest a couple of easy things to do, from a visual inspection.

Or leave it all alone and hope that the BCO doesn't notice. Which, if Blunkett has changed jobs, might be the outcome, otherwise, he will.

You are a very naughty man. And you have now realised that, just because a piece of paper says something won't stand up, that that is not necessarily the case.

 

[ajstoneservices]

because a piece of paper says something won't stand up, that that is not necessarily the case.

And vice versa

 

[Shytalkz]

True

 

[childsandalbert]

Cheers all for the advice.

I did think about lying blatantly to the BCO such as 'it's always been like that since we moved in' but it would be blatantly a lie, as all the wood work around the hatch is nice and shiny and new looking compared to the manky old 70's off-white gloss.

So I need to find a nice, sensible structural engineer - that shouldn't be too hard eh? I'll need to engage the services of onesuch in anycase, as I think I'll need some other building maths done as well.

Cheers,

AC