Tall (LONG) Wood Studs ....

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So, in class we were talking about tall stud walls ... in our example, 20 ft.   We found out that the deflection under wind load was 2.88 in. for the 2 x 6 @ 16 in. o.c., blah, blah ... and this was excessive with regard to a limit of L/180.  I may have remembered wrong.  The appropriate deflection limit for our example should be L/120 = 2.0 in.  Which means we're still a bit excessive. 

Options ...

1.  2 x 8 studs?

2.  closer spacing? ... 12 in. o.c., or less?  (yikes, that ends up being a lot of woood, ... and nails, and ...)

3.  `plant shelf' or some other lateral support

4.  `counting' the stiffness of the wall sheathing

5.  (we didn't mention) ENGINEERED LUMBER


I didn't mention Engineered Lumber for two reasons: 1) I forgot, and 2) Engineered studs aren't much stiffer than the dim. lumber ones (even though they are stronger).

ONE ADVANTAGE, however, of the engineered lumber, is that it is more amiable to longer lengths than the dim. lumber.

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I found some cool stuff on using ENGINEERED LUMBER for wall studs ... the Boise Cascade Versa Stud ...

I can't seem to paste a link - but simply Google "western versa stud 1.7 wall guide" or something similar.  You should land on the Boise Cascade stuff.

The ` ... Guide' has a lot of the same stuff we were talking about in class ...

Interestingly, it show we can get the 2 x 6 (1.5 x 5.5) up to 20 ft @ 16 in. o.c. ... with one side of wall sheathed, 20 psf wind pressure, L/120 deflection limit.

SWEET.


The Trus-Joist people manufacture a `Timberstrand' Engineered Lumber stud, which I am sure is similar.


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ALSO NOTE: ... the long engineered lumber studs are very useful in construction where we have `open to above' type situations ... where `platform' framing adjacent to the opening ... DOESN'T WORK.


Doc

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