Seismic Retrofitting | San Francisco
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Did you type "earthquake retrofit san francisco," or "san francisco earthquake retrofitting," into your search browser and end up on this website? This page will explain everything you need to know about our retrofit companies and about how we do seismic retrofitting in San Francisco and surrounding areas. The most likely places to collapse under high earthquake lateral stresses are garage door openings and/or huge, unreinforced ground-floor areas. Several multi-unit buildings and houses in San Francisco have similar "soft-story" qualities.
It is crucial to know that your building is being retrofitted to current seismic standards, which include using the correct hardware and installation techniques for bolts, clips, hold downs, foundation footings, steel frames, and shear walls. This is due to the passage of San Francisco's Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit Ordinance, which updated seismic building codes.
To save costs and turnaround times, seismic retrofit contractors and retrofit companies offers custom developed and pre-certified bracing systems. We do this by only working with competent engineers and reliable suppliers.
It is crucial to know that your building is being retrofitted to current seismic standards, which include using the correct hardware and installation techniques for bolts, clips, hold downs, foundation footings, steel frames, and shear walls. This is due to the passage of San Francisco's Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit Ordinance, which updated seismic building codes.
To save costs and turnaround times, seismic retrofit contractors and retrofit companies offers custom developed and pre-certified bracing systems. We do this by only working with competent engineers and reliable suppliers.
Soft Story | Retrofit | San Francisco
Our seismic retrofit contractors in San Francisco provide experienced consultancy and construction services for your seismic retrofit needs and is wholly committed to structural safety.
Due to the cost-effective solutions we employ for sophisticated retrofitting, our clients with soft stories, mixed-use buildings, and residential properties have saved thousands of dollars.
Due to the cost-effective solutions we employ for sophisticated retrofitting, our clients with soft stories, mixed-use buildings, and residential properties have saved thousands of dollars.
San Francisco earthquake retrofitting can be challenging. For a long time, shear walls that were only 18′′ wide could be used to reinforce garage door openings. These shear walls behaved like posts and toppled over, as was demonstrated during the Northridge Earthquake. As a result, the 1997 Unified Building Code altered the requirement for the minimum width of the walls on either side of a garage from 18 inches to 4 feet.
A 4′ wide wall on either side of the garage was often not desired by builders since doing so required them to construct a larger, more costly garage. Let's imagine a builder requests that the garage's side walls only be 12 inches wide. Because the building rule requires a shear wall to be 4 feet wide, he is unable to construct a typical shear wall. Engineers began developing moment columns to meet this demand, and manufacturers began producing robust walls that were very narrow but could withstand very powerful earthquake forces. Moment columns and strong walls are two topics that will be covered by our seismic retrofit contractors on this website.
The "Allowable Load" column in the table's first row reveals how much quake force a certain size moment column can withstand. A constructor must find out how to install an extremely heavy steel column that weighs 1600 lobs absolutely upright, therefore weight is perhaps the most crucial aspect from their perspective. You'll understand what I mean if you try to lift a 50-pound bag of concrete and double that amount by 32 to obtain 1600 pounds. Moreover, moment columns require a significant amount of engineering, concrete, and steel reinforcement. On the other hand, Strong Walls are pre-engineered, and if you utilize basic retrofit design concepts, it is simple to choose which one to employ. We determine the size of Strong Wall we require before going one size larger "just to be sure."
A 4′ wide wall on either side of the garage was often not desired by builders since doing so required them to construct a larger, more costly garage. Let's imagine a builder requests that the garage's side walls only be 12 inches wide. Because the building rule requires a shear wall to be 4 feet wide, he is unable to construct a typical shear wall. Engineers began developing moment columns to meet this demand, and manufacturers began producing robust walls that were very narrow but could withstand very powerful earthquake forces. Moment columns and strong walls are two topics that will be covered by our seismic retrofit contractors on this website.
The "Allowable Load" column in the table's first row reveals how much quake force a certain size moment column can withstand. A constructor must find out how to install an extremely heavy steel column that weighs 1600 lobs absolutely upright, therefore weight is perhaps the most crucial aspect from their perspective. You'll understand what I mean if you try to lift a 50-pound bag of concrete and double that amount by 32 to obtain 1600 pounds. Moreover, moment columns require a significant amount of engineering, concrete, and steel reinforcement. On the other hand, Strong Walls are pre-engineered, and if you utilize basic retrofit design concepts, it is simple to choose which one to employ. We determine the size of Strong Wall we require before going one size larger "just to be sure."
What is a soft story? How do you refit them? What are a moment column and a moment frame? How do they operate and how are they put to safeguard homes with soft stories? If you typed on "soft story san francisco," into your browser and laned on this page you will find the information you are looking for.
A soft story occurs when there is a living area above a garage and the big concern is that the garage door opening will cause a collapse and the living area will collapse down with it. This is a serious structural weakness and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland have now required that buildings with 5 units or more be retrofitted and could potentially be include duplexes, triplexes , and four plexes in the near future. So it's very important and they're worried about the geologic hazard as you may know the geology is a very serious concern and it could happen at any minute and it's going to be huge and a lot of buildings are going to be lost and hopefully your home will not be one of them. According to official figures, 350,000 people would be relocated and 155,000 housing units will become uninhabitable following an earthquake. Several of them will be modestly sized residences and buildings. Many of these damaged structures will be in Oakland and Berkeley, but soft story buildings, including typical single-family houses, can be found across the Bay Area. When looking for soft story retrofit, San Francisco residents often come to us for their needs to be met.
A soft story occurs when there is a living area above a garage and the big concern is that the garage door opening will cause a collapse and the living area will collapse down with it. This is a serious structural weakness and the cities of San Francisco and Oakland have now required that buildings with 5 units or more be retrofitted and could potentially be include duplexes, triplexes , and four plexes in the near future. So it's very important and they're worried about the geologic hazard as you may know the geology is a very serious concern and it could happen at any minute and it's going to be huge and a lot of buildings are going to be lost and hopefully your home will not be one of them. According to official figures, 350,000 people would be relocated and 155,000 housing units will become uninhabitable following an earthquake. Several of them will be modestly sized residences and buildings. Many of these damaged structures will be in Oakland and Berkeley, but soft story buildings, including typical single-family houses, can be found across the Bay Area. When looking for soft story retrofit, San Francisco residents often come to us for their needs to be met.
San Francisco Earthquake Retrofitting
What many people don't realize about San Francisco and the Bay Area is that just outside the city is a major fault line that could produce one of the most powerful earthquakes in the world. What makes matters worse is that California didn't have a seismic building code until 2013 and that means that the vast majority of the homes in the city were not built to withstand earthquake damage and most homes still aren't retrofitted currently and that means that if the big one strikes whole neighborhoods of historic houses could be devastated. There are solutions that seismic retrofit contractors in San Francisco are working to make small changes to homes that can have a big impact if an earthquake were to strike. When earthquake retrofitting a home in San Francisco, the goal is to make the house shake less. So you will need to find a way to to transfer the loads of the earthquake from the home to the the strong concrete foundation. Houses not retrofitted are built to withstand vertical loads, like gravity, but during an earthquake you have the ground moving in a linear direction and laterally and we really don't know what direction it's going to come from, it's energy moving in one direction. In an earthquake the ground moves forward in jolts or waves and the house wants to keep going that way which is why you want to connect that vertical load to the foundation. Ideally, when earthquake retrofitting in San Francisco you want a continuous load path from the roof system, to the wall system, to the floor system. If there is no mechanical connection between the floor system and the foundation, that becomes a weak point. To fix that we need to transfer the load effectively from the roof all the way to the foundation and to do that we need to install specialty hardware. When looking for earthquake retrofit, San Francisco residents come to our San Francisco Engineering pros for all their planning needs.
