Fink Truss and Central Brace Role and Replacement Information, help and tips on many areas of roofing including trusses, tiling, venting, insulation etc....

[edelstoff]

Hi,

I have fink trusses in the roof, and the two longest central webs have bracing between them on some trusses (not all). This looks a bit ad hoc and roughly nailed into the webs.

This reinforcement is not shown on any of the engineering drawings for fink trusses and has me puzzled as to it's role - nominally to prevent bowing of the web I suppose but I've not seen pictures of other fink trusses braced in this way and it not entirely clear whether this could be replaced with a simple alternative that would prevent bowing but take the loads across the webs but above head height, or even if it was for another purpose but now redundant.

Grateful for any advice.

[edelstoff]

Any thoughts on this question?

I get that I can't remove any of the fink truss webs but these ad hoc horizontal central braces look pretty redundant from a load point of view and I can't see any pictures of fink trusses with them.

Might they have just been fitted to stop warping of the truss before the roof was assembled? The mounting with just two nails looks very ad-hoc.

I was planning on mounting some bracing between the 2nd-3rd and 4th-5th webs to mount a flat train set layout in thin plywood. This would seem to reinforce the inner (3rd/4th) webs in similar way in any case.

(numbering for a fink truss with internal 6 webs)