Attic Trusses Gusset Plate Pulled Back

Use a pneumatic nail gun and nails to attach your gusset on both sides of the wood pieces.

Attic trusses gusset plate pulled back.

For truss repairs to be effective the gusset plates must be in contact with the wood members and the nails must extend through all members. That many damaged trusses is unusual. Sometimes an engineer will specify a metal replacement plate with nails. These are usually much larger than the metal plate being replaced.

But what really got me was when i got into the attic above the garage. Metal connector plates can sometimes be pressed back when the teeth are still in alignment with the original holes. I would try to pull down on the top chord to see if the nails lineup with its current position which would indicate the damage was done before the roof sheathing was applied. I saw three seperate trusses where the gusset plates were pulling out of the wood.

Ever try pulling a truss plate off. It s a sob and the plate gets mangled in the process. The normal repair is to install a plywood or osb gusset plate nailed in place. However this is often not a simple process.

Because it s nearly impossible to reinstall the plate replace it with a 1 2 plywood gusset. I wasnt sure if the cracks in the garage walls were related to he gusset plates.