Hurricane Truss Strapping

The South Florida building code was last changed in 2002 to new upgraded standards including the cities of Port St Lucie, Palm City, Stuart, Jupiter and the Palm Beaches  to help protect homes from hurricane damage. It was around this time Hurricane straps were becoming standard in new home construction.

While there are many types of roof designs, your home most likely will have pre-fabricated trusses (trusses assembled in a factory and then delivered to the home site). This was the start of many problems prior to the new codes. In the past, very little thought was put into how the trusses where attached to the walls. The main concern was keeping the home from collapsing against the rules of gravity.

Many builders from the mid-west or north came into coastal areas to keep up with available work. Having little experience with high winds, little consideration was taken in regards to the effects of hurricanes. They may not be at fault entirely as many homebuilder contend with issues homebuyers have little knowledge of on a regular basis. Then there were outdated building codes and less knowledgeable home inspectors. Even worst is having to deal with the constant unexpected and unknown. Also reality is the cyclical nature of hurricane intensities was unknown to most of these builders.

Prior to new codes and hurricane strapping many trusses were merely “toe-nailed” to the header at appropriate intervals. This means they were simply driving the nail at a 45-degree angle into a board and on through into the next board. While this may seem good, it proved to be one of the weakest ways to connect the two. The result was that when the hurricane force winds start blowing, they nails pulled out and thus the roof would come apart. There have been cases where the whole roof came off in one piece.

To overcome this problem, hurricane straps were created. They are good quality made of sometimes galvanized metal to prevent corrosion. They come in a number of styles and shapes allowing for various uses for various projects. If the roof orientation and wind direction is just right, the roof acts like a low efficiency wind foil, creating lift on the leeward side of the roof. This lift could try to pull the leeward side of the roof up and off. Meanwhile the windward side of the roof will be experiencing strong downward pressure. This will have the roof under great stress. If the roof fails, hurricane strength wind can enter the home and soon thereafter, devastating destruction will occur. Since, as a storm moves across the area, the wind direction may change up to 180 degrees, both sides of the roof may be stressed both ways.

This is why hurricane straps will significantly increase your roofs chance of weathering a storm and avoiding that stress.