Structural Engineering - Home Design And Planning

Structural engineering is the process used to determine which building materials will be used in a specific way, to carry building loads safely. The picture below provides you with a structural supporting beam that's going to be used to hold up a large section of the roof.

Structural Engineers

A structural engineer is someone that you would hire to provide you with all of the structural engineering, needed to assemble a building safely. The structural engineer will use complicated math formulas to figure out different lumber and foundation sizes.

When you look at a set of building plans, you will find all of the floor framing joists sizes, beams, roof rafters, concrete footings and more. Engineers are allowed to provide you with stronger building components, but aren't allowed to provide you with weaker ones.

For example, if a 2 x 12 is questionable, most engineers will request the next lumber size up (2 x 14). I said most engineers, because there are plenty of engineers whose job depends upon being economical. You will find a lot of this on large construction projects.

Structural Engineering And Stair Design

A structural engineer will provide the stair builder with all of the sizes for their stair stringers, treads, risers and any other framing supports. Without structural engineering, we would need to rely on the Carpenters past experience, with success and failures.

Eventually the system of trial and error would create better engineers, but it would also lead to more failures. Structural engineering reduces the amount of risk and structural failure of building components.

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