Foundation earthquake brackets?

[Fishboy]

My wife and I went to the Seattle Home Show last weekend and we stopped and chatted with a guy who specializes in preparing homes for earthquakes. He had all the standard stuff that you'd expect; strapping for the water heater and tall cabinets and such, but one that really caught my eye was a bracket for attaching a house to the foundation. I took his material and emailed him yesterday looking for these brackets. He said they're available in Home Depot or Lowe's, but I got a blank stare from the hardware people I asked in both of these stores.

Our house was built in 1958 and the sill is bolted to the concrete foundation in just enough places to ensure everything on top could be constructed. I want to install something to do what I can to keep the house from shifting off the foundation if\when we get a good jolt.

There isn't enough room between the sill and the floor to hold a hammer drill to drill through the sill and into the top of the foundation, so I can't use anchor bolts in the vertical direction. This bracket was interesting because it fits to the side of the foundation and the sill. It's installed by drilling two anchor bolts horizontally into the foundation and four lag bolts into the sill. I can't find these on the net, and I can't imagine what else to call them besides "earthquake brackets", or "foundation brackets".

Does anyone have a source for this type of hardware? Any other ideas for preparing my home for an earthquake are also welcome.


Mahalo nui loa,
Brian and Mary
Lynnwood, WA\Discovery Harbour

[sansei]

Anytime I am looking for building connector hardware of any sort the first place I check is Simpson Strongtie. Is something like this what you saw / are thinking about: http://www.strongtie.com/products/connec...JA-FSA.asp

Simpson is carried by just about any building supply store. They may not carry the specific hardware you are looking for but once you have the catalog #, they can probably order it for you.


Larry

[Kapohocat]

quote:

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Originally posted by Fishboy

Does anyone have a source for this type of hardware? Any other ideas for preparing my home for an earthquake are also welcome.

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Do you have the company name of the ones you saw? and part number. I want to see what you were talking about.

[Fishboy]

Thanks much, sansei, that web site had exactly what I was looking for: a Universal Foundation Plate. Now another dilemma, what's the difference between that and foundation anchors? It's kinda funny that Lowe's and Home Depot didn't have this, but it's also likely I didn't explain it very well. I printed the catalog page with all the numbers, so maybe they'll know it from that.

Thanks again,

Mahalo nui loa,
Brian and Mary
Lynnwood, WA\Discovery Harbour

[Fishboy]

quote:

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Originally posted by KapohocatDo you have the company name of the ones you saw? and part number. I want to see what you were talking about.

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Kat,
What I need is on this page: http://www.strongtie.com/ftp/catalogs/c-...8-p021.pdf

Mahalo nui loa,
Brian and Mary
Lynnwood, WA\Discovery Harbour

[Rob Tucker]

Don't expect stores like Home Depot or Lowe's to trock the full line of Simpson StrongTie products. They carry some of the more common items but not nearly the whole line. White Cap, I believe, carries the best inventory of Simpson. Many catalog items will need to be ordered in advance.

[Fishboy]

quote:

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Originally posted by Rob Tucker

Don't expect stores like Home Depot or Lowe's to stock the full line of Simpson StrongTie products. They carry some of the more common items but not nearly the whole line. White Cap, I believe, carries the best inventory of Simpson. Many catalog items will need to be ordered in advance.

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Rob,
I've never heard of White Cap, but there are a couple other building supply places here in Seattle I'll check tomorrow. Incidentally, it's kind of surprising that the big box stores don't carry these as homes in the vintage of ours were built with no seismic codes and there are always public notices that people should be refitting their homes for earthquakes. We had a 7.3 jolt back in 2003 or so that knocked a few bricks off chimneys and such, but did no real damage. Since then, there've been a quite a few faults identified and each discovery has been the cause for great concern. I don't know if there's a great market for these, but at least I'll be able to order what I need.

Mahalo nui loa,
Brian and Mary
Lynnwood, WA\Discovery Harbour

[Rob Tucker]

I found that the Big Box stores such as Home Depot have a lot of what I call breadth but lack real depth in their inventory. That means while they may have 100,000 items in the store the selection in many categories or specialties is actually fairly limited.

White Cap is a construction supply chain in many western states. They have an office in Hilo where they had bought out a local firm called Wire Products. Primary vendor for rebar, mesh, HD tools and specialty items.

[Fishboy]

As long as we're on this topic, I'll ask another related question:

Sears is having a sale on tools right now and I went and looked at a 1/2" drive 6.0 volt hammerdrill that's on sale for $70. I didn't get it because six volts just sounds too light weight for most applications, but the next size up is 9.0 volts for $120. These Strongtie brackets require the drilling of two 1/2" x 4" holes per bracket. I've never used a six-volt hammerdrill, do you think it'd drill the 1/2" bit with reasonable ease?

Mahalo nui loa,
Brian and Mary
Lynnwood, WA\Discovery Harbour

[Kapohocat]

White Cap will also special order items for you.

Hotcatz or someone, what do you think of this item being used in asbuilts?