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Recent content by bnickeson

  1. bnickeson

    Lateral earth pressure on footings and keys of retaining walls

    Thanks for the explanations, all. The key being located away from the back of footing and wall makes sense to me for why we wouldn't apply lateral pressure to it.
  2. bnickeson

    Lateral earth pressure on footings and keys of retaining walls

    There's only soil on one side of the building, so the load is unbalanced. There's also very few transverse walls due to the space layout and the shape of the building. So the slab sliding resistance is just 0.6D times a 0.3 coefficient of friction which doesn't add up to much.
  3. bnickeson

    Lateral earth pressure on footings and keys of retaining walls

    Yeah, I'm also counting on the basement slab. Even though it's 100' in length parallel to the direction of the lateral soil force, the slab only contributes about 800 plf to the sliding resistance. That's less than a quarter of the total sliding force. I was a bit shocked by that.
  4. bnickeson

    Lateral earth pressure on footings and keys of retaining walls

    This may be a bit of an unintuitive question, but it is mostly geared around how software treats lateral earth pressure loads on footings of retaining walls and keys of retaining wall footings. In this instance, I am speaking of RetainPro but I believe other software treats it similarly. In...
  5. bnickeson

    Need some immediate help on coupling nuts

    Because I found out about this Friday morning and they're pouring the concrete walls starting Monday. The specified couplers would have taken weeks to source at this point apparently which would have amounted to tens of thousands in delays. I already read the fabricator the riot act.
  6. bnickeson

    Need some immediate help on coupling nuts

    It's absolutely wild to me that something designed to couple two rods together does not have any published load information whatsoever. https://www.portlandbolt.com/technical/faqs/coupling-nut-load-ratings/ Also, I found this table...
  7. bnickeson

    Need some immediate help on coupling nuts

    So long story short, I have a detail where an A325 bolt is threaded into one side of a coupling nut and the opposite side is rebar embedded in a wall. I originally specified a specific Lenton coupler that the fabricator apparently didn't use. What was supplied was a "Grade 2" coupler which in...
  8. bnickeson

    Saltwater pool

    From everything I've read, no, saltwater is worse. Of course, most of these write-ups I've found are addressing the pool parts and components rather than the concrete and reinforcing, but I'm assuming that the same applies to the structure.
  9. bnickeson

    Saltwater pool

    Has anyone ever done the structure for a saltwater pool before? We were tasked with designing the containment walls for a rooftop pool, where the EOR already designed a big tank for it and we designed the supplemental walls for the pool that sit inside the main tank. The owner just changed...
  10. bnickeson

    Slab-on-grade perimeter insulation per IECC C402.2.5

    A couple comments on the latest posts. First, interrupting the exterior insulation where the brick bears on the foundation completely defeats the purpose of the continuous insulation requirement. Allowing the thermal bridging between the brick and foundation is worse than the original detail...
  11. bnickeson

    Slab-on-grade perimeter insulation per IECC C402.2.5

    How does that work with something like brick veneer? Seems impossible to have continuous exterior insulation when the brick is bearing on your foundation. Also, I wasn't really given a reason, but apparently architects hate the exterior insulation option. It's an aesthetics issue. You don't...
  12. bnickeson

    Slab-on-grade perimeter insulation per IECC C402.2.5

    The energy conservation code has - apparently for some time now - had a requirement for insulation at the perimeter of a concrete slab-on-grade. This requirement is pictured below. The key language in there is "The insulation shall extend downward from the top of the slab". Up until...
  13. bnickeson

    Cap plates on HSS columns for weather protection

    Possibly. But Section M2 is titled "Fabrication" so...
  14. bnickeson

    Cap plates on HSS columns for weather protection

    Perfect! That article gave me the spec section I was looking for. I knew there had to be a section on that somewhere. Thanks!
  15. bnickeson

    Cap plates on HSS columns for weather protection

    Nothing in our specs about it. Not even in the base MasterSpec document.

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