Preventing Your House Lift-Off with Roof Truss Straps: An Analysis

The roof is an essential part of your home, and if you live in Florida, you’ll want to make sure your roof stays on your home during hurricane season. Truss straps have become the popular go-to component for preventing the roof from being lifted off the house. Here is an in-depth analysis of roof truss straps.

Introduction

Roof truss straps in Florida come in premade structures made of wood or sometimes steel. They give the roof extra support and connect the roof to the walls of the house. Trusses are formed into triangular “webs” that are reinforced with long, sloping beams from the top and a horizontal beam from the bottom, all of which is linked by joints. The webbing effect of trusses helps distribute weight evenly over wide areas of the roof.

Several trusses are spaced evenly from one end of the roof and house to the other, taking a bulk of the weight off the exterior walls. Trusses are typically made in a factory and delivered to the home construction site and can be installed immediately. This is why roughly 80% of residential construction crews prefer using truss straps over traditional rafters.

Advantages

There are several reasons why roof truss strap installation in Florida is so popular in this day and age. Truss straps are made of units of small pieces of wood that are connected by tooth plate connectors, making them incredibly strong, sturdy, and lightweight. A single roof truss strap in Florida can span as much as 60 feet, reducing the need for interior load-bearing walls and allowing for a more open floor plan that more and more people are looking for in a home.

The best roof truss straps in Florida use approximately 40% less lumber than other methods, making them an environmentally friendly alternative. Since they are constructed with smaller pieces of wood, trusses are less expensive than other alternative methods. Buying them premade means you won’t need to worry about needing extra space to store materials, reducing the cost of labor, waste management, and financial losses due to pilfering.

Disadvantages

Probably the biggest disadvantage of using wooden roof truss straps in Florida is that, by being exposed to violent weather and high winds during a hurricane, the wood has a higher chance of rotting, warping, and being damaged by insects. Steel trusses can hold up better in extreme weather conditions since they won’t decay or suffer damage from insects. Steel and Wood trusses won’t hold up if a fire breaks out.  Steel will start to melt at 230 degrees, and wood ignites at 250 degrees. And at 700 degrees (fires can reach 700-1000 degrees easily), a bulk of the strength of steel will be lost. The upside with wood trusses is that they will develop a coating while melting, allowing them to stay cooler longer and will burn less.