Structural practice questions

Racking is movement or distortion of a structure or of its components, usually from wind or seismic loads, and wind shoving a house sideways is the manual's example. Shear is a different deformation, one in which parallel planes inside a member slide against each other.

Newer houses should have reinforcing steel in their footings, though steel is not a requirement outside high wind and seismic zones. A deep frost line calls for a deeper footing, not for reinforcement. An older house may or may not have steel in its footings.

Spalling is wall material breaking down, and it could be structural where a large share of that material is unsound. Its listed causes are water entering the wall because of grading or gutter problems, and old or poor quality foundation materials. White powder on a wall is efflorescence.

These are steel I-beams, installed in an attempt to stop further movement of a bowing or leaning wall without changing where it sits now. They are usually not effective where the failure is significant. Of the wall repairs, only tieback anchors are meant to change the wall's position.

A joist that bears on a ledger should have three 16d nails driven into the ledger under it, so two nails fall short. A ledger, usually a 2x2, is an accepted bearing point, which is why the condition is a fastening shortfall rather than a bad support method. Joist depth matters to the bridging rule, not to ledger nailing.

A truss usually has support at each end, but it sometimes bears at a point within its span, where the truss often has two or more vertical members. The wall below should sit directly beneath that bearing point, so an offset wall is a reportable defect. Support at the ends alone does not meet that rule.

Glass in the door that leads from the garage into the living space is on the typical defect list. A solid or steel door is the expected construction there. The IRC calls for a self-closing device on this door, so self-closing hinges are not a defect.

The letter d means penny, a common way of stating the general size of a nail. It does not describe diameter or length on its own, and nails with the same penny size can still differ.

ICF systems do not have a record of significant defects in the system itself that would show in a home inspection. Their defects usually trace to failures elsewhere, such as water getting in at poor flashing or poor fastening of wood floors and roof framing to the concrete. Walls too thin for their height are a possible cause of rotation and bulging in CMU and structural brick walls.

A single ceiling joist running the whole distance between two rafters is unusual. The usual arrangement is one joist from each rafter, lapped over a load-bearing wall and fastened so the pair ties the opposite rafters together. Treating the lap itself as a defect invents a problem the framing does not have.