Shear Wall Plywood Nailing & Structural Issues

Over the last 6 months we've re-framed 4 fire damaged houses. All of the houses had existing structural issues.

This fire damaged house in Oakland California some of the framing members were pressured fitted into the frame. When the carpenters in 1910 ran out of nails, they just pressured fitted the lumber.

In this house built in Oakley California in 1979, the original girder  trusses never have any bearing at each end of the girder truss.

This house in Pittsburg California built in the early 1960's had 2x4 rafters that were deflecting, besides being fire damaged, were replaced with trusses.

On our current fire damaged house built in 1993. The structural shear wall framing  is/was pathetic.

In this picture you can see the 1" O.C. shear wall nailing, that was suppose to be 2" O.C. shear wall nailing, nailed in a some what straight line on the bottom plate.  All shear wall nailing should be staggered.

In these next set of pictures you can see the 2x trimmer was nailed 1" O.C., instead of the 4x4 holdown post.

In this next picture you can see the 1" O.C. nailing that is just pathetic.

Here we are bringing the shear wall framing up to the current building code. Replacing the 1993 Simpson HDA2 holdown with an 2013 Simpson HDU5 holdown for the 2" O.C. shear wall nailing.

Here's a picture of Erik nailing off the 2" O.C. shear wall nailing correctly. For 2", 3" & 4" on center nailing we mark off the plywood shear wall panels to make sure we have the correct number of nails in each sheet of plywood.

Here's a picture of the 2" O.C. shear wall plywood nailing. All nails are staggered  and the 2x trimmer is nailed at 6" O.C.

To update the fire damaged house we installed MST60 straps from the first floor holdowns to 4x4 post in the second floor wall framing. We, also installed the CS14 coil straps from each end of the shear wall  accross the window opening for the shear wall re-entry straps.