Skip to main content
Stesso

Account for Ridge Beam Requirements

9:42
12:30
74.7K views

At 9:42 in

12 Things I Wish I Knew Before Building a House

Watch on YouTube

What happens here

A critical structural element in large A-frame construction, especially in regions with heavy snow loads, is the ridge beam. This particular A-frame required a massive 60-foot long, 3-foot deep, and 9-inch wide glue-laminated beam, weighing 4,500 pounds. This beam alone cost $15,000 and posed significant logistical challenges during installation due to its size and weight, especially with inconvenient access roads. Architects design for specific snow loads, and for a wide, tall A-frame like this, traditional 'webbing' systems (lighter truss-like connections between rafters) are insufficient for engineers to approve. These lighter systems are typically only suitable for much smaller A-frames, such as tiny homes. Therefore, builders must account for the substantial cost and complexity of a heavy-duty ridge beam in their budget and construction plan for larger A-frames.

Goal: Large A-frame structures require an exceptionally heavy and expensive ridge beam to support the snow load, making alternative, cheaper 'webbing' systems insufficient for larger builds.

Tools and materials

  • Crane (or heavy lifting equipment)
  • Glue-laminated Beam (Glulam)

What they say

Hide

and handy number 11 on the list when considering building a cabin specifically an A-frame is your ridge beam up top we have a 60t long 3T deep 9 in wide weighing at 4500 lb glue l beam and if you haven't seen that video when we brought it in go check it out it will give you an anxiety attack but the biggest question I get is aren't there a Fram designs that you don't have to have such a big ridge beam that's not only expensive it's a $155,000 beam with very inconvenient access roads but the answer to that is the architect's designed to have a particular snow load on the building the building is so wide and it's so tall that some of the traditional webbing system that they'll have to connect the rafters it's not sufficient for for the engineers to be able to sign off on that the only real way to get away with that webbing system that's far cheaper is if you were to build a building structure an A-frame specifically about half the size of this room it's essentially a system in place for tiny homes that are A-frames and this is like I said close to 2,000 ft and number 12 on the list when

Auto-generated from the video audio.