Soft Story Retrofit Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES SOFT STORY RETROFIT EXPERTS
Soft story retrofit Los Angeles by Foundation Builders Inc. Look no further for all of your retrofitting needs.
The process soft story retrofitting in LA County has never been quicker, easier and more affordable than now. At Foundation Builders, we can help you save a significant amount of money on the highest quality soft story retrofit services around.
DO ALL BUILDINGS IN LOS ANGELES REQUIRE SOFT STORY RETROFIT?
Los Angeles has a mandatory soft story retrofit program that applies to certain types of buildings. LA City has a set of rules and regulations that provide guidelines for what type of buildings require soft story retrofit in Los Angeles.
These guidelines are provided by Ordinance 183893 and Ordinance 184081. The ordinances go into specific details as to what types of buildings fall into the mandatory category. The goal of these ordinances are to reduce structural deficiencies by the most economical and feasible method.
Let’s go over some of the basic details provided by these ordinances that specify some types of buildings that require retrofitting.
- Buildings with 4 or more units that consist of 2 or more stories wood frame construction.
- Buildings that were built under building code standards enacted before January 1, 1978.
- Buildings that contain ground floor parking or other similar open floor space.
- Buildings with a hanging car port.
Let’s go into further details on our blog post about soft story retrofit requirements in Los Angeles.
PURPOSE OF SOFT STORY RETROFITTING
The purpose of soft story retrofitting is to strengthen a buildings structural integrity by providing additional physical support.
Multi story buildings can have weak front wall lines that create a “soft story” which makes the building vulnerable to earthquakes.
HOW IS A SOFT STORY RETROFIT DONE?
There are various methods of getting this done depending on the building and it’s situation.
One common and popular method is by using special moment frames. A special moment frame is a large steel frame that provides support below the soft areas of a building by holding up the weight of the building.