Soft Story Retrofit
A soft-story building is a building in which one or more floors have windows, wide doors, or other openings in places where a shear wall would normally be present. This shear wall is typically required for stability and safety in earthquake engineering design. A soft story retrofit is necessary for buildings with a soft story because they are inherently weak.
These buildings are called “soft” because of the structural design. They are especially dangerous in situations such as earthq
uakes since the structure does not have the same security as a regular building. It cannot withstand the forces of an earthquake, which is why it could collapse. This is actually one of the leading causes of damage to soft-story buildings.
A soft-story building is considered soft because it has a lot of wide-open space. A couple of examples of a soft-story building would be an apartment building of two or more stories located over a ground-level space with large openings, such as a parking garage. This wide-open space offers fewer opportunities to install shear or stabilizing walls to maintain a stable structure. There are specialized walls that can help support the structure during an earthquake. Think about it like this: if you were driving into a parking garage, have you ever noticed that sometimes, each level is wide open? This is a perfect example of a soft story building. Yes, the structure is securely built to withstand the combined weight of multiple cars parked there at the same time. But if there were a massive earthquake and the parking garage were not built with proper stability, it would likely collapse.
It is very important to understand whether your soft-story building is a faulty structure. In general, it is not as apparent that these buildings have a weak structure. A few examples of a faulty soft story include structural joints with poor detailing, insufficient beam and slab reinforcement, or reinforcing steel with an inaccurate aspect ratio. It is extremely important to prevent a building’s ultimate collapse. Soft stories are often at the bottom of a structure (back to our parking garage example). So if there is a collapse, it can take the entire building down with it. If this happens, this building could potentially cause irreparable damage and become unusable in the future.
As an earthquake-specializing company, Weinstein Construction knows exactly how to resolve, repair, and prevent any damage that has occurred or could occur in the future. With our experience, our team can take existing soft-story buildings and give them the TLC they need. And this process is very important. It involves breaking down the existing slab structure and installing new reinforcement beams to set the building in place. New concrete is poured into the area, and once it is dry, the improved soft-story structure is complete.
If there are concerns about whether your building is a soft-story building or if you have concerns about earthquake-related damage, Weinstein Construction guarantees to have a solution for you.
