NOT YOUR TYPICAL
TRUSS JOB
THE FARM WISCONSIN DISCOV-
ERY CENTER will open this year near
interstate I-43, under a stunning roof
provided by Truss Systems based in
Little Chute, Wisconsin. “It’s going to
be a high-profile building,” noted Truss
Systems President Steve Szymanski.
“It’s high visibility,” he explains, and
it’s big. “There’s 81-foot spans,” Steve
says. “It’s not your typical truss job.”
Steve says he’s seen those spans
in agricultural buildings around
Wisconsin, but not often in a com-
81-7-0 Over 2 Supports
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mercial building. Similarly, Truss
Systems has certainly designed visitor
centers before, but nothing that really
compares to the vision set forth by
the Wisconsin Agricultural Education
Center Board of Directors. “It’s going
to be a tourist destination,” says Steve.
The priority will be learning: “many
Americans do not know where their
food actually comes from, or how it is
produced,” the Farm Wisconsin web-
site notes. “Using local case studies,
stories and exhibits, [the Discovery

Center] will explore the historic, tra-
ditional, artisan and locally-produced
agricultural products” of the state.
In addition, as described in a press
release issued by Bayland Buildings,
the builder on the project and a long-
time customer of Truss Systems, the
center will function as a wedding
venue and will incorporate an opera-
tional barn. Steve says Truss Systems
has done some retrofitting of barns
being turned into wedding venues,
but they’ve never worked on a project
quite like this one.
“There’s actually a viewing section
where students can come and watch
a live calf birthing,” truss designer
Dave Meyer notes. “I’ve never had to
design a calf birthing center before.”
“You don’t do this kind of truss project
every day,” adds Dave. “It’s a unique
truss package.” For one thing, the col-
lection of trusses supporting the Farm
Wisconsin roof is incredibly diverse.
Dave says most of his projects use
multiple truss types, some more than
Vaulted
ceiling
entryway
others, but rarely as many as this proj-
ect required. “I think I had 80 differ-
ent truss types on this,” he said. “It’s
not my largest project by far,” but at
almost a week’s worth of work, it was
an enormous project, timewise.
“The size, and what they were trying
to achieve by having a vaulted ceiling
across the entire front side of this
building – the volume, the open con-
cept – that’s what makes this unique,”
The Farm Wisconsin Discovery Center,
still under construction, is “not your
everyday truss job,” says Truss Systems
president Steve Szymanski. “You’ve got
some large span trusses (81 eighths to
be precise)” that make the entry “really
a focal point” of the building.
Barn
Auditorium & calf
birthing viewing
area
says Steve. “There are some unique
challenges to the wood truss system
that’s going in there.” The initial step
of the job, therefore, was very careful
measurement.
“The first thing,” said Dave, “is we
went out to the jobsite and field-
verified all the dimensions.” Then he
started designing by running all the
trusses behind the parallel chord gird-
er. “I started on the far left wing,” he
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 • sbcmag.info 11
 Original interior
bearing location
Reaction Load = 34,556 lbs
Trusses behind
the parallel chord
girder
Parallel chord girder
Corner girders
explained, “because it’s just common
trusses. Then, I went to the far right,
which attached to the barn.” With the
wings complete, he started moving
forward from the back of the building,
“running the 81-foot trusses toward
the front to get to the primary girder.”
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Added post
Reaction Load = 31,339 lbs
The girder itself came next. Dave
designed a three-ply girder with a
single interior bearing, in accordance
with the original building plans. At
that point, however, the building
owners decided that instead of a
drop ceiling hung below a flat bottom
chord, the wanted a vaulted ceiling
above an auditorium space. For Dave,
that meant a change in the truss
shape and an extra bearing point to
adequately transfer the load. “When
we switched that to a parallel chord
detail, we had to add that interior
bearing,” says Dave.
Next up on the design list were the
corner girders that form the octagonal
shape of the building entryway – an
unusual shape that presented a satis-
fying challenge. “I do a lot of parallel
chords,” says Dave, but this project
was different from the rest. “What

“There’s a girder truss that basi-
cally carries the whole load,” says
Steve Szymanski. While the original
design called for just a single inte-
rior bearing, a second post turned
out to be a necessity to carry the
full roof load.
really stood out for me,” he explained,
was that “the corner girders are hold-
ing the depth.” Maintaining a single
wall height around the entire building
to support a level soffit and single
fascia was one of the most challeng-
ing parts of the design. The constraint
of the truss depth meant Dave had
to find creative solutions to accom-
modate the roof load.
“I realized I had to do the girders two-
ply, one each side, because of the
hip line,” Dave remembers. He ended
up with 43-foot, double-ply parallel-
chord girder trusses with “one on
each side so there’s actually four plies
right next to each other.”
To help the framers make sense of it
all, Steve said that they pre-nailed all
the multi-ply trusses, something that’s
not standard practice for their market.
“We’re getting asked more and more
1'3"1
Why two 2-ply girders instead of a
4-ply girder?
It’s all about the angle, Dave Meyer explains.
If the girders intersected at 90 degrees,
there would be no difference between two
double-ply trusses sitting right next to each
other and a four-ply truss.
However, in this case, to make the distinct
octagonal roof shape, the corner girders
rest on the main girder at an angle. That means, says Steve Szymanski,
“one is going to be slightly longer to pick up more of the bearing. There
is a method to that madness!” The bearing area on the main girder is
calculated separately for each of the two-ply trusses, and the differing
lengths means each double-ply gets as much bearing as possible while
maintaining the angle.
Dave says his unique approach isn’t necessarily what every designer
might think of. After more than twenty years of designing, he says,
creative solutions have become a specialty.
to do that,” Steve notes. “They may
not have a flat surface at the jobsite.”
And on a project like this one, there’s
plenty to worry about during instal-
lation.
In fact, the framers on this project
began asking for details as soon as
they saw what they would need to
install. “I’ve been in this 30 years,”
Steve says, “and we take it for grant-
ed that they’re going to know what
they’re doing out in the field. But they
probably don’t!” In this case, he had
no trouble understanding why. “After
the framer called me, I started looking
at it and said, ‘oh, yeah – I can see
why you’re struggling with this!’ This
was so complex, and everything had
to be exact.”
Steve says it was great to be working
with a customer he knew well, one
he’d worked with before and who
JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2018 • sbcmag.info 13
 Steve Szymanski explained
that the skewable hangers –
unique hardware that he’s
seeing more and more in his
market and that’s required
to pull off a design like this
where multiple, odd angles
come together – need to
be installed on the ground,
before the girder is set. “The
hangers have to actually be
held up just for the ceiling
planes to come out at the
correct angle,” he says. That
kind of installation takes a lot
more thinking than a typical
truss-setting job would – but
in this case, the planning paid
off. “It actually went very well
in the field,” Steve reported.

paid close enough attention to detail to ask a lot of questions up front. “There
was so much more communication that was required for the framer to install this
set of trusses,” Steve explains. A truss package that is routine for a component
manufacturer can be overwhelming to a framing crew – and with good reason.

“We’re working with this stuff every day, but you take it out to the field,” says
Steve, and it’s amazing that any framing crew is able to put the pieces together.
In this project, he notes, the sheer size of the trusses was a significant factor.
That was complicated by the fact that so many of the trusses were intersecting
and tying into sub-girders.

To sort things out, Steve hung up the phone and started marking up the design
drawings. He provided detailed dimensions, showing the site crew exactly where
the hangers needed to be placed on the girders. “They’re skewable hangers,” he
explains, “which means not only do they have to put them on, they have to bend
them to the right angle and then they’re fastened onto the girder.” All of that,
Steve adds, has to be done on the ground. “A lot of times, they set a girder truss
and then they put the hanger on, but with these you have to put the hanger on
first. That led to…I’ll call it a challenge…for the framer out in the field. And for
us, too.”

With Steve’s help on the hanger placement, something he says he doesn’t do

for any other job, the complicated installation went very well. “Obviously, it was

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