Tried two ways of bracing a garage door header, the ugly one won

Last month I framed a 16 foot opening in a garage in Boise and did one header with a doubled 2x10 and one with a single LVL I had left over from a job. The doubled up wood one cost me about $40 less and felt stiffer when I hung off it, plus the lumber yard had it in stock same day. Is it just me or does anyone else keep coming back to plain old dimensional lumber over the fancy engineered stuff?

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william_hunt886d ago

That 16 foot span in Boise is a tough call because a doubled 2x10 on that length is really pushing it unless you got a wall or post helping out. What did your span tables say for the doubled up version at that width, because most of them cut off way shorter than 16 feet for a 2x10. The LVL probably had the numbers on its side even if it felt less stiff when you hung on it. Curious if you checked the deflection rating on both or just went by feel. Feels can lie when you are only hanging 180 pounds off the middle for a few seconds.

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