Floors A building's primary horizontal planar surface Support live loads: people, furnishings, and movable equipment Support dead loads: the weight of the floor itself, any non-movable, built-in components on the floor

Flooring materials Flooring can be made of many possible materials. Building code requirements may dictate the performance requirements of a floor material. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) specifies the degree of friction, slip resistance, of flooring materials used in public spaces. We are probably most familiar with: wood, stone, concrete, sheet vinyl, ceramic tile, and carpet as the surfacing materials on the floors we encounter every day

The distance a piece of material has to span is directly related to its size. The size of these steel floor trusses is based on the distance they must span, and the load they must carry.

Wood floor joists and wood flooring in a house. The direction of the floor boards is a result of the direction of the floor joists.

Concrete flooring

Steel reinforcing, called ‘rebar’ is placed to be inside the concrete slab

Steel rebar are numbered, 1, 2, 4, 5, 12, 16, et cetera. Each number equals that many eights of an inch. A number 12 rebar is 12/8”, or 1 ½” in diameter

Wood frame construction of floors

Wood frame construction

Steel framing Recently, steel framing has begun to make strong inroads into the residential building market. The move to steel in home construction has been fueled by rapidly increasing lumber prices and a need to conserve timber products. Steel homes use nearly the same framing techniques employed in wood-framed buildings, and construction costs run about the same. Unlike wood, however, steel is impervious to termites. It provides added resistance to fire and earthquake.