rigging to steel trussing

brin831

Member
Guys reading other threads on here just as a general observer has raised a question for a future event we have.

its a warehouse we turn into a dinner in a commercial building ... in the past most everything has been ground supported but it would be great to fly some items as the budget and requirements for the event have increased.

anyway my question is more hypothetical and i'm not our rigger so perhaps its a question for him to teach me and i'm ok if that's the answer ... what and how are load ratings of various trussing calculated. ie is there a way to say ok this is x truss or y i beam so it can should support this much weight based on span and style etc. in the above case its a warren steel beam truss about 40 ft span off top of my head.

perhaps this is an engineers question for the building design to say you can put this much weight on these points or whatever ... sorry this was a rambling but trying to keep it non specific.
 
Knowing how strong the beam is only half the battle. You also have to know what else it is holding up. An I beam that spans 40' might be able to hold 2 tons in the center, but if it is holding up 800 lbs of roof trusses and half of a two ton AC chiller it wouldn't be safe to hang from. If there isn't load rating info on the structure you will need an engineer to come in and do a report. A rigger will be able to tell if something is for sure unsafe but will have a hard time making something safe with out a load rating.
 
Its pretty typical around here to use the snow load criteria for the roof to double as the rigging criteria. A lot more goes into getting your final criteria per beam but there is usually a pretty decent load after your typical mech loads figured into a building design. Assuming you don't have 2' of snow on your roof during the event odds are an engineer will give you the ability to rig.

No matter what, you need to get an engineer involved before you start working in non-traditional spaces. You need a max CPL and a max UDL per beam and a total capacity of the system.
 

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