need some help

[Herb Taylor]

I recently relocated to El Paso, Texas and discovered that the builders here are still using the small (1 inch) round washers on ½ anchor bolts (spaced 6 feet O.C) which have been bored to at least ¾ holes. El Paso is in a seismic zone C and special wind region, so with this in mind it’s my opinion that they should be using the 2 X 2 square washers (at least) and this has been in the code since the 97 UBC. Also they don’t go bye 2003 IRC 403.1.6 (The wood sole plate at exterior walls on monolithic slabs and wood sill plate shall be anchored to the foundation with anchor bolts spaced a maximum of 6 feet (1829 mm) on center. There shall be a minimum of two bolts per plate section with one bolt located not more than 12 inches (305 mm) or less than seven bolt diameters from each end of the plate section.) Example here is the front garage walls they only have one bolt if they are lucky most of the time they just use power-driven fasteners and second example is at the plate breaks once again they are using power-driven fasteners. I’m trying to put together a code path and ICC evaluation reports to demonstrate the importance of these issues, so any help I could receive would be greatly appreciated.