We spend a fair amount of time making sure that the interior floors of bearing-wall buildings are properly fastened to the masonry. The solution used in past centuries in Leuven is pretty straightforward:
Those are wrought-iron straps going through the wall and ending in vertical-bar ties. They’re obvious on the stepped-gable building between the second- and third-floor windows, and a little harder to see on the building to the left.
Here’s another example:
The wide spacing and slope of the roof make me think these ties may be for trusses.
Any time I think I have a clever idea, I try to check old buildings to see if someone else came up with it fifty or two hundred, or a thousand years ago.
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