Structural Garage Door Header Missing
You don't see this too often, and garage door
opening framed with a 2 x 4 header. The builder clearly, has never seen
a structural header sagging, because there's too much weight above it.
Even though the garage door opening is only 8 foot wide, it should have
at least a 4 x 8 header. This is the minimum size for a structural
header that I would suggest in a situation like this.
I hate to see projects like this being built. I know what this garage
door opening is going to look like in 10 years. Yeah, I know that the
garage won't fall down, but you will have structural cracks in your
walls and a sagging garage door opening.
Home Repair Tip: Remove the 2 x 4 garage door header and replace it with
a 4 x 8 or 4 x 10 header.
Home Repair Common Sense: The roof on the garage is going to be
constructed using an engineered truss roof system. The interior trusses
sit on two exterior walls and the weight of the roof is disbursed to
each of them, one at each end of the truss.
The gable truss or the truss that sits on the ends of
the garage, (like the roof truss that will be located above the garage
door headers), distributes the weight evenly along the length of the
entire wall.
If there isn't enough structural support underneath
the gable roof truss, (proper sized garage door headers) the weight of
the roof and the weight of exterior finish (siding or stucco) could be
too much to handle.
If the structural supports can't carry the weight,
they will eventually, start to sag, split or they could even break.
If you have any questions about an engineered roof truss system, you
should contact the manufacturer.