Roof & Ceiling Construction — ICC B1 Practice Questions

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Answers and explanations for these are in the app.

• The attic above the second floor covers roughly 900 square feet and has about 6 feet of vertical height at the ridge, and it contains no mechanical equipment. The builder says no access was provided because nothing up there needs servicing. What is the correct finding?
• The builder wants to use the reduced ventilation ratio of 1 square foot for each 300 square feet of attic area. Which arrangement of openings allows that reduction to be used?
• At the perimeter the blown insulation has been carried out over the top plate and packed tight against the underside of the roof sheathing, completely filling the space above the soffit inlets, and no baffles were installed. What is the correct finding?
• The ceiling joists are 2 by 6 members sized on the approved plans for an uninhabitable attic with limited storage loading, and the owner has decked roughly 400 square feet and filled it with boxes, furniture and paint. How should the inspector handle this?
• The rafters are nailed to a 1 by 8 board at the peak, there are no ceiling joists and no rafter ties anywhere in the assembly, and at each end the board simply stops against the gable framing without any post or support beneath it. What is the correct finding?
• The framer has also installed 1 by 4 boards connecting opposing rafters at roughly mid-height of the attic space, spaced about 8 feet apart, and calls them the collar ties for the roof. Judging those members against the code, what is the correct finding?
• The rafters bear on the exterior wall plates, the ceiling joists run perpendicular to them, no separate ties connect opposing rafters near the plate line, and the member at the peak is a nailed 1 by 8 board with no support beneath its ends. What is the correct finding?
• The truss design drawings show continuous lateral bracing on specified web members with diagonal bracing at intervals, and none of it has been installed. The framer says the roof sheathing already braces the whole truss. What is the correct finding?
• For the species, grade, spacing and load shown, the plans list a maximum rafter span of 18 feet 0 inches. The roof is framed at 6 units vertical in 12 units horizontal, and along the top edge of a rafter you measure 20 feet from the ridge to the outside face of the wall plate. What is the correct finding?
• The rear wing is framed at 3 units vertical in 12 units horizontal, asphalt shingles are specified, and a single layer of underlayment has been applied in the usual overlapping courses up the slope. What is the correct finding?
• The porch roof is framed at 1.5 units vertical in 12 units horizontal, and the same three-tab asphalt shingles used on the main roof have been laid on it over a doubled underlayment. What is the correct finding?
• The roofer installed a self-adhering polymer-modified bitumen sheet along the eaves, and measuring up the slope you find it stops about 12 inches inside the exterior wall line of the building. What is the correct finding?
• Lifting a course at the rake you count two existing applications of asphalt shingles on the deck, both sound and dry, and the contractor plans to lay a new layer over the top of them. What is the correct action?
• At the sidewall the roofer ran the shingles tight to the wall and sealed the junction with a continuous bead of roofing sealant, and at the valley the original metal was reused with the shingles butted over it. What is the correct finding?
• The fireplace opening measures 5 square feet, and the hearth extension in front of it projects 12 inches from the face of the fireplace and 6 inches beyond each side of the opening. What is the correct finding?
• The masonry chimney terminates 2 feet above the point where it passes through the roof surface, and the ridge of the same roof stands 8 feet away horizontally with its peak 1 foot below the top of the chimney. What is the correct finding?
• Laying a tape along the top edge of one member from the wall plate up to the peak, you read 20 feet 0 inches, and the pitch is 9 units vertical in 12 units horizontal. The approved plans give a maximum allowable rafter span of 16 feet 6 inches for the species, grade, spacing and loading used here, with a note that span is taken along the horizontal projection. How should the inspector rule?
• The rafters bear on the exterior wall plates and are nailed to a ridge board at the peak. The only members connecting opposing rafters are ties installed at a height roughly halfway between the plate line and the ridge, and no engineered design has been submitted for the roof. Where does the code place prescriptively designed rafter ties?
• The ceiling joists run parallel to the rafters and the plans rely on them as the rafter ties. Each joist runs from the exterior wall and stops over the center bearing wall, where it is toenailed to the plate alongside the joist coming from the other side, with no lap and no splice plate. The framer says the bearing wall carries the joists so nothing more is needed. How should the inspector rule?
• The common rafters are 2x10 members. The valley rafters where two roof planes meet are 2x8, and the hip rafters are 2x6. Where the common rafters are cut into the valley, the plunge cut on the common rafter is deeper than the face of the 2x8 valley member. No engineered design has been submitted. How should the inspector rule?
• To get a duct past one truss, the installer cut roughly 4 inches out of a vertical web member and left both chords untouched. The superintendent points out that the chords were not damaged and offers to nail plywood gussets on both faces of the cut web before you leave. How should the inspector rule?
• Each truss heel bears on the double top plate and every truss is held with two toenails and nothing else. The truss design drawings delivered with the package show an uplift reaction at each bearing point and state the required bearing width. No metal connectors have been installed anywhere along either bearing wall. How should the inspector rule?
• The roof sheathing is 7/16-inch wood structural panel over rafters at 24 inches on center. Snapping lines over the rafters, you find 8d nails at roughly 6 inches on center along the panel edges but 16 to 18 inches apart in the field, and several rows of field nails have missed the rafter entirely and are visible from the attic. The approved fastening schedule calls for 8d at 6 inches on edges and 12 inches in the field. How should the inspector rule?
• The vented attic has 1,800 square feet of ceiling area. The condition allowing the reduced ratio has not been met, so the required ventilating area is 1 square foot for each 150 square feet of the area ventilated. The builder installed 16 soffit vents. Each vent has a gross opening of 8 inches by 16 inches, and the manufacturer's listing gives 65 square inches of net free area per vent after the louvers and insect screening are accounted for. How should the inspector rule?
• The vented attic measures 2,100 square feet. The two ratios available are 1 square foot of net free ventilating area for each 150 square feet of the area ventilated, and a reduced 1 square foot for each 300 square feet where the required condition is met. The builder has placed 55 percent of the ventilating area in ventilators located in the upper portion of the attic, at least 3 feet above the eave vents, with the balance provided by eave vents. Which required area applies?
• The soffit and ridge vents have been sealed off, closed-cell spray foam is applied in direct contact with the underside of the roof sheathing, and there are no ventilating openings anywhere in the assembly. The insulation contractor has also stapled a continuous polyethylene sheet across the ceiling joists below the attic. How should the inspector rule?
• The hatch is a rough-framed opening 22 inches by 30 inches cut into the ceiling of a bedroom closet. Standing on a ladder with your head through the opening, you measure 24 inches of vertical clear height from the opening up to the underside of the framing above. The attic exceeds 30 square feet in area and has more than 30 inches of vertical height at its peak. Which finding requires a correction?
• The main roof is framed at 5 units vertical in 12 units horizontal and the porch roof at 3 units vertical in 12 units horizontal. Wood shakes are being applied to both surfaces. The minimum slopes are 3 units in 12 for wood shingles and 4 units in 12 for wood shakes. How should the inspector rule?
• Step flashing has been woven correctly into the shingle courses the whole way up the sidewall. At the bottom of that run, where the roof edge meets the wall above the gutter, the step flashing simply stops at the last course and the wall cladding continues past it down to the trim, with nothing turning the water away from the wall. How should the inspector rule?
• The house carries a single existing layer of asphalt shingles. Lifting shingles in several places you find the wood structural panel deck beneath is water-soaked over large areas around the chimney and along one valley, with the panel faces delaminating. The roofer proposes to lay the new shingles over the existing single layer. How should the inspector rule?
• The framer has run the floor and ceiling framing tight against the sides of the masonry chimney, with header ends nailed hard to the brick face and the joists in contact with the masonry along their length. The chimney is fully enclosed by framing on all sides, so it is an interior chimney. How should the inspector rule?
• A wood mantel shelf projects 8 inches out from the face of the fireplace, and its underside sits 10 inches above the top of the fireplace opening. Painted wood trim boards run up each side of the opening 4 inches from its edge and project 3/4 inch from the face. The applicable rules are that combustible material may not be placed within 6 inches of the fireplace opening, and combustible material within 12 inches of the opening may project no more than 1/8 inch for each 1 inch of clearance from the opening. How should the inspector rule?
• The roofer applied the strip shingles with four fasteners per shingle in the standard pattern. The approved plans and the shingle manufacturer's printed high-wind instructions both call for six fasteners per shingle at the design wind speed shown for this site. How should the inspector rule?
• The approved plans reproduce two rows from the rafter span table for 2x8 members at 16 inches on center under the loading for this roof: Douglas fir-larch No. 2 permits a span of 13 feet 5 inches, and spruce-pine-fir No. 3 permits 10 feet 2 inches. The rafters actually installed carry a spruce-pine-fir No. 3 grade stamp. The horizontal projection you measure from the plate to the ridge is 12 feet 6 inches. How should the inspector rule?
• Each new rafter bears 1 1/4 inches on the wood ledger and 2 1/2 inches on the masonry wall, and nothing else supports the rafter ends. The prescriptive bearing requirements are not less than 1 1/2 inches of bearing on wood or metal and not less than 3 inches on masonry or concrete. How should the inspector rule?
• The rafters are spaced 24 inches on center and the opening interrupts three of them, so the header runs between the trimmer rafters on either side of those three. The framer cut the three rafters and framed the opening with a single header at the head and a single header at the sill, each end nailed with three 16d nails into a single trimmer rafter. Single members are permitted where the header span does not exceed 4 feet, doubling is required beyond that, and approved hangers are required where the header span exceeds 6 feet. How should the inspector rule?
• The plumbing vent stack comes through the roof and the roofer has fitted a boot with a collar over the pipe. The boot flange is laid on top of the shingle course below it and on top of the shingle courses above it as well, with a heavy bead of roof cement around the whole perimeter, and no shingles lap over the upper part of the flange. How should the inspector rule?
• The porch is framed at 2 units vertical in 12 units horizontal, and the panels are through-fastened with lapped, nonsoldered side seams and no lap sealant. How should the inspector judge this installation?
• The chimney measures 48 inches across the slope, and the roofer has run step flashing and counterflashing around all four sides with the upslope side detailed exactly like the sides. What does the code require here?
• The rafters on one side of the ridge are offset roughly 4 inches from the rafters on the other side along much of the length of the ridge, and the ridge board is a nominal 1x8. What does the code require of this framing?
• The hearth extension is 3/4-inch stone tile bedded in thinset directly on the wood subfloor, the firebox floor is level with the room floor, and the extension projects the required distance from the opening. What is the correct finding?
• The valley metal and the step flashing at the two sidewalls are rusted through in several places, and the roofer intends to reinstall them under the new shingles to save the cost of new metal. How should the inspector respond?
• The vented attic has 1,950 square feet of ceiling area, the applicable ratio is 1 square foot of net free ventilating area for each 150 square feet, and the installed vents total 1,500 square inches of net free area. Where does this attic stand?
• The vented attic measures 3,000 square feet. Using the reduced ratio of 1 square foot for each 300 square feet, the code requires between 40 and 50 percent of the required ventilating area to be in the upper portion of the space. What is the least net free area that must be placed in the upper portion?
• The vertical distance from the top plate line to the ridge measures 12 feet 0 inches, and collar ties are required in the upper third of the attic space. Measured above the top plate, what is the lowest point at which a collar tie may be installed?
• The schedule gives an allowable clear span of 11 feet 6 inches for the beam used. The ridge runs 24 feet 0 inches between the bearing points at the gable walls, with one 3 1/2-inch-wide post supporting the beam at midspan. What is the clear span of each segment?
• The rafters are 2x8 members with an allowable span of 12 feet 4 inches for this loading. The horizontal projection from the wall plate to the ridge measures 20 feet 0 inches, and the purlin supports the rafters at a point 9 feet 0 inches horizontally from the plate. How do the rafters stand?
• The deck under the shakes is 1x6 boards laid with 4-inch gaps between them, and the roofer plans to install asphalt shingles directly over those spaced boards. What is the correct finding?
• The back and side walls of the firebox are 8 inches of solid brick with no firebrick lining, and the mason says 8 inches has always been enough. What does the code require of these walls?
• Looking up along the ridge from inside, you find the sheathing runs unbroken to the peak on both sides, with the ridge vent and cap shingles installed over solid deck along the entire length. What is the correct finding?
• The deck is visibly damp in patches, the air temperature is 38 degrees, and the manufacturer's instructions in the bundle wrapper call for a dry deck and hand sealing of every tab below 40 degrees. How should the inspector respond?
• The clay flue liner sections are stacked with wide mortar joints, several of which have squeezed into the flue and been left with mortar hanging inside, and one joint is open on the back side. What is the correct finding?
• The vented attic measures 2,760 square feet. The installed vents total 1,325 square inches of net free area, which the builder sized on the reduced ratio of 1 square foot for each 300 square feet. You find that neither condition allowing the reduced ratio has been met, so the ratio of 1 square foot for each 150 square feet governs. What additional net free area is required?
• The vented attic measures 1,680 square feet and the governing ratio is 1 square foot of net free ventilating area for each 150 square feet. The ridge vent is rated at 12 square inches of net free area per lineal foot and runs 56 feet. The continuous soffit vent is rated at 9 square inches of net free area per lineal foot. How many lineal feet of soffit vent are needed to make up the balance?
• The vented attic measures 1,500 square feet and the governing ratio is 1 square foot of net free ventilating area for each 150 square feet. Each vent the builder is using has a gross opening of 128 square inches, and the cut sheet lists its net free area as 60 square inches. How many of these vents does the attic require?

Other ICC B1 content areas

• Wall Construction & Coverings109 questions
• Public Safety & Special Construction84 questions
• Footings & Foundations67 questions
• Floor Construction62 questions
• Building Planning44 questions
• Code Administration40 questions