I came across a picture online today of a residential construction fail that honestly terrified me as someone who respects structural engineering. A framing crew was running new central air ductwork through an older home, and instead of building a drywall soffit underneath the ceiling to hide the large round metal ducts, they decided to just cut massive 8-inch circular holes directly through the middle of the floor joists.
They literally severed the bottom half of five consecutive 2x10 load-bearing joists right in the center of the room’s span to slide the pipe through.
Anyone with basic building knowledge knows that the bottom edge of a joist handles all the tension weight of the floor above it. By cutting out that much wood, they effectively reduced the strength of those floor supports to almost zero. The floor upstairs is guaranteed to start sagging within a few months, or worse, completely collapse if someone puts a heavy piece of furniture over that spot. It’s wild to me that municipal inspectors don’t catch these things immediately before drywall goes up. Has anyone here ever discovered a hidden structural nightmare like that inside their own walls after buying a house?