Hurricane ties installed using joist hanger nails top AND bottom. Should I yank them out

beamdeckjoistsnails

I'm using double sided hurricane ties to secure my joists to my beams for a deck I am building. The tie looks like below:

enter image description here

I had been using 1.5" joist hanger nails for the 6 holes at the top that connect to the joist and then some 10d nails to connect the bottom 4 holes to the beam.

A friend of mine was helping me and ended up using joist hanger nails for the 4 holes on the bottom as well.

I have a bad feeling that these are not going to cut it and that I should yank the nails in the bottom 4 holes and replace with some 10d nails. Thoughts?

Best Answer

Nah - most of the strength is in shear, and joist hanger nails are nice and fat so they have good shear strength.

also, yanking them is likely to be harder than you think.

The actual nailing schedule seems to be here:

http://www.strongtie.com/products/connectors/H.asp

That suggests that 10d are one size larger than you should use in a model H1Z hanger (since that's the one you pictured and you did not give a model, I have to assume that's the model you have.) The specs call for 8dx1-1/2 (joist hanger) and 8d (standard 2-1/2") - if you are forcing 10d in there they might end up weaker due to surface damage.

The table appears to include a column for "uplift with 8dx1-1/2" implying that installing them with joist hanger nails everywhere is not unheard of. It changes the uplift from 585 to 455 pounds (per hanger) on the H1 size hanger (Z is a coating suffix) (those values are for "DF/SP" presuambly douglas fir and similar quality spruce - for "SPF/HF" the difference is only 400 lbs .vs. 370 lbs.