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The Structural Engineers Association of California (SEAOC) has suggested limiting the use of stapled shear panels. View SEAOC's bulletin regarding stapled shear walls for more information.

Hard-core engineers may be interested in structural engineer Ben Schmid's comments on code approval report for staples (this is about a 1 MB file of four scanned pages).

"Green" Framing Lumber used in Shear Walls
Section 3.1.3 of the Shear Wall Construction Guide mentions that the strength of nails driven into green lumber (lumber with a moisture content of 19% or more--usually "S-Grn" appears in the grade-stamp) will have less strength than nails driven into dry lumber. The APA tested eight shear walls, six framed with green lumber and two with seasoned lumber. They report that the ultimate strength of the walls was not significantly different. However, they say that the stiffness of the shear walls built with green lumber was less than the walls built with dry lumber. Remember that stiffness is very important in preventing damage to building finishes.

For more information, see APA's Technical Bulletin TT-075 and APA Report T21002-53

Shear Walls with Sloping Top Chords
Appendix B of Wood-Framed Shear Wall Construction--an Illustrated Guide discusses the correct way to analyze an isolated shear wall that is taller at one end than the other. Since sloping shear walls are rarely isolated, other parts of the structural system will usually help keep the shear wall from failing if it is not designed properly.

One structural engineer and researcher in the field of earthquake design had this to say:
"What you are showing is one small part of a folded plate diaphragm system that I do not think any of us really understand at this point.... Because roof diaphragms are not a significant source of earthquake damage, they are not currently a high priority for testing, so we remain trying to develop mehcanics-based models without really knowing."

Engineers do analyze wood-framed systems by making many simplifications. But the shear wall will suffer more damage than the roof diaphragm because the forces in the roof diaphragm get "concentrated" at shear walls.

Until someone comes forward with a more accurate analytical model or some test results that show how sloping shear walls really behave, engineers should analyze sloping shear walls in way that best reflects reality. This is the method presented in Appendix B of Wood-Framed Shear Wall Construction--an Illustrated Guide

Engineers and other brave technical types can find even further discussion in the "Appendix to the Appendix". This is included at the end of APPENDIX B. (This is a non-printable PDF version of the appendix.)