Roof - Sheathing

Today was a ridiculous day to spend on a roof.  It was stinkin hot!

But that's where I was for the most part.  I finished up framing the fascia boards all the way around and I shimmed two trusses to make things line up better.  Then it was time for plywood.

The layout worked fine.  I didn't have any problems with the trusses being skewed and needing to custom cut my plywood.  There were two 1' 7" spaces mixed in with the normal 2' spaces.  I understand why it was designed that way, but it was a bit more of a bother to deal with.

Here are some photos:

The front is basically done.  There are a few board that need to be trimmed.  The front side of the ridge vent is cut.

The 'ladders' that I mentioned in the last post are used to create the eves.  You can see here how they are covered with sheathing and become part of the roof.

A bit more to do on the back side of the roof yet.

Daddy, can I come up there with you?

The 'attic' (10' x 4'-3") area.  The temporary bracing will be cleaned up once the sheathing is on.

Framing - Trusses

Today at 7:30am friends and family showed up for the first ever Paine family 'barn raising'.  The goal was to set 21 trusses in place and that goal was accomplished in just about 3 hours (in spite of my 1.5 - 2hr target).  Everyone found their job the work went really smoothly.

At about 7:45 we stood up the first truss.  The first truss or two took extra time to make sure it was plumb. You can see the "C" jigs that the guys used to roll the trussed into position.

Making progress: one group on each side was in charge of nailing in the hurricane clips.

We would carry the trusses inside and lay them on the walls upside down...then roll truss upright.  We ran temporary (permanent) bracing in the inside of the truss towards to top to keep everything in line.

The truss pile is getting low.  The guys started to discuss how to get the trusses in place now that we were running out of room to hand and flip them.

 By the time we were wrapping up, I'd say we had gotten pretty good at truss setting.

The crew in front of the finished product.  THANKS so much guys - we made a ton of progress...and there's literally no way I could have done it without you!

Dad N, Steve, Ray, Me and Si, Uhr, Andrew, Eric, Travis, Dad P.

Later in the day, the Dad's and I sheathed the gable, hung the 'ladders' for the eves and stacked some plywood on the roof to save me the work by myself.

Everything really looks great.  I went through with a tape measure and checked everything and I was a little surprised that it was pretty stinkin' accurate.

 Next up, sheathing the roof.  Next, next up: roof it!

Framing - Walls

This weekend I framed the walls.  The walls are 2x4 construction, set on a 2x8 pressure treated sill plate. 

Framing by yourself
Since I was working alone, I chose to build 8' sections of wall with a single top plate and no sheathing flat on the floor and then lift them into place on the J-bolts.  This worked will.

The LVL headers for the garage doors were heavy.  I attached the jack and king studs to each side of the header on the ground and then tilted it vertical.  I carefully lifted one side at a time up onto the block and had some bracing and the nail gun nearby to get it stabilized as quickly as possible.

Check the crown of your wood
I'm that guy that picks through a few hundred studs at Home Depot to get the straight ones.  But for the garage, the wood was delivered, so I had to take what I got.

• Studs:  Check the direction of the crown of studs and face the crowns in the same direction.  I chose to face them out.
• Sill Plate:  Place your sill plate so that if the wood starts to cup, the center will tend to rise.  If the edges rise, it looks bad.

Pressure treated wood

• Use galvanized nails for contact with pressure treated lumber.  The chemicals will corrode steel nails.

Headers

• A rull of thumb for sizing headers: 1" of thickness (dimensional lumber) for each foot of span.  Other than my LVL headers, I had only one load-bearing header over the passage door. I used double 2x8 headers over a 3'-4" opening - plenty according to the rule of thumb.
• I used one jack stud on each side of my doors and windows.  I used 2 jack studs on each side of the garage doors.

Sheathing
After the walls were up, plumbed each corner of the building in each direction using a stake in the ground and a 2x4 (or whatever) brace.  Once the corner was plumb, I sheathed it with 15/32 (4 ply Fir) plywood.  I chose to use plywood vertically on the corners to give extra strength. Aside from the corners I used 7/16 OSB.  I know there's a big debate over whether OSB is as good as plywood.  Here's my thought - under ideal circumstances I think OSB is a nice product (and it's nice that is less than half the price of plywood)...but I think plywood is more forgiving in non-ideal circumstances. Drop OSB on it's edge and you're likely to do some decent damage.  Try to pull a nail through OSB - you've ruined a 4"x4" section of the board.  Of course, OSB doesn't do well if left exposed to rain.  Etc.  If it were the same price, I would certainly use 100% plywood.

• One other sheathing note: I left 1/8" for expansion between boards on their "ends" and 1/16" on their "sides".  I'm not sure how to handle the accumulation of the 1/8" gaps getting you off center on your studs...I didn't quite have long enough runs for that to matter.

Now some photos:

How I stood up the LVL Headers

Corners plumb and sheathed.

Looking more like a garage now.

Testing it out.

Helper #1

Helper #2

Reference

Nailing Schedule:
http://www.informationdestination.cengage.com/ReferenceContent/Carpentry/Nailing-Schedule.pdf

Crushed Stone Calculator
http://www.barrestone.com/calculator.asp

Simonton ProFinish Contractor Single Hung Window Sizes
http://www.simonton.com/Products/_FileDisplay.htm?pid=1&mid=3&fid=867&fname=Simonton%20ProFinish_Contractor_Single%20Hung.pdf

Block, Brick, Concrete Rules of Thumb
http://www.boxley.com/products/block/rules_thumb.html

OSB Use guidelines - gap around edge, nailing schedule, span ratings
http://osbguide.tecotested.com/pdfs/en/el808.pdf

Vertical or Horizontal Sheething?
http://www.finehomebuilding.com/how-to/qa/plywood-orientation-horizontal-or-vertical.aspx

http://www.apawood.org/pablog/index.cfm/2006/8/1/Help-Desk-Question-Should-Wall-Sheathing-be-Installed-Horizontal-or-Vertical

Soffit installation instructions - J channel, F channel, etc
http://www.certainteed.com/resources/555.pdf

Roofing Tutorial
http://oldtimer.wordpress.com/2008/09/18/habitat-tutorial-part-4-roofing/

Slab - Prep and Pour

Since Last week, I added another course of block to bring the level up in relationship to the driveway.

I graded (1/4" per foot) the stone and compacted the stone.

On the side to be insulated I put down a 6 mil vapor barrier.  The wind felt great...but was otherwise annoying.

On the side that is not insulated I dug in haunches every 8' or so.  The haunches are about 6" deep and 12" wide and create cement "beams" running beneath the garage floor.  I ended up pouring a thicker floor, but the idea was the the haunches would give extra strength to a 4" floor.  

The doors were formed about of 2x12s and 2x8s.

The 6x6 remesh was laid down over the entire surface and 2 "4 rebar lengths were put in each haunch.  In addition, about ever 4', a piece of rebar was drilled into the wall and left to be embedded in the slab.

Concrete day!

The first truck arrived and it was really nice to see so much work being done so quickly.  When you do most of the work yourself, I think it gives you a much higher appreciation for when other people are doing the work.

The first half was completed and bull-floated (that's the tool with the really long pole).

Allie took advantage of a lull in the action to come and check things out.

Once the second truck had unloaded, 3 of the 5 guys left.  The remaining 2 did the hand trowel and power trowel work.

Silas and Allie stamped the job.

A few hours later all the troweling was done.  Very nice.  The slab ended up being close to 6" thick and used 15 cu. yds of 4000psi concrete.

It was a beautiful day to be outside working.  The lumber and trusses are both on-order.  Lumber should be here next Thurs and I hope to have some photos of walls for you soon after.

Foundation, Drainage, and Grading

The week started with block laying.  I used about 400 blocks and 26 80# bags of mortar.

And then it was done.  The inspector walked the trenches to make sure everything was cool.

The loose blocks are for the last course on the front - between the doors.  I didn't want to cement these in yet since I'd be driving over that wall a lot.  The large pile of stone (2B - clean) is for below the slab.  I used .60 Cubic Yard per ton to figure my amount.  For 22 tons, I paid $368 including delivery and tax.

Next, I finished the drainage.  There are some wet spots in my yard as well as an area that seems to be a little spring that soaks a portion of my neighbor's yard.  I'm trying to dry those out as well as provide a discharge for the downspouts. (we'll probably try to use a rain barrel though)  I used about 75' of perf pipe and about 175' of solid (4" flexible pipe).  Perf pipe is surrounded by clean stone.

Drain pipe complete.  The downspout will go in this pipe...once I cut it off a bit closer to the ground.  You can also see the conduits coming from the house.I roughly filled in the trenches inside and out.  Lots of stinking compaction!  Here you can see my insulation (2" R10) sticking up.  What I did is a little experimental.  Normally the insulation is on the outside of the foundation.  Because I'm considering super-insulating the walls, I'd end up with thicker walls that would cover the insulation that is showing.  The insulation goes down 36 - 42".  I only did a portion of the wall because I don't plan to heat/insulate the whole building.

There was lots of grading to do between filling in the drainage trenches and back-filling the wall.  I would have loved to have a smaller machine for this work.  The gap between machine work and hand work is pretty big when you have wet soil (decent amount of rain the last few days) and lots of rocks.

Meanwhile inside...

Next up, prep for the concrete floor this Thurs or Fri.

Insulation And Heating

One of my interests as I'm doing the garage project is to consider and possibly implement some passive solar design considerations.  The garage is not intended to be living area, but to the extent that I will use the garage as a workshop or for storing items that I don't want to freeze, I would like it to be as naturally warm as possible.

The two things that I'm considering are super-insulation and large windows on the southern side of the building.

Windows
For the passive solar windows, these are the principles that I would like to follow:

• Windows on southern side
• Awnings or deciduous trees to block the high-in-the sky summer sun
• Windows with low U-Factor (.1 to .3), high Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (> .5 if possible), and low Air Leakage (< .2).  Information on reading the standard window spec label can be found here:
• http://nfrc.org/label.aspx
• Windows with an area equal to 12% of the floor area.
• I don't want to use super expensive windows.  I'll probably settle for something off-the-shelf.

(from the NFRC link above)

Insulation
For passive solar insulation, these are the principles that I would like to follow:

• Take the time to seal all air leaks with foam insulation.  I may create an internal partition wall to section-off a more climate-controlled portion of the garage from the portion with the garage doors.
• Put 2" rigid foam insulation under the slab and around the foundation wall to eliminate cold bridges - areas where heat can flow from the inside to the outside without crossing insulation.  Here is a nice design guide on how much and where to use insulation around a foundation: http://www.toolbase.org/PDF/DesignGuides/revisedFPSFguide.pdf

(from the guide that I linked to above)

There are plenty of other areas related to passive solar that I could consider, but I think the costs out-weigh the benefits for a garage.

I'm sure I'll be updating this post as I do more research and make decisions on the insulation and heating.