If time permits the third wall should be sheeted and in place today. Framers or folks working with structural insulated panels would probably chuckle at the idea of one wall a day. Ho Hum...it's off to work I go.
Raising walls is rather time consuming when working alone, but with a little patience and lots of precaution, they find their way into a vertical position eventually. I use two jacks and multiple braces to lever up the walls a few inches at a time. Brace stops are screwed into the floor deck at intervals so that as the wall goes up, each brace drops into its new position. I found this to be much more effective than using ropes and cables. There is less time moving outside the building to tighten each come-along.
If time permits the third wall should be sheeted and in place today. Framers or folks working with structural insulated panels would probably chuckle at the idea of one wall a day. Ho Hum...it's off to work I go.
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Now that winter has finally arrived I have a two week break that has allowed for some time to build main floor walls. After clearing snow and ice from the tarp, the main floor deck appeared to have survived the fall rain and moisture without any major swelling. I now have two walls up, and expect to have the other two up over the next few days. Raising a 34 foot wall alone is an exercise in patience and safety. Although it is time consuming, there is considerable satisfaction in knowing what is possible through simple use of levers and braces.
The past few weekends have been spent getting firewood under cover and visiting. A break from the building is probably a good thing. If we had taken advantage of the warm weather we likely could have raised four more walls by now. That will likely happen in the midst of snow and colder temperatures. The floor plans have been re-drawn many times now, but at some point the final locations for windows and doors will dictate the next direction for the design. We are planning to leave as much open space as possible from the basement up.
Installing the deadbolt in the basement door was an interesting exercise. I was quickly reminded of the need for precision and alignment. Although I had borrowed a jig for cutting the holes, I was still faced with ensuring that the striker plate and hole was aligned perfectly. Of course everything does not always work out the way you anticipate. I wound up next door with the hole saw bit in a vise, trying to loosen one bit in order to put on the smaller one. After about two and a half hours, my little deadbolt job was finally finished.
The first priority on arrival was to install a high temperature chimney in the "love shack" and get some deep heat going. This was well worth the effort. We now have a toasty little place to warm up while picking away at things over the winter months. I'll get some related pictures up sometime. I learned something about reading instructions (or not reading instructions) before proceeding. ...To be continued. We set up a temporary roof to shed snow. Now that we have snow, we can go and see how well our engineering did the job. A new three foot door was installed in the basement today. It's funny how things don't always work out as you expected. The door should have simply slid into the rough opening, but this was not the case. Material had to be trimmed from the header from a precarious position on a ladder. It is easy to forget how fussy things can get leveling and shimming up a door frame. Having to hang a door from scratch would be a full day project. There is something to be said for pre-hung doors.
Now that the door is in place the next step is to install a deadbolt lock above the main keyed passage set. This will eliminate having to close the opening with a piece of plywood at the end of each day. The next trip should involve moving a stove inside and firing it up. This weekend marks the end of a long struggle since the excavation that took place the last week August, 2009. It is now Thanksgiving Monday, October 12, 2009 and our basement has been back filled. Worries of spring run off turning the site into a muddy swimming pool are gone. We now have a covered hole in the ground that we can heat and continue to work in. We can take time to continue to play with the evolving design and raise the walls over the winter months.
We arrived Friday evening and settled into preparing for the skid steer that was due to arrive Saturday afternoon. We cut pins from re-bar and drilled holes through the sole plate into the footing. It was at least 10:00 at night before we were finished. Tired and hungry, we had a bowl of soup and crawled into bed. In the morning we sealed the bottom exterior plate around the footing, shoveled sand on top of the footing and over the weeping tile to make a bed for the blue foam insulation. This involved many wheelbarrow loads to get things to where they needed to be. When this was done, we hung a 10' sheet of 6 mil poly around the three walls to be back filled. Around noon, Edie went down to make a fire and heat up some soup. The skid steer operator showed up at 1:30 to see if we were around. I busied myself finishing up laying the blue foam down, holding it in place with sand and clods of clay. The skid steer arrived within half an hour and began to place sand over the foam and along the footing. We worked our way up the wall placing at least 20 inches of pit run gravel against the walls followed by dirt/clay. I concentrated on keeping the poly from pulling down and shoveling each new layer of sand against the walls. The skid steer disappeared at six o'clock, leaving the building site transformed. The basement is now buried and we have a large upper driveway area covered with gravel.We spent the evening by the fire, planning our work for the next day. Sunday morning we were a little slower to rise than normal, a little stiff from shoveling sand and sealing walls. Our first adventure was to move the motor home from our neighbor's driveway after a month and a half of squatting. The first trick was to get her started, and then to keep her from stalling. Each time she stalled, we would have to boost her with the truck. After about six boosts and some leveling with blocks she sits in her resting place for the winter.(It is likely she won't move from her spot until next summer when we do more landscaping.) We set to work sealing the top plates and perimeter boards. At the end of the day the basement was sealed on the exterior, clean and organized. We covered the decking with plastic in the remaining daylight and nailed plywood over the door. |
AuthorTed Green Archives
April 2018
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