My Industrial Cabin Build

[WoodChuckDad]

I also intend to epoxy all the cracks. The visual of the crack doesn’t bother us but having it be smooth would be nice.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

I watched it without sound, so I'm sure I missed quite a bit.

The cracks in the concrete are from too much water. Very common and not a big deal, it's what the rebar is there for.

Your wife looks bored.

why did you do your temporary diagonal bracing that way? Just attach a stud from the bottom corner up as high as it will go, and screw into each stud with a single screw.

Are you going to attach your walls to the concrete? Most interior walls don't need it, but I think it makes a difference at the doors. I drill a half inch hole through the bottom plate, then drill a half inch hole into the slab, and pound in an anchor and tighten. It just takes a couple minutes and the results are significant. Be sure to get the galvanized wedge anchors. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Red-Head-10-Pack-5-1-2-in-x-1-2-in-Wedge-Anchors/1000775748

I walked into Lowe’s in the old hometown where I went to high school because I have to be there for some business pulled up your link and was able to quickly find what I was looking for. thank you. Aisle 2 bay 16

 

[WoodChuckDad]

I had time last night and this morning edit together a video from this weekends build with my son-in-law

 

[WoodChuckDad]

DIY Build framing gone wrong. Son in law to the rescue!! - YouTube

 

[buckeyefarmer]

Nice.

I usually estimate 1 stud per ft of wall, if 16"oc. Thats usually enough extra for Jack studs, etc.

I do a takeoff in a spreadsheet to figure how much to buy, by size.

That 8 ft will get you. Precuts are the way to go for studs.

Having built my own house, i can tell you every mistake, lol.

Oh, and dont nail your boot to the floor by reaching over a wall to nail on siding and being a little high with the nail......

 

[Steppenwolfe]

DIY Build framing gone wrong. Son in law to the rescue!! - YouTube

Your SIL is a good kid... :thumbsup:

 

[rScotty]

It's pretty easy to keep concrete from cracking. You'll hear a lot of house builders say, "Concrete always cracks".... or things like, "It's gray and it cracks. That's just what concrete does."

Of course that simply isn't true outside of the most inexpensive pours. There are lots of things built of concrete that can't have cracks. Machine shops are often built on massive slab floors & no cracks. Dams don't tend to crack. Ferrocement boat hulls have been popular for a hundred years and they don't have cracks in them.. Septic tanks don't have cracks....In fact, most concrete jobs don't crack because they are designed not to crack.

Here are the simple tricks for a good concrete slab: These are after the fact, but hopefully help the next guy.

Compact the subgrade properly - sometimes this means putting in clay or sand. Use a bottom vapor barrier under the pour.
Investigate if the cement company has higher strength concrete mixes - they tend to quote their low end mix. Most profession projects require stronger concrete.
Keep your lifts low - under 6" - and use a vibrator if possible.
Either avoid acute angles or put in expansion joints.
MOST IMPORTANTLY, Finish smooth it, and then keep it wet and covered with a poly tarp until it completely cures. A full strenght cure can take a month.

After a full cure you can probably go straight to a stain and burn wax into the surface with an industrial floor buffer. That's what I did & the floor looks like fine leather. Cheap, too.

Steel rebar is mostly there because concrete is weak in tension. If things go wrong and the concrete does shrink too much then tension cracks will develop. When cracked, the strength of the concrete goes to zero and the strength of the slab depends on the strength of the rebarl. That's why the amount of steel in any slab varys with what the structure will be. The steel gives you your tensile strength.

If you have cracks, it isn;t the end of the world. Lots of floors have cracks and work just fine. I've got a crack in mine right where I ignored the rules.
rScotty

 

[s219]

Did your son in law explain why 8' walls are framed 8'1.5" ? Short answer is that it would be real tough to squeeze 8' of drywall (two 4' sheets, horizontal) under a ceiling that is exactly 8' tall, but what we really like is also having the ceiling drywall (1/2") tucked in tight to the wall, and have the wall drywall come up underneath it to support the edge. Then you want extra slop to get the wall sheets in there. Normally you end up with 3/4" to 1" gap down at the bottom.

If you're not using drywall or the wall height isn't a multiple of drywall sheet size, or other reasons to have some slop, I think the dimension isn't so important and your 8' "on the nose" walls would have been OK. But I bet the first guy who tried putting drywall on an exact 8' wall quickly realized his mistake and got real sick of shaving down one of his sheets!

One big mistake I see rookies make is not adjusting the stud spacing at the edge of walls. 16" on center for the middle studs is good, but for the edge studs you want 16" from the end to the center of the next stud (so those will be 15.25" on center). Get that wrong one time and it's another mistake that will slap you in the face!

There are a lot of little details like this in framing that don't really matter for the structural aspect, but they make downstream steps work a lot better. Really, the framing is often driven by stuff that attaches to the framing as much as the structural requirements.

 

[EddieWalker]

It's pretty easy to keep concrete from cracking. You'll hear a lot of house builders say, "Concrete always cracks".... or things like, "It's gray and it cracks. That's just what concrete does."

Of course that simply isn't true outside of the most inexpensive pours. There are lots of things built of concrete that can't have cracks. Machine shops are often built on massive slab floors & no cracks. Dams don't tend to crack. Ferrocement boat hulls have been popular for a hundred years and they don't have cracks in them.. Septic tanks don't have cracks....In fact, most concrete jobs don't crack because they are designed not to crack. ..

While proper compaction under the concrete is important, you will not see any cracking in a new slab from poorly compacted soil. That will take years, or even decades to happen.

All cracking right after it's poured is from too much water being added to the mix. Water is volume and when that volume leaves the concrete, you create a void that results in cracking. Rebar is designed to hold the concrete together to minimize the size of those cracks. In slabs without rebar, or when the rebar is laying on the ground and not on chairs, the cracks can become very large. Most of the cracks are so fine that they are almost impossible to see, but an average house will have dozens of cracks in it's slab.

Comparing a house slab to a manufactured product doesn't take into account that the mix and materials used are different, or that the amount of water added to those mixes is carefully, and religiously controlled. Apples to oranges.

When pouring a slab foundation, the crew is working fast and it's very labor intensive work. To make it easier, and to give them more time to get the best finish possible, they will try to add more water to the mix as it's coming out of the truck. This is what caused the cracks in the slab of this house.

For bigger commercial and government jobs, the contractor is usually required to pass a slump test. This is where they quickly and easily prove that there is NOT too much water in the mix. Concrete Slump Test Procedure, Applications & Types of Slump

I've never seen a residential pour that could pass a slump test, including my own house. Pouring it that dry requires a massive amount of additional labor, which nobody building a house is willing to pay. The other thing to remember is that those cracks from the water rarely cause any measurable problems with the finished house. Less water is better, but more importantly is getting the slab poured and nicely finished that day with the crew that you have there to do it.

 

[EddieWalker]

Did your son in law explain why 8' walls are framed 8'1.5" ? Short answer is that it would be real tough to squeeze 8' of drywall (two 4' sheets, horizontal) under a ceiling that is exactly 8' tall, but what we really like is also having the ceiling drywall (1/2") tucked in tight to the wall, and have the wall drywall come up underneath it to support the edge. Then you want extra slop to get the wall sheets in there. Normally you end up with 3/4" to 1" gap down at the bottom.

If you're not using drywall or the wall height isn't a multiple of drywall sheet size, or other reasons to have some slop, I think the dimension isn't so important and your 8' "on the nose" walls would have been OK. But I bet the first guy who tried putting drywall on an exact 8' wall quickly realized his mistake and got real sick of shaving down one of his sheets!

One big mistake I see rookies make is not adjusting the stud spacing at the edge of walls. 16" on center for the middle studs is good, but for the edge studs you want 16" from the end to the center of the next stud (so those will be 15.25" on center). Get that wrong one time and it's another mistake that will slap you in the face!

There are a lot of little details like this in framing that don't really matter for the structural aspect, but they make downstream steps work a lot better. Really, the framing is often driven by stuff that attaches to the framing as much as the structural requirements.

Sheetrock on the ceiling should be 5/8" thick if your joists are on 24 inch centers. 1/2 inch will sag on you over time unless it's on 16 inch centers, and it's very rare for anybody to do a ceiling with 16 inch centers.

Good advice on tweaking the studs. I make mine line up with the outside sheeting because it's more important to me to have full sheets out the outside with minimum cutting, then it is to have the sheetrock line up perfectly. I also like to use 12 foot sheets when I can go from wall to wall and only have one seem down the middle.

What are you using for sheathing? OSB is $7 a sheet right now and I like it a lot better then half inch plywood. Zip System is closer to $20 a sheet, plus the tape is another $25 a roll, but it's by far the best product out there. It also comes in different lengths from 8ft, 9ft and 12ft. Maybe more, but that's all I've bought. It's a tighter, more compact compression of the wood with a rubbery type paint on the outside so you don't have to use house wrap. The best part for me is that I don't have to worry about getting my siding up right away. You can easily leave it exposed for a year or two!!!

Also remember that when installing sheathing and sheetrock, that you always want to put it up first, and then cut out the openings. This avoids cracking at the window and door corners and adds a lot of strength. DIY people will run a full sheet up either side of a window, then cut a small piece for above and below the window. This is wrong and should never be done.