New Garage/Barn, hole to roof

[whodat90]

Today the floor joists for the second floor went in, as well as much of the flooring. We're using advantix flooring, supposed to be much better than regular T&G ply. Smoother, anyhow. We used doubled 2'x18"x40' LVLs for the center support, with a single 4" lolly column. The beam went up fairly easily; set it in place on the ground, then lifted one end and blocked it. Moved to the other end, did the same, continued till it was up. The lolly column was a bit of a pain, as it was too long. Ended up having to cut the end off and reweld it 2" shorter. Oh well, good justification for having just bought the bandsaw. We framed the openings for the 'elevator' and the stairs. Made a contraption to lift the flooring sheets with my loader. Took the carry-all from the last set of pics, and lag bolted some extra LVL onto it. Then nailed a pallet to that. Then braced that up with some 2x4s, lots more nails and lag bolts. Ended up with a 4'x4' platform with stops at either side that extended the height of my bucket by about 2'. Laid 5 sheets of floor on it, rolled back and lifted. No problem. The forks on the front and my 2x4 stops on the back kept the ply in place, and more importantly off my lap. Hope to get the rest of the flooring laid tomorrow and start on the trusses.

Pic 1: Above the green ladder is the stair opening. On the right is the newly shortened lolly column, and just past that you can see the opening in the ceiling.

Pic 2: This is how it was set to load the flooring on.

Pic 3: This is how high my little loader could lift it.


Edit; It's much sturdier than it looks. Solid as a rock. The only movement I can get in the whole thing is play in the pins of my loader. The carryall is attached with 20' of 5/16" chain, a couple of the hooks that I welded on the bucket, and a chain binder. I can put the thing flat on the ground and lift the front of the tractor with no movement. I also chained up my tiller from the rops bar, on the principle that I want the RPMs as low as possible for control of the loader, and don't want to give up any HP or hydraulic pressure/flow to keep the tiller up. FWIW in my past life I was among other things a loadmaster on helicopters, so I'm kind of **** about things being tied/attached securely.

 

[EddieWalker]

whodat,

Looks like some good progress. I'm curios about the blocking. Did you block the floor joists yet? You went from one picture showing the joists and then your loading up your decking. Sort of skipped a step.

Just curious, but did you price or look into engineered floor joists? I don't know how far you can span with them off hand, so it's just something I'm wondering?

Thanks for the update and pictures,
Eddie

 

[whodat90]

Nope, we're putting the blocking in after the floor is on. Kind of backwards, but the weather isn't real hopeful right now so we're trying our best to make it somewhat weathertight, and the blocking can be put in more easily in bad weather than the floor can be laid down. Haven't looked into engineered joists, mostly because the plans didn't call for them. You're talking about the wood I-beams, right? Not the trusses? I wouldn't have had any problem one way or the other with the I-beam style, but am absolutely against the truss style. I just don't see how anything with that many joints can possibly be as stable over time as a solid piece. One other thing that I wonder about is fire resistance? Probably not an issue, but I can't imagine that a truss or I-beam can be as fire resistant as a solid wood joist. Anyhow, the blocking will likely be my sunday project; I try to do all the scut work on sunday when the paid skilled labor isn't working so that they can spend their time on things I either can't or don't know how to do. I can do a lot of things, but I'm not afraid to admit that I don't know anywhere near as much about building as they (or you) do. Also, a fair number of decisions are being made kind of on the fly; we changed the stairs from 3' to 4' wide, etc. so deviation from the plans is inevitable. One thing that caught the contractors off guard, for example, was the somewhat non-standard 28' width of the building. The fact that they were working with a pair of 14' joists rather than 16' joists meant that they have to scab supports for the flooring in the middle where the joists overlap. In the attached pics, you can see how the joists rest against each other side-to-side in the center. It didn't occur to them till they reached that point that there would be a 2' overlap where the breaks in the flooring didn't rest on the center of a joist. I pointed out that they should have started in the center and worked out, but hindsight is 20/20 and I didn't realize it either so no harm no foul. We're just going to sister some 2' 2x4's against the rafters to provide a nailing surface. Not optimal, but cheaper and easier than pulling up all the (glued and screwed) flooring to change it. Lesson learned. Actually, the biggest design error I think I've made so far is the placement of the 8' opening in the upstairs floor. Now that the flooring is mostly down, and now that we've made the stairs wider, there's only about 4' corner to corner (from the top of the stairs to the corner of the opening) which makes for an awkward transition once you get to the top of the stairs. Most of the time, it won't matter but it'll annoy me forever. I guess that's why I'm not an architect.

 

[EddieWalker]

whodat,

Yes, I was interested in the I beam type engineered floor joists. I've used them on smaller jobs, but never one as big a span as yours. Since you didn't look into them it doesn't matter. I was mainly curious if they could span the full 28 feet. I know they can go pretty far, but don't know how far. Your project is probably much to far for them. LOL

I can see your reasoning for the blocking and don't see any reason it wont work. Are you going to fasten the decking to the blocking too? Probably too late for glue, but some screws would give you some strength.

It's nice to hear your wife is OK with you working on Christmas eve. I'm booked up solid on family stuff from Saturday through Monday, plus most of this week is being eaten up running erands.

Eddie

 

[whodat90]

Yup, I'm a sucker for a 20lb box of 3" drywall screws and a dewalt 18v drill. I'll probably end up putting a screw between every pair of nails the contractors laid, as well as one or two in each blocking. Depending on how even the blocking ends up being, I will likely put some adhesive on each one before I put it up into place. FWIW, when I put hardwood floors in my old house, I ended up putting ~20lbs of 3" drywall screws into ~500ft/2 of subfloor _in addition to_ the nails and adhesive that were already there, plus 4 screws per piece of blocking _in addition to the nails_ that were already holding them in, just because I hate squeaky or bouncy floors. Ended up putting a screw every 6", plus the ones in the blocking.

 

[whodat90]

Well, I have an office party today so no useful work done. Last thing I did before coming was to lift the last 8 sheets of advantek up so the boys could finish laying the floor. Out of curiosity, I looked at the website; it's 78lbs a sheet. 624lbs, plus the weight of the contraption I put on the bucket to hold it. It lifted it to full height, but wasn't reall happy about it. It probably didn't help that it was 24*f and I didn't have time to let the hydraulics warm up very much. I expect that the lumber package for the trusses will be ordered, and hopefully delivered, today so that we can start laying out and building them.

 

[whodat90]

Eddie, I just looked at the advantek website; they make I-joists. If I had used 16" tall I-joists spaced 16"oc, I could have spanned the entire distance without a center support. As soon as you go smaller than 16" tall, you'd need either a center beam or to decrease the oc spacing to 12". doesn't look like there's any real advantage to using them rather than the regular 2x10s in my application.

 

[whodat90]

Well, the rest of the flooring is down. The guys threw up a temporary railing around the hole. Now I hope they ordered the stuff they need for the trusses, and if so it should be here tomorrow morning and the trusses can be built.
whodat

 

[whodat90]

Blocking is in, all flooring is down, and the materials package for the trusses has been delivered. First truss has been partially laid out.
Oh yeah, the smaller doors are 9'x8' (WxH) so they're a little wider than I originally posted. They also put more of the T-111 up. Truss building begins in earnest tomorrow.

 

[whodat90]

I was away for the holidays, but when I returned I found all but one of the trusses up. I left a camera with one of the guys, and he took step by step pics. One deviation from plans was the second to last truss. This is the truss that sits on the end walls, with the last (or first) trusses defining the overhang. The plans call for the truss in question to be notched multiple times to support the 2x4s that the last truss hang on. Rather than notching the truss so deeply, my contractor built two trusses that were 3.5" less-tall (shorter doesn't really fit here) than the others, so that the 2x4s could rest squarely on the top of the truss. Harder to explain than to show. Anyway, the first trussses built were the odd ones, and one was set and the other was placed on the ground at the end. Then the trusses were built and set one by one till they reached the halfway point, when they started just stacking the trusses against each other. Couldn't keep setting them past the halfway point because they needed the room to keep building the trusses. Once all were built, all were set. The only one that hasn't been put on yet was the final truss, which carries the widow's peak. I think that one's going to be built in place.
From inside it's beautiful. 5' away from the edge of the floor there's 6' of headroom. No supports in the upstairs make for an effective 18'x40' room.