Using these trusses in a small shed?

s219 · Feb 6, 2015

pmsmechanic said:
Maybe you should define a large truss. I put up 16, 32 foot long trusses up on a 12 foot wall all by myself. It was a lot of trips up and down a ladder but I got it done.

So how did you work out the process? The widest I have handled by myself were 20 footers. Was easy to get them hung upside down from the wall headers, but flipping them over was a PITA and I wouldn't want to do it again by myself. These had a 8:12 pitch and were about 6-7 feet tall. I'd rather have had at least one helper up on a ladder to catch the truss when it was tipped upright, and another helper nailing them in at the header would be great too.

pmsmechanic · Feb 6, 2015

Here's how I did it. I attached a long gin pole to my 4420 fel with a short chain on the end to hook onto the rafter. I had all the walls marked for rafter spacing. The tops of the rafters were marked for the strapping and the strapping for the rafters was all precut and marked on two foot centers. I lifted the rafters one at a time onto the walls of the building. It helped that I started against another building. (Basically I built a 28x30 and 32x30 end to end with one wall being 60 feet long) I would nail strapping down the center on the top of the rafter and then go to each side and toenail the rafter to the walls. At first I would use a rope to try and steer the rafters into place but after a while I got good at using handy tree branches etc to brush or bump the rafters into place as I was moving.

After several rafters were up I started strapping in the middle (top and bottom of the rafter) of each side. The rafters I used had a 2x4 up the center and so at the bottom of the rafter I nailed strapping to the vertical 2x4. It was easier to slide the rafter in that way. Also at the top center I only strapped one side. Again it was easier to slide the rafters into place then. Once I had the strapping started I would put up two rafters at a time just nailing the strapping in the center (top and bottom) and then going down to install the second rafter. This meant that I only had to climb the walls half as many times.

Once half the rafters were up I installed all of the strapping and started on the tin. Tin acts as a giant cross brace and I didn't want the wind blowing my rafters down. At first I would pull the tin up one sheet at a time but soon figured that if I used my gin pole it would be a lot easier. The gin pole was fastened onto the tractor with two chains and the spreader bar that was welded onto the gin pole was wide enough to slip several sheets into at a time.

I didn't do the whole job in one day. My wife works in the evenings and I would just go out and chew away at things for several hours. I would say the whole job, rafters,strapping, fascia and tin took about 4-5 days total. At 58 I just can't move the way I did when I was 25. I'll also add that I got real good at feathering the hydraulic levers because a 20+ foot gin pole amplifies any loader movement. The job was also made easier because I had a hydrostatic transmission.