A lot has occured on the house project over the last two months. The lower roof is finally in place and the rough framing is now 95% complete! In this post I’m going to cover installation of the trusses and the roof sheathing.
As I mentioned in a previous post, it took nearly four months of going over details with the truss manufacturer to get the details ironed-out. Once everything was right on paper, they were able to produce the entire package in about two weeks. The truss package was delivered on August 1st.
I took a slightly over a week of leave from work to focus on installing the trusses. Most of the work I did alone; although, many times Dad come by early after taking off from his job. He was a big help, especially with the heaver trusses and girders!
I rented a telehandler to lift the larger trusses. The rental was expensive but it was definitely worth it. We lifted the heavy trusses using it and then raise the remaining shorter ones by hand.
Here is a time lapse of installing the main 5-ply girder truss that runs 28.5 ft across the garage. This truss weighs close to 750 lbs!
Installing the main trusses only took about a week and a half, working long days (10-12 hr). I felt a little surprised as I was not expecting it to assemble that quickly.
Once the main trusses were installed, I went back over the assembly and installed the temporary bracing. Beside stability considerations, this is also important for spacing and ensuring that the trusses are parallel to each other. The final hip rafter and jack trusses were installed last and, being more complicated, took another week and a half to complete.
We had unusual cloudy weather in early August. The clouds made working outside all day much easier. Thankfully we only got a hint of rain once or twice.
By the third week of August, we were installing the 2×6 rafter tails and fascia board. Dad almost single-handedly installed the frieze blocks and roof boundary clips (for transferring shear loads from the roof).
For installing the rafter tails, I carefully installed the first and last tail on each section of eave and ran a string line between them. Each of the tails in between the first and last were lined up just barely touching the string line and nailed onto the existing 2×4 tail. This method resulted in a very straight fascia board and also didn’t require us to mark and individually trim the tails to length.
With the roof framing and trusses complete, I transitioned to sheathing the roof. Although it took me three full weeks to complete, for the amount of material (113 plywood sheets), I felt that it actually went fairly quickly.
Based on how many boxes of collated nails I purchased, I estimate that the entire roof (upper and lower) combined with the associated framing has over 15,000 nails holding it together.
I’m thankful that I was able to complete the roof so quickly. And, praise the LORD I did not get hurt in the process!
But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.
Jn. 20:31
