September 23 - Still More Firewall Work and a Cool Tool

A Very Wet Summer -
I do not want to confuse people with the facts  so I am not going to research history to compare this summer with its predecessors, but I do know that there has been a lot of rain. I suspect when the roof is finally on and the building is water tight, a drought will immediately begin. Aare uses a piece of construction lumber as a floating bridge to cross the moat protecting the middle of the building.





Along the back wall a small pond has formed. I am thinking that it is lucky it is not spring time or we would likely be chasing geese off of nests before we could start work for the day. Of course a swan or two would rather dress up the place.

Now that we see how complicated the firewall is, I am thinking maybe a cistern or two along the back wall might furnish adequate water for a sprinkler system and save all the bother of the firewall. Well, I suppose greater minds than mine have thought this matter through already. Besides, it is probably not a smart thing to cross horses in midstream, as my metaphor mixer used to say.
Finishing the Firewall Top Plate -

Ed, Ami, and Loren collaborated on finishing off the firewall top plate. Once again two segments must be joined in space without the benefit of a wall or ceiling to stabilize it. A couple more temporary supports were dropped across the firewall span and the endpoints of the wall segment were plotted. Then with the benefit of the cool little laser tool, the last segment was put into place. Here Ami joins the plate segments together.

Ed is caught red handed holding the board while Ami puts in a screw. The red laser line is delineating where the edge of the board needs to go.

The red line on the board is the edge line for the board coming in from the right. The plate consists of a double layer of these boards so another board will be placed under the joint securing both of these boards and strengthening the joint.

The ingenious tool that throws out these red lines is shown here. The laser is aligned along the edge of the angled wall. You can see the red beam just catching  the edge of the wall. It casts out a line from the left side of the box (the beam along the wall edge) and out the top, projecting a line on the overhead boards as shown above.

Where the angled wall meets the existing foam block wall, a vertical line shows on the foam block. The finished firewall will intersect the foam block wall along this line. So, building a wall at an oddball angle is a matter of getting all the edges to line up on the red lines. This incredible little device saves hours of layout work with chalk lines snapped between points that may not be very easy to locate in space. 

The white stuff on the beams at the top of the wall is Dave's intumescent  paint. I have been waiting anxiously to get that word back into the blog. For those seeking to impress acquaintances, intumescence is a noun meaning a swollen part of a plant or animal. So I think you could probably drop in a casual line like, "Oh look. The nasty bee that stung me left a painful intumescence." I am certain that will generate much more sympathy than an ordinary swelling.

  

Here Dave, who does carpentry when not painting, is marking a spot on the  plate with his red pencil. The red spot, which is marking where the stud must be located, is generated by the laser. Or maybe it is just the mark left by the red pencil he is using.