September 26 - More Firewall Details and a Change of Seasons

Firewall Framing Nears Completion -
The big, complicated firewall is nearly all framed up. And it looks rather pretty with its red-edge-trimmed boards. The manufactured boards have a distinct advantage over natural, tree grown, boards in that they do not warp. They will stay straight. The boards are also significantly harder than natural boards. The nail guns do not sink the nails completely so they must be driven home with powerful hammer blows. Sam noted that some nails were bent in the process. One man once told me that 'threaded nails' hold better, so maybe those bent ones that get rapped in are an improvement on straight ones.

Openings for the windows and doors are framed up.The opening in the center is for doors. The larger openings on each side of center are where the windows will go. The windows will not be that big but will be framed up within that opening. If the headers over those openings were placed at finished height, an additional horizontal beam would be required, so those headers being up in the sky satisfy the structural requirements.

The headers are rather beefy looking. Three and one-half inches of laminated wood standing on edge. A double thickness of the material pictured below.



Building materials and techniques are all about carrying weight. Sam talks about carrying the weight of the roof, complete with an eight foot or so snow load, if my memory serves me correctly. He might think I am stretching the snow load, but this isn't Florida, you know.
Concrete footings under the walls. Concrete filled foam blocks make up the walls which support the trusses.Big girder trusses carry the weight of the center of the building. And now the firewall has to be strong enough to hold up its share of the weight. So we use all these glued up, resin filled manufactured wood products. Products that were not available to people who used solid walnut beams to build their barns with. Check out all the air space in the top picture of this post and the one below. I figure we are holding up the roof with 12% solids and 88% air.

Trusses, bring on more trusses -
The piggybacks over the front entry are now installed. So, now we have a  peaky rather than flat top foyer. First they were hoisted up with the mobile fork lift. The trussmen peeled them off one at a time, installing them from the building outward towards the road.










Lyle, Sam and Troy are securing the first truss. Naturally, they again appeased the rats by first installing rat runs so the piggies can rest on them. Paul, on the far right, is actually working on the firewall from the topside. 2x8 boards are attached in the notches that were sculpted into the top of the firewall studs. The picture below shows this operation more clearly.

As evening descends, the last truss is peeled off the fork tines and dropped into its final resting place. It took a little clever maneuvering to get the truss off the tines without undue acrobatics by the roof bound workers. "They done good."










The Wood Pile - 
There is a pile of wood scraps to which some smaller folks were diligently adding throughout the evening. Wood pieces too small to use any more are designated for this pile.
I wonder what will be the fate of this material. The wood chunks that were used to hold the bolts in the walls were polluted with concrete when the walls were poured and the wood pieces were to be discarded. Brent was charged with loading the basket on the mobile forklift to dump them into the dumpster. He stopped for what seemed like several minutes and stared at the wood chunks. I thought I even saw a tear form in the corner of his eye. I saw concrete splattered wood pieces. He saw BTUs. BTUs that would be unavailable for heating his boiler at home. He did dump the load in the dumpster and not in his car, but it was a difficult decision. I am thinking he might be better prepared when the time comes to dispose of this wood pile.
Changing Seasons -
With the change of seasons upon us, the birds are flocking up, making practice runs for the flight south. The sandhill cranes, which Sam once referred to as "rib eye of the sky",  will soon be gone for the winter, I did not succeed in getting the picture of these magnificent birds in flight that I had hoped for, but maybe they have not yet gone (I hope, I hope, I hope). But if not this year, there is always next year, and I will try again.

 Also with the change of seasons come a new paint job for the blog. Out with the orange and in with the autumn buff color.