noelleprice (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} noelleprice) wrote,@ 2006-11-02 19:56:00 |
|
Building a House the East St. Tammany Way - Installment 3: Block through Subfloor
You may recall this picture from our workshop on pouring footings, taken at the future site of a Habitat house in LaCombe.
In this chapter, we'll be following the construction of Kim Brown's house in Slidell from footings to subfloor. You'll meet Kim a bit later.
Once the concrete sets up, the first task is to tear apart the forms and backfill around your footings so that ground level is just below the top of the footing. Form break-down is pretty grueling work when it's hot, which it still invariably was since this was September. Next, you take elevations on your finished footing to see how well you did at keeping it level everywhere. You snap chalklines to show where the outer edges of the bearing walls will be. Then at each location where you previously set hurricane straps, you now place a stack of three concrete blocks, their outer edges lined up with the wall lines. This is where you find out how well you placed your straps, based on whether or not you can place blocks in all the locations called for in the plans with the straps threading neatly through the holes to both the right and left of middle in the blocks. Thanks to spending way too much time setting these straps and about a days worth of smoke coming out of my ears from all the mental geargrinding, none of our straps on this house went astray. Based on the footing elevations taken, the block stacks at the high points will be stacked "dry" (without mortar) and everywhere else the amount of mortar used will depend on how much lower than those high points the footing is at the location of the stack.
This is our best block-laying volunteer to date: Milton, King of Mortar.
Once the stacks are mortared in place, and their heights are checked and rechecked to make sure we have created a level plane across the top of all the stacks, we fill the stacks with concrete. Preferably without knocking the stacks all wonky in the process. Yes, "wonky" is a technical term. Is it a carpentry term? No. Owing to a desire to keep this web journal family-friendly, I can't print the carpenter phrase for "wonky".
Laurie in the bright green shirt has the distinction of being the only volunteer to come close to making even Rock blush, God bless her.
As the concrete is being poured into the stacks, the straps are carefully placed within the concrete... three inches from outside edge of block on the perimeter of the house and an inch and a half from middle on alternating sides on the interior. This is to accomodate the two adjacent 2X10 sills that will be run along the outside of the straps on the perimeter, and sandwiched between them on interior walls. Block stacks are then finished with termite flashing to discourage the little buggers from crawling up the block and munching on the sill plates. 
Next, the sills are nailed to eachother and to the hurricane straps. The sill boards are cut in a staggered fashion so that all joints are on top of block stacks, and both sills never break on the same stack. On the corners, they lap eachother in an interlocking manner, as pictured.
(That's "3% Tammy" on the nail gun. She got that nickname based solely on being from Utah. Depending on who you ask, this is either because being from Utah, even though she is not LDS, she is still at least 3 percent Mormon just by association, or because 3% is the highest level of alcohol beer is allowed to have in Utah, well below the national average. Either way, "3%" stuck.)
Next, the joists are run between the sill plates, and fastened with the use of metal joist hangers. As with the sills, it is very important to make sure all the joists are "crowned" currectly, which means that the natural end to end curve of the board should always curve upward, like a rainbow rather than a "u". It's also important to run a string line on the sills during this process so that your joists don't push the sills out of whack without you noticing it.
Now we're ready for the decking. We use tongue-and-groove plywood so that it all locks together to create an even surface. First we goober on some construction adhesive, then slide the sheets into place and nail them. Rows are started alternately with whole and half sheets to stagger the seams. 
And that gets us through subfloor. Next, we'll be ready to put some walls up!
You may recall this picture from our workshop on pouring footings, taken at the future site of a Habitat house in LaCombe.
In this chapter, we'll be following the construction of Kim Brown's house in Slidell from footings to subfloor. You'll meet Kim a bit later. Once the concrete sets up, the first task is to tear apart the forms and backfill around your footings so that ground level is just below the top of the footing. Form break-down is pretty grueling work when it's hot, which it still invariably was since this was September. Next, you take elevations on your finished footing to see how well you did at keeping it level everywhere. You snap chalklines to show where the outer edges of the bearing walls will be. Then at each location where you previously set hurricane straps, you now place a stack of three concrete blocks, their outer edges lined up with the wall lines. This is where you find out how well you placed your straps, based on whether or not you can place blocks in all the locations called for in the plans with the straps threading neatly through the holes to both the right and left of middle in the blocks. Thanks to spending way too much time setting these straps and about a days worth of smoke coming out of my ears from all the mental geargrinding, none of our straps on this house went astray. Based on the footing elevations taken, the block stacks at the high points will be stacked "dry" (without mortar) and everywhere else the amount of mortar used will depend on how much lower than those high points the footing is at the location of the stack.
This is our best block-laying volunteer to date: Milton, King of Mortar.
Once the stacks are mortared in place, and their heights are checked and rechecked to make sure we have created a level plane across the top of all the stacks, we fill the stacks with concrete. Preferably without knocking the stacks all wonky in the process. Yes, "wonky" is a technical term. Is it a carpentry term? No. Owing to a desire to keep this web journal family-friendly, I can't print the carpenter phrase for "wonky".
Laurie in the bright green shirt has the distinction of being the only volunteer to come close to making even Rock blush, God bless her.
As the concrete is being poured into the stacks, the straps are carefully placed within the concrete... three inches from outside edge of block on the perimeter of the house and an inch and a half from middle on alternating sides on the interior. This is to accomodate the two adjacent 2X10 sills that will be run along the outside of the straps on the perimeter, and sandwiched between them on interior walls. Block stacks are then finished with termite flashing to discourage the little buggers from crawling up the block and munching on the sill plates. 
Next, the sills are nailed to eachother and to the hurricane straps. The sill boards are cut in a staggered fashion so that all joints are on top of block stacks, and both sills never break on the same stack. On the corners, they lap eachother in an interlocking manner, as pictured. 
(That's "3% Tammy" on the nail gun. She got that nickname based solely on being from Utah. Depending on who you ask, this is either because being from Utah, even though she is not LDS, she is still at least 3 percent Mormon just by association, or because 3% is the highest level of alcohol beer is allowed to have in Utah, well below the national average. Either way, "3%" stuck.)
Next, the joists are run between the sill plates, and fastened with the use of metal joist hangers. As with the sills, it is very important to make sure all the joists are "crowned" currectly, which means that the natural end to end curve of the board should always curve upward, like a rainbow rather than a "u". It's also important to run a string line on the sills during this process so that your joists don't push the sills out of whack without you noticing it.
Now we're ready for the decking. We use tongue-and-groove plywood so that it all locks together to create an even surface. First we goober on some construction adhesive, then slide the sheets into place and nail them. Rows are started alternately with whole and half sheets to stagger the seams. 
And that gets us through subfloor. Next, we'll be ready to put some walls up!
