TJI ceiling up and almost done!

We've placed all the TJI ceiling beams today. Each end gets two 3 inch (7.62cm) screws. We then use a steel cross brace at 71 inches (180cm) inside from each big beam. This helps the beams from toppling over in abnormally high winds or earthquakes. Look at the caption text under the pictures where i'll describe it in more detail.

We put the home depot scaffolding to good use today. Tomorrow we will go and pickup another entire scaffold set. It will help when we have to deal with things on both ends of the beams and especially outside the house. We also need to pickup more braces since they didn't have enough for us and had to bring them in from other stores on the island. Our Hilti bolts have arrived for our house as well. We ordered a masterset which means its a bulk box and it includes their best concrete bit. The bit even allows us to drill through rebar, a handy feature considering how much steel we have in our "steel city".

As you saw yesterday the TJI beams were manufactured in Canada. The date and time of manufacturer is also printed on the beams. This batch was made on November 30th 2009 at 7:58am.

So we placed 27 beams today and screwed them in place. Perhaps the most challenging part sometimes is lifting them up there. However we figured out a couple of neat tricks to make things go faster. Sometimes i would pull them up to myself with rope, other times I would just pull them one by one. We usually push one side up on top of the lower beam, then lift the other end up and lay it flat on the big beam. We put up a couple on there side. Then I put my special template / spacer tool beside the already placed one and then stand up the beam. I then screw on both sides. We went back and screwed the other end only after we finished one side. My dad held a space there temporally so we could get them roughly on that side. We used the template again when we went back to screw that side also.

One thing which people usually don't bother with are making sure these TJI beams stand up straight. we used the cross brace to bring the beams into level and plumb. Might as well make things plumb and level while we are at it. It only takes a couple of seconds so why not.

Tomorrow we will need to finish off all the missing cross braces and start building our walls. We have finally been able to make some measurements with regards to how high the windows should be in the back bedroom.

Sandwich plywood in place, ready for eventual steel strapping.

Our home depot scaffold, this is set to 5 foot (1.5 meters) height. You can stack another 5 foot section on top to get 10 feet. Its nice that you can roll it around and then lock the feet.

More beams in place.

Sometimes working with the scaffold in the air becomes a challenge when its feet can't sit on the concrete.

These are the steel cross braces. Each is screwed in two places. The steel plate is then bent around partially the TJI beam.

Roof almost done.

Side view of one screw holding down beam. Another goes on the other side. The gap will be filled with glue and a shim / spacer.

We use a template to give us the exact spacing. We use it everywhere we screw, on the ends and at the braces. This gives us exactly 16 inch (40.64cm) on centre.

All beams in place with cross braces done.

Temporally placing a 2x4 to figure out our outside wall height.

View of finished work from front.

Closeup of cross brace supports. Normally they make them out of wood, however using this steel is much faster and will make for better ventilation eventually.