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Quoted: Today was the first nice day in a week and rain is forecast for 8 of the next 10 days [well, snow/showers on Easter Sunday]. What is going on I wonder? I feel your pain. View Quote In fact, it's been much WORSE in my lifetime because that precip could have all been snow and ice. (Yep, I've seen it, up to the end of April) Every year is different, and there is no reason for us to expect any one year to fit any certain pattern. Weather happens in cycles with the earth's warming and cooling cycles (and this, in my view, is within LARGER warming and cooling cycles. Yes, Global Warming is real, cuz it..you know...melted the ice age. But we are not changing it, nor should we. The warming is FAR better than the cooling, cuz...glaciers.) |
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Bump. Finally a warm, dry day. Now if I can get a few more in a row, I can dig my trailer out of the back yard. so I can cut the grass and get some work done.
It has another flat. Weather is calling for frost tonight. Light frost, but still. Jeez. Frost two days from the first of May. |
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Looking forward to this thread getting some new content.
And a free bump for Kitties. |
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Looking forward to this thread getting some new content. And a free bump for Kitties. View Quote I'm dealing with a family issue at the moment, and I've got to get my dad's tractor down here. Have two weeks to do that. Had planned to wait and bring it after I had the building finished and a shed roof for the tractor to sit under, but the timing has been taken out of my hands and I'm going to have to just cover the tractor best I can once I get it here, until I get the space set up for it. I hate that this has had to be set aside for real life. Hopefully by the middle of June I will be able to begin again. |
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Drive by bump.
Hope to be done with all of this unfortunate life stuff in about two weeks. |
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Yeah, I thought that, then the life drama extended for a full month. Apologies all around.
Things are moving on the rehab, cuz I'm hiring a lot of help. My own building, not so much. Pics inbounc of the rehab. If I'm still allowed in Homestead/Garden. |
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@Kitties-with-Sigs
I see your last post was on the 9th. Everything OK?? We miss you! |
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Quoted:
@Kitties-with-Sigs I see your last post was on the 9th. Everything OK?? We miss you! View Quote |
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Quoted:
A lot has happened in the past two months. I was away dealing with family stuff for all the spring and summer. Missed my whole summer, basically. But I had a crew still working a lot of the time, and fortunately we were at a stage that they could carry on to some extent, without me there. Early in the summer I said, "I can't tell whether I'm coming or going. Can you get that scrap plywood out of the basement and make me a desk?" Ta-Da!!! Desk. This will be the utility room at some point. Right now it's my office. I have exactly three feet between the counter and the boxes of tile at my back. But hey, there is a coffeemaker, so the basics are covered. http://www.fototime.com/5DF9A7E225D7706/standard.jpg This was the kitchen. The walls to the left of the chimney and the one extending to the right in the photo (the cooler is in the present hallway) are both going away. The wall to the left of the chimney is not load bearing. The other wall..yeah. It is. That will be of interest later. http://www.fototime.com/5D5D3FDAA7A8CBB/standard.jpg BUT...see that hole in the flue? Yeah...Nobody knew that was there. I mentioned it to the owner and he said, "Is that why that wall was warm in the winter?" Uhm...maybe? So this flue.. It has two caps on top, but it's ONE flue. So the furnace in the basement vented out the flue. Aaaand....the woodburning fireplace vented out the same flue. I said to the owner, "you have a very busy guardian angel watching over this house." Anyway, add "get the flue patched" onto the list of stuff to do. Past time for bed for me, but more soon. Lots more photos loaded. Just no brain power to post. Kitties, back from the dead. Sort of. View Quote I take it they didn't have any CO detectors in the house? |
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Quoted:
Welcome back! I take it they didn't have any CO detectors in the house? View Quote Let me qualify that by saying I've taken down several hardwired smoke/fire detectors, and I believed at the time that they were CO detectors as well, but maybe not. I'd have to dig those out and look more closely. The one positive thing about an old house is that it's leaky enough to keep enough fresh air moving through, that you can more easily survive a bit of CO. Not sayin' it's a good idea to bank on it, but modern, tightly sealed houses have some associated issues that go with it. SOMETHING was fuctioning somehow to move furnace gases out effectively enough that nobody died from it. At least there were not acute issues. Whether it contributed to long-term illnesses...???? Yeah, I dunno. |
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Quoted: That's a good question, and yes, as far as I know, they did.. Let me qualify that by saying I've taken down several hardwired smoke/fire detectors, and I believed at the time that they were CO detectors as well, but maybe not. I'd have to dig those out and look more closely. The one positive thing about an old house is that it's leaky enough to keep enough fresh air moving through, that you can more easily survive a bit of CO. Not sayin' it's a good idea to bank on it, but modern, tightly sealed houses have some associated issues that go with it. SOMETHING was fuctioning somehow to move furnace gases out effectively enough that nobody died from it. At least there were not acute issues. Whether it contributed to long-term illnesses...???? Yeah, I dunno. View Quote One of my old college professors who loves a few miles from me damn near died last winter from CO poisoning. Furnace vent had come unhooked and was dumping into the basement directly below the master bedroom. Somehow his wife didn't even show symptoms. |
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Quoted:
So...I'm probably going to get stoned by the armchair quarterbacks for what I'm about to post. (And it's long. So if you aren't into long, just quit now.) This came down to a decision, and I'll tell y'all the reasons I chose this, knowing full well the options, weak points of my choice, and yes, the potentials for failure. First, some background... I filled up this 22' dumpster three times. The first two and a half times was all just the ruined STUFF out of the main floor, attic, and basement. The last half dumpster was actually construction materials. http://www.fototime.com/015A67941B8D581/standard.jpg Basically, all this time, I hadn't pulled a permit on this house because I couldn't see the freaking house so I didn't know what to put on the permit as far as changes I would make. I needed to get all the sh*t out of the place (the useful stuff the owner wants to keep, I packed and moved to storage, the rest I tossed or donated) before I could see the house and determine what it needed. PLUS... this house does not have drywall. http://www.fototime.com/FA98F1832E9B399/standard.jpg It has plaster over sheetrock. That's some of it on the floor in the kitchen. So these are 2 X 4ish sheets of cement board (more like durock than drywall) coated with a thick covering of real plaster. Not as thick as a plaster/lath combo, but damn near. Here's what happens at every corner... This metal mesh gets wrapped around the corner to hold the plaster. http://www.fototime.com/775EF16634E0CAF/standard.jpg It's strong as hell, and it's QUIET like plaster. If I'd had the option, I would have left it, but it had cracked in too many spots, and I know that renters will destroy it by trying to hang stuff on walls. Anyway...That's a LOT of weight. Example: In the bedroom the windows did not work. When we took down the plaster/rock, the windows worked just fine, because the weight on the walls was causing enough sag to jam the windows up. So...things became more apparent the more we uncovered, and the more weight we took out of the house. The carpet stayed in place while we took down the ceilings and plaster-over-rock on the walls because the floors under the carpet are hardwood, and the plaster coming down would have destroyed them. So....even once the stuff was out, I was sorta kinda guessing about the level and shape of the floors from the top side. Well...there was a lot to be learned once the carpet started coming out. The carpet was three inches deep in some places (with extra padding) and it hid a lot of unpardonable sins. Every interior loadbearing wall was sagging. Significantly. So once I realized that, I still had to get the basement emptied, so I could see WHY those walls were sagging. I brought in a Master Carpenter (friend, but I paid him) to get him to look at it with me so I could say, "Am I seeing what I think I'm seeing?" And "Am I missing something here?" The guy who built this house was actually the builder for much of this lovely old neighborhood. All the stone houses around here (you will see some of the exterior in these photos), apparently he built. Then he...wait for it...used the leftovers from those houses to build his own. BUT...he built a MUCH larger house for himself than he did for the other folks who hired him to build. But did he buy longer joists? Or larger joists? No. He did not. He used undersized joists for the spans he was building, and if they weren't long enough, he scabbed them together wherever. AND....those interior loadbearing walls? He doubled the joists underneath them (undersized joists, remember?) but they were unsupported across the spans they covered. So as an example, the joists under the kitchen are only 2 X 8, (SORT OF 16" centers....none of them are consistent,like most olde houses) and they span 15 feet. BUT they are oak and poplar. Not the weak-ass pine we build with today. Still, when you double that 2 X 8 and set a loadbearing wall on it, with no support in the middle, you've got a recipe for sag. BUT...there's another part to the equation. About a quarter of the way through that 15' span, he scabbed them together to continue on to the foundation wall, because they weren't long enough to reach. He didn't buy any new joists for his big house. He used the leftover joists from the smaller ones. That scab is a hinge. Hinges bend. Ta-da! More recipe for sag. Now listen... I can't rag on this guy too much. This house has stood strong since 1938. I cannot stand here and tell you that a house I built today with my hands, out of yellow pine, would do the same. This house has a tank of a foundation, and as far as I can tell, it's had no more issues than most houses this old. Yeah, the doors have sagged and been cut off at funky angles to get them to open and close easily. You know what? I can throw a rock in any direction and hit a house with the same issues. The REASON for the issues though...yeah that's new for me. The fact that this builder fudged on his own house kind of surprised me. So here we are, 80 years later, We have more, heavier appliances, and a lot more CRAP than they had back then. The house is old. It's sagging a little, sorta like the skin on an older person starts to give a little.I really need to draw the floorplan so you can understand but I'm making no promises Here's a photo of how I'm taking some load off of the interior of the house, and hopefully letting the house breathe a deep sigh of relief. http://www.fototime.com/FB7E6B8210DF5A7/standard.jpg See that beam? That's an engineered beam. Yup. It's engineered by ME. I'm going to outline the (easily available) choices I had and why I made the one I did. I'm totally open to any of you saying you might have made a different choice, and telling me why. That's good education. Lot of y'all know more than I do. But don't be mean. I'm just not up for that. If you're mean, hey, I'll just delete it. POOF. Life is too short. So...My choices were as follows: 1-a 4 X 4 or 6 X 6. ~~Solid timbers are awesome. But they also bend. They crown and flex with heating and cooling, moisture and time. (I place them as my third or fourth choice for this long-term placement.) 2-LVL--This would have been my second choice, and I might decide, somewhere down the road, that it would have been better. ~~To order LVLs, I would have had to know right off exactly what I wanted to do under the floor, with no room for saying, "crap, I think we need to do it differently because of what's happening over here." I liked that flexibility that allowed me to say, "that needs to be longer" Or shorter. ALSO....LVLs are as stiff as it gets, unless you go with metal. In this instance, I wanted stable, but less stiff...more in item 3. 3-Beams I built out of 2 X stock and plywood. Basically 2 X glued and nailed together with plywood between. In this case it was 2 X 6 because the spans are not that great for any one beam. ~~What I wanted was the stability of an LVL, without the complete stiffness. I wanted MORE flexibility than an LVL, but less than I would get with a single timber. THE REASON I wanted this...is because like the olde house, the homemade beam is a little forgiving. If I put in three jacks under a 16' beam, I can actually raise the middle jack, and the beam will flex SOME. Not as much as a solid timber, but way more than an LVL. Over time, the beam will let that middle be higher, and the ends will settle into it a bit without being too high. I hope. Everything with the foundation and structure of an olde house is..."let's try this and see if the house will do it." It requires some subtlety. Ain't sayin I'm good at it. Just sayin' I understand. 4-Stick a jack under the low point and call it good. ~~This is what most people do. This is what the previous owners had done (or their hired minions had done) In my experience, when you're dealing with an old house, you can take a framing member..a girder, let's say...and stick a jack under the low point and lift. It looks great. But four weeks from now, the house will have a hump where the jack is and will sag on either side of it. Doesn't matter if it shouldn't. It does, and to hell with what you want. Olde houses are like old people. They're crotchety. They settle into their ways and if you shove them one direction, they'll sag back in the other with a sort of "f*ck you and your daggone jack". My awesome handyman guy has trouble with this. Me: "If we jack there, it's probably going to sag over there." Him: "It shouldn't." Me: "No, it shouldn't. But it will. I know it will." Him:*disgruntled* "Harumph." Awesome Handyman (AH) lives in a new house. Just sayin. Here's another beam, that is perpendicular to, and intersects with, the one in the first pic. http://www.fototime.com/6E76804739851B7/standard.jpg Not all of these jacks will stay. Some of them are "moving stuff around" jacks. Those will go away when the walls are stable and as they should be. One point to note...this basement is dry. Mostly anyway. It's bone dry in the crawlspace areas. I'm correcting drainage issues around the foundation to dry out other parts. But that "dry basement" is important here. You don't want the ground under the blocks where the jacks are placed to be swelling and shrinking with moisture every few days. This ground is really stable. (She says, and crosses herself, though she is not Catholic.) So that's WAY enough for one post. More later. View Quote On the beams, I would say you definitely made the right call. Personally I like to use steel. I know it and am comfortable with it because I use it all the time (Engineering Manager in the steel industry ). It would have taken roughly a W8x18 wide flange beam to get you to the same strength as what you used. $400 or so depending on where you get it from and 3 times the weight of what you made and like you said, much stiffer due to a much higher modulus of elasticity (2.9x109 for steel vs 1.4x106 ish depending on the wood). Flitch beams are always another option. Flitch Beams OK, engineer hat off |
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Wow! Looks like quite the project! On the beams, I would say you definitely made the right call. Personally I like to use steel. I know it and am comfortable with it because I use it all the time (Engineering Manager in the steel industry ). It would have taken roughly a W8x18 wide flange beam to get you to the same strength as what you used. $400 or so depending on where you get it from and 3 times the weight of what you made and like you said, much stiffer due to a much higher modulus of elasticity (2.9x109 for steel vs 1.4x106 ish depending on the wood). Flitch beams are always another option. Flitch Beams OK, engineer hat off View Quote And are you throwing math at me? Just kidding. I was good at math. A long time ago when I had to design and implement experiments and the statistics involved. Now I don't have to do that so I run away. I appreciate the vote of support on the home-engineered beams. I still look at them and go, "God I hope those don't bend over four seasons." They will be in a partially climate controlled space once I'm done. But still... Now the question will be whether my choice was right for the beam in the attic. ETA: I actually looked at the possibility of the steel/wood Flitch beams. I didn't know what those were called, but the possibility came up that my attic beam might require a layer of steel. It did not. Honestly I might have been able to make the attic beam smaller that way, and I bet it wouldn't be much different in weight. That dang thing is stupid heavy. I have pics of that coming. |
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Quoted: Wait. Are you saying the steel beam would have been 18" wide? (I don't understand the nomenclature for sizing steel beams.) And are you throwing math at me? Just kidding. I was good at math. A long time ago when I had to design and implement experiments and the statistics involved. Now I don't have to do that so I run away. I appreciate the vote of support on the home-engineered beams. I still look at them and go, "God I hope those don't bend over four seasons." They will be in a partially climate controlled space once I'm done. But still... Now the question will be whether my choice was right for the beam in the attic. ETA: I actually looked at the possibility of the steel/wood Flitch beams. I didn't know what those were called, but the possibility came up that my attic beam might require a layer of steel. It did not. Honestly I might have been able to make the attic beam smaller that way, and I bet it wouldn't be much different in weight. That dang thing is stupid heavy. I have pics of that coming. View Quote |
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Quoted:
Sorry for the confusion W8x18 would be a Wide flange beam, 8" nominal height and 18 pounds per foot. 8.14" tall and 5.25" wide. View Quote I hired minions to help AH with the beams he and I built, but when nobody was available, I hefted one end and held it in place til it was strapped (plumber's strapping for temporary safety) and we got it jacked in place. Any heavier and I would have been useless. As to cost, I didn't realize a steel beam would be that expensive. (Never bought one.) A 2 X 6 beam probably cost $30, including plywood and a tube of adhesive. |
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I'd have been hesitant to use an lvl anyway on a dirt basement. They do not like moisture.
I would have done treated 2x with treated plywood. Treated not just for obvious reasons, but it's the best way to get southern yellow pine around here, which is better for stuff like that than regular stud grade stuff. I have lumber span tables, should you need them, let me know. |
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Quoted:
I'd have been hesitant to use an lvl anyway on a dirt basement. They do not like moisture. I would have done treated 2x with treated plywood. Treated not just for obvious reasons, but it's the best way to get southern yellow pine around here, which is better for stuff like that than regular stud grade stuff. I have lumber span tables, should you need them, let me know. View Quote Here, we are no longer allowed to use treated lumber "inside" which includes the basement/crawl space. So...I admit that I did one beam out of (old) treated lumber because I had it. But the rest are out of nontreated. We are dry enough that I am not even a little bit worried about the moisture intrusion into these beams unless we have some kind of significant event, and then all bets are off. |
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On a side note, I'm mad at my lumber yard (new to me lumber yard) and I'm having to take some time to decide to just let it be.
Ordered a small lot of lumber. Several wide 2 X stock in different widths and lengths, (yellow pine) and about 30 2 X 4s. Of the 30, eight are what I consider decent stock to use for framing. I don't care whether it's pretty, but if it's so f***ed up that it's a weak board, why the blazes would I stick it in a house I want to hold up? I'm pissed off and I need to let it go. Just. Let. It. Go. This is small beans, and not that much money, but...****breathes in, breathes out.**** I'll go somewhere else and buy what I need to do this. I really like them there but what they call #2s...Yeah I wouldn't even call them #3s. They can smile at me all they want while they take my money, but I ain't goin' back there for lumber. |
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Yeah, they try to pass off junk as decent lumber, although not as bad as pre '08.
At Menards (like a Home Depot), all the lumber is generally picked through. They take all the rejects and stack them back up. Very common to have 1/2 or better of a pallet of junk they keep trying to sell. That junk goes to contractors and those who order by the pallet/large load, or otherwise have it delivered where they have no say. Of course, you can reject it, but most don't take that time to inspect it that much, especially what is in the middle of the pallet. |
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Quoted: Thank you! I might bump you with questions about some of these spans. I wish I could get clear and easily readable "how to do it" tables here. View Quote You need to know the species of the wood and then get the design specs for that wood. Example: For Southern Yellow Pine, you get design specs like this: LINKY You get the Fb, which is needed for the tables I have. Then you look up your span, find the beam size you want to use, and get the rated weight at that span. You would then get on a 9' span with a single 2x10, a weight rating of 1742 pounds uniformly distributed, or 193 pounds per linear foot. |
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They aren't exactly simple tables... You need to know the species of the wood and then get the design specs for that wood. Example: For Southern Yellow Pine, you get design specs like this: LINKY You get the Fb, which is needed for the tables I have. Then you look up your span, find the beam size you want to use, and get the rated weight at that span. You would then get on a 9' span with a single 2x10, a weight rating of 1742 pounds uniformly distributed, or 193 pounds per linear foot. View Quote Of course, with those calculators, there's also no possibility that the joists are scabbed together in the freaking middle of the room. So there's that. I've gotta learn to read these things. I do. But I must say, I want to ignore all that and just do the fun stuff that does not hurt my brain. Edited cuz of fatigue and bad typing. |
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Quoted:
Yeah, they try to pass off junk as decent lumber, although not as bad as pre '08. At Menards (like a Home Depot), all the lumber is generally picked through. They take all the rejects and stack them back up. Very common to have 1/2 or better of a pallet of junk they keep trying to sell. That junk goes to contractors and those who order by the pallet/large load, or otherwise have it delivered where they have no say. Of course, you can reject it, but most don't take that time to inspect it that much, especially what is in the middle of the pallet. View Quote They do good on the yellow pine stock. But that's almost never scuzzy. The 2 X 4s? Oh. My. Lord. I'm using them. I'm finding creative ways. I'm sistering a lot of studs and joists because of spacing, bowing, ugly cutouts made by electricians years back, etc... (and an interesting thing I haven't seen too often. These guys put up the walls, and if a stud was crowned one way or the other, they sawed across it more than half way to basically break its back, and shoved it into line. That'll teach a board to break out of the pack, now won't it? ). Anyway, I'm over it, and the scuzzy studs will do fine for those purposes. But I'm not looking forward to having to do this the homeowner way and actually go to Lowes, or piss off the yard guys by pulling my trailer in and sorting through their bundles of crappy 2 X 4s to get 40 decent ones. I don't have the time, and I hate to be "that chick." Although...even as I type that, I realize that the older I get, the less I effing care about being "that chick." At least I didn't go there and struggle through the door, carrying the one with all the cracks, that was more than half bark, with no square corners and half the end chewed off by some piece of equipment, slap it down on the counter and get all bitchy. Goooooooosfabra. GOOOOOOSfabra.... |
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Quoted: Jeezzzus. That's what I ran into with the online calculators too. The bigger problem, though, was that they are ALL geared to new lumber. No possibility that the width is not 1.5 actual on a 2 x nominal, for instance, and no possibility that it's solid oak. Although the studs in the walls are 3.5 for a 4" wall, they are 2" actual. The JOISTS, however, are 5.5 ish actual ( Old houses always include the "ish" factor" which I'm sure you find familiar, cuz of the old house you just moved out of.) But the joists are 2" ish actual. f[/img] View Quote http://forestryforum.com/members/donp/beamclcNDS2.htm |
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Quoted: Maybe this will help you on the oak / 2" actual thing? http://forestryforum.com/members/donp/beamclcNDS2.htm View Quote THANK YOU! This is awesome! ETA: Having some trouble reading their graphs, as I can't see the difference between inches and feet on the diagrams, even when I blow it up on my screen. I'll figure it out, but wow, my eyes are older than I thought. |
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Glad to see this thread back alive.
Good luck with your repairs. |
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Not an SME on insulation, but I know where they publish...
https://buildingscience.com/documents/reports/rr-0412-insulations-sheathings-and-vapor-retarders/view https://buildingscience.com/documents/reports/rr-0410-vapor-barriers-and-wall-design/view Search for more here: https://buildingscience.com/document-search Commence eye-glazing! |
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Not an SME on insulation, but I know where they publish... https://buildingscience.com/documents/reports/rr-0412-insulations-sheathings-and-vapor-retarders/view https://buildingscience.com/documents/reports/rr-0410-vapor-barriers-and-wall-design/view Search for more here: https://buildingscience.com/document-search Commence eye-glazing! View Quote I will look at all of this! |
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