Sunday 4 November 2018

Large Trussed Roof

October wasn't what I had planned as I had intended to work on my own kitchen and pantry area. The roof on my brothers house took priority in the end so he'd be weather tight by Christmas and it's nice to have been a part of his house build.

The roof was a monster and when it turned up we got a sense of scale of the thing! It's all attic trusses and they've got 8ft (2.4m) ceilings in them


The first day we managed to get the small L shape on and some of the larger trusses.
Dill the brick layer was dead excited to get the roof on. A big milestone! 
 Dad had spent the time and made our job huge amounts easier by building a big truss lifting jib on the 4WD forklift. This meant we could pretty much lift them to where we needed them.



With a truss roof it soon takes shape.

the second day we had far worse weather and only worked until mid day as it had started to get dangerous. When we got down from the scaffold we realised that there had been weather warning everywhere and trees blown over in the local town. We were all completely soaked to the skin and decided to call it a day.

The jib dad made, such a labour saver! 

Lifting them into place with ropes to keep them from blowing too much in the wind and help position them



Although it's a trussed roof it became apparent early on that we were going to have to "cut" a fair bit of this roof on. Lots of it couldn't be done in trusses so normal rafters needed to be put in place and the valley needed to all be cut by hand.

What was annoying was that the truss company didn't sent nearly enough loose timber so we had to buy some more.

Short of a bevel so my brother made one up! Worked a treat when we were cutting the cripple jack rafters. 


Cripple jack rafters... always fun!



The other side of the valley to be cut on by hand as well

My brother cutting whilst I fix up above on the scaffold.

One hell of a view from up here! 

Three battery platforms used on this roof - all performed well to be fair, hard to pick a favourite

Ceiling joists need to be added after the binders are in place

It's a big roof. the battens on the outside were just on as we placed the trusses in place. 
A huge roof in the end and a huge space created in the loft. There's so much timber in it, but I'm glad my brother chose to go 400mm centers when ordering it rather than 600mm center, makes for such a stronger roof and it is quite exposed here until he gets some planting in place and established.

There;s something about working on a big roof that I always love and I don't get to do so many these days with working part time. It's also nice knowing that my brother will live here for a very long time so I'll be visiting it frequently over the next few decades!

4 comments:

  1. I'm glad to see them planning to use the attic space. Over here, Those trusses are often built very light and that space is so full of braces that the space is unusable.

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    1. Yeah they use those type of trusses a lot on new builds. Called fink trusses or fan trusses depending which way the braces go. Designed to be as cheap as possible! This one will take some serious weight should it need to!

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  2. I always love working on big roof framing jobs like that. Wish I could have been there to lend a hand. The valleys seem daunting at first but they are a fun challenge to sort out. I fear these days I am short on strength and stamina to handle such a project.

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    Replies
    1. I would have loved to have had you working with me on this job! I'd love to see how we do things differently end do things the same.
      In the end I mainly did it with my brother (although the bricklayer and his mate helped for the first few days and were great). It was good working with him on it and I'm sure if I went on a big site no one would question if he was a carpenter. He has the right attitude and a good set of tools as well as having worked with me enough and enough of his own jobs to be competent.
      Never a fan of valleys but far better than hips. In truth I always moan about them but love the challenge. If it was all easy there would be no fun and I do still love this trade. A fun project in all really.

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