The Garage
And we also trimmed the excess material off the tops of the walls. The OSB boards were nailed to the very tops of the iBeams and noggins (on the front) to finally finish off the walls.
Garage Lights Finished
There isn’t any more jagged steps in the sky line of the walls! All nice and smooth ready for the 18mm OSB boards! At last!
Next is to man handle almost 30sheets of 18mm OSB boards each weighing about 35kg (77lbs) each! We are going to get hot so roll on the freezing weather! No sweat!!
Today we resumed our work on our Garage after a 3 day break for Christmas! We finished putting on the metal bracket pies holding down the iBeams(the rafters) across the middle wall.
We also put a couple extra brackets at the bottom of the door posts (the big front doors) to ensure full structural tie down around each of the large openings. There would be quite a considerable uplift force during strong winds especially if someone opens both doors at the same time!
We are almost ready to put up the OSB boards but first the last row of noggins across the middle of the front portion of the garage. This is to connect and stiffen up all 22 rafters into a single structural unit. We have already done this for the front, middle and back positions over the walls, so this is the last row to do.
We started installing the metal brackets on the iBeam rafters. We have done the back and front walls. We are using hardened nails, 38mm long ring shank for extra grip and zinc plated! The nail gun has a special nozzle to allow Stephen to place the nails accurately into the tiny holes in the metal brackets! But even then a couple of times, the nail missed the hole and bounced off! But one actually punched a new hole through the metal and hammered the nail into the wood!
We then nailed up small pieces of 18mm OSB fillers on the webbing part of the iBeams over where the middle wall is. This is because the metal brackets needs something to fix on to. Very fiddly work, going up and down ladders etc!
The Snow and ICE have finally let up! We had a little bit of rain and that helped to melt the ice on the garage floor so we managed to scrape and brush out all the snow and ice out of the doors!
The remaining 11 iBeam rafters have gone up!
All I-Beams up
All I-Beams up
We have a thick layer of snow over everything! It is minus four degrees Celsius (-4oC)!!
Snow and Ice
(the garage)
Snow and Ice
(down the garden)
The concrete floor slab has a thick layer of crunchy ice which is uneven and a little slippery!
So no Play today! Oops I mean Work!
Our building control inspector came today to take a look at our Garage. He was checking the structural and quality of work! His words were “I am very happy with your work!” “Very happy indeed!”
That is good to know that we are going in the right direction!
Phew!
We got half the iBeams up! That is 11 of them. They are nailed into place. They are fitting very nicely!
We are still having to walk each iBeam out of the garage, turning it around and then propping it up on the middle wall, climb the ladders and hauling it up to the top of the world! Fortunately each iBeam only weighs 20kg each but still it is hot work!
Hopefully the weather will not be too bad tomorrow! Then we can finish the other 11 iBeams!
The morning was spent trimming all 22 iBeams to exact lengths! We got out our chop saw on the bench and along with two extension benches proceeded to very carefully get the angle of the cut just right, at 1.3degrees which is the slope of the roof! Once the saw was set up and tested with samples, we carried each beam to the saw for one end and then spin it around to cut the other end! Well it wasn’t that easy, walking the whole iBeam out of the garage, turning it around and then walking it back in again! And remember each beam is 9metres (29feet) long!! We walked miles today!
We also glued and stapled strips of fluffy geo-textile over the holes drilled yesterday in the first i-beam to act as a filter for the incoming air.
The iBeams have been brought out of storage today! The first job was to nail on a whole load of small OSB pieces at both ends of the beams in order to provide a solid fixing surface for the metal brackets to tie down the rafters onto the walls!
The other job was to drill 21 holes in the webbing (as they call it, the thin material in between the top and bottom flanges) to let the fresh air in for our air conditioning system. It turned out that we have 22 holes!
Now to get critical and cut them to exact lengths! Tomorrow’s job!
42 square pieces of stainless steel mesh was cut and stapled over all the holes previously drilled a couple of days ago. The metal mesh will reduce the possibility of animal life getting into our roof cavity and getting stuck!
The mesh covering the holes for the air conditioning system (on the left side of the garage) were additionally stuck down with a ring of construction bulk glue to ensure a complete seal. The iBeam immediately next to these holes now has similar holes more or less lining up. These will have a microfiber cloth (using a heavy weight geotextile material) stapled and glued to provide a secondary filter layer to further reduce large dust particles and micro insects from getting through and into our fresh air supply!