Journal of Progress--June 18-June 30

Monday June 18-Thursday June 21, 2018
We enjoyed a reunion with our children and grandchildren in southern Utah

Fiday, June 22, 2018
We returned to Mammoth, was visited by our daughter and family from Texas.   After they left, it was too hot to work, but did get some work done in the evening. Got the concrete blocks installed, and temporarily nailed the stairs in place. Tomorrow will permanently screw the stairs and the landing to the house and install the decking. Shouldn’t take long.  I expect delivery of the i-joists on Monday. It’s gonna be interesting getting 32-foot joists up on top of eight-foot walls!

Saturday, June 23, 2018
Barbara took an early morning walk above Mammoth.  Looking back at our area, you can barely see our house in the trees.  Can you find it?  It is left of the house with the orange roof beyond the trees.

 Half day of work, due to visit from friends from Salt Lake. Finished the porch steps (but not the railings), repaired the root cellar stairs, installed the last two metal tee braces on top of the walls, and hammered in some mending plates. And cleaned up. Not a bad day’s work. Also, made a gasoline run to Eureka, so I’m ready for the joists, which should be delivered in the morning. I anticipate that the upper deck should be done in another week, or two at the most. Then I can start on the roof!

Sunday, June 24, 2018
Church, working on computers at home, more visits by deer.

Monday, June 25, 2018
We took delivery from Home Depot of 24 floor joists.  I ordered them at thirty feet, though I needed thirty feet, five inches, because the Home Depot Pro Desk guy swore that Boise Cascade always cuts their joists two feet longer than ordered, so you can trim them to the exact length. As delivered, all twenty-four joists were thirty feet, one inch! I was furious. The joists cost over $1300.00, and they were the length I ordered (but wrong). I called The Home Depot. Home Depot was great about it.  They said they would be remade and the new ones delivered on Thursday.  Very happy about their customer service.

Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Cut 560 pieces of 2x2 for nailing strips on the blocking for the joists. Had only fifteen 2x2s, but LOTS of scrap 2x stock, so did a LOT of tablesaw work. Got all 560 pieces finished in time for the joists to be delivered

We went to Holden and bought an old 1985 Ford for a water truck.  It needs a tune up.

Wednesday, June 27, 2018
Truck wouldn't start.  Don determined it needed a new battery.

Per Home Depot's instructions, Don unbanded the rim boards that were shipped with the floor joists and stored them in the house.

Don cut additional 2x2 for nailing strips on the blocking for the joist

In the afternoon we went to Tooele for a battery for the truck, various items from Home Depot, laundry, grocery shopping, chiropractic, and more 2 x 4's in Stockton.

Thursday, June 28, 2018
Don tried to put the battery in the truck.  He broke a battery cable clamp.  He went to Payson to get a new one as well as propane.  While he was gone, the guy arrived from Home Depot with the new joists.  Fortunately, Don arrived back just as the guy started to work. They delivered new joists, two feet longer, within twenty-four hours. No extra charges. They even threw in an extra, twenty-four foot rim board I’d forgotten to order, for free. They normally charge about $4.00 / foot for the rim boards. THAT’S why I buy from The Home Depot! 

Home Depot's Insurance policy prohibits their workman from putting the joists onto the building under construction.

Here’s how I got the joist up on the walls by myself:

1. Threw ropes over the north end wall from the inside to the outside, near each of the side walls.

2. Slipped a loop of rope around each end of the joist.

3. I tried hoisting the joist by pulling down on the rope, but there was too much friction. Thought of several ways to reduce the friction, but in the end just lifted the joist as high as I could and used the rope to tie it off to a window beam.

4. Repeated at the other end.

5. Continued lifting ends alternately, until I had the beam as high as I could get it, about a foot below the top of the wall.

6. Used my bar clamp to lift one end all the way to the top of the wall and tied it in place. 

7. Repeated the procedure at the other end, Reached over the wall and lifted the joist onto the top of the wall, tying it in place.

8. Used the ropes to haul each end toward the west end of the house, alternately. Eventually discovered that it was easier to push the joist ends, using a twelve-foot 1x4.

9. Clamped or tied the beam in place at both ends and at the middle. Job done!

With two workers working together, the whole operation should not take more than five to ten minutes per joist, or a total of two to four hours.  Alone, he trimmed it down to 14 minutes.

Friday, June 29, 2018

Cool weather, and not too windy!  With the help of neighbors, Don was able to get the floor joists on top of the wall.Took about 30 minutes-- if that long. Would have taken me a week by myself. Then I went up on top and screwed each joist down to the walls at each end and the middle, against possible high winds, which never happened.

We went to town to get water.  Somehow, just as we turned onto the Eureka highway from what we call the short cut, the trailer fell off the hitch.  Here we were on a main highway with a big problem.  This has happened to us once before and two big strong men stopped and lifted it back up for reattachment.  This time there were no big, strong men.  A car stopped driven by a woman and what looked like a child.  The woman got out, barefoot on the hot pavement and helped Don lift the trailer hitch up.  The child turned out to be a 24 yer old woman.  They are out here studying the decline of sage grass.  

Finished making the jig for my self-designed spacers/blocking. Cut up one of the five sheets of OSB that I have saved just for this project. (OSB stands for Oriented Strand Board, which means the grains of the chips run every direction, for strength.) Each spacer has a piece of 2x2 glued and screwed to it, on each side. The two short sides are nailing strips for the joists. The ones on the top and bottom (the long sides), are nailers for subfloor and ceiling sheet rock, respectively. Each also has a hole drilled in the center, for wires or pipes, should the need arise. So now, I have a stack of thrity OSB panels ready to use, made from one of the five sheets, which means that theoretically I can make 150 of them, though I calculate I’ll only need 140. All the 2x2s are cut and stacked. 

The jig for the gluing and screwing.

Cutting the spacer plates.

Tomorrow, I hope to finish cutting all the panels, and maybe build a goodly number of the finished spacers. I’m anxious to get them built, as I can’t start installing the joists until I have the spacers ready to go. It’s my intention to glue the whole structure together, into one unitized panel, for maximum stiffness.

Spoke to our electrician, Aaron. He’s not able to get the trencher on Tuesday, so he ordered it for tomorrow, Saturday. Bad news is, he can’t get it until 2:00 in the afternoon, so he won’t get here until around 4:00. He intends to work on Sunday, and maybe Monday morning if need be. I tried to discourage him from working on Sunday, but he says there’s no other way. The good news is that I only get charged one day rental, instead of three. It’ll be SOOOOO good to have electricity!

More good news. a brother from chruch came over to help me with my truck, and got it running. He says he’ll be back tomorrow to rebuild the carburetor. Once the truck is running, we can get started on the water cistern! I can’t think how great it’ll be to have running water and a toilet and sinks!

Apropos of sinks, our landlord bought a whole oak kitchen from ReStore, which she is not going to use, and which she is offering to us for the same price she paid for it: $400.00. After measuring the cabinets and the kitchen area, it appears we’ll be able to use them all. Things are starting to click!

Saturday, June 20, 2018
Don built custom spacers.  Got sixty-six joist spacers manufactured. Process is not simple. Cutting the spacers themselves out of OSB is relatively easy. But that leaves nothing to nail to, so the edges have to be lined with 2x2s. Cutting them wasn’t hard either, just there are a lot of them: four edges on each of the 140 spacers. The hard, slow part, is assembling them and gluing and screwing them together. Finished the jig yesterday. Today, started to use it. There are six basic steps:

1. load the jig

The arrows mark where the screws go.

2. apply the glue

3. screw the OSB plate to the 2x2s. (ten screws each)

4. mark and drill the center hole for wires and/or pipe

Marking where to drill the hole.

Blowing the sawdust off the spacer.

Loosening the spacer.

5. remove the finished spacer and stack it

6. clean and prep the jig, ready for loading.

Blowing the sawdust out of the jig.

Repeat 140 times. Barbara took pictures of the process.

Stack of spacers at the end of the day.

One of the reasons it’s so slow is that I have to stop every thirty and manufacture more OSB plates, cutting them from a full 4 ft. x 8 ft. sheet of OSB. This is too big to cut on my table saw, so I have to cut each sheet into pieces small enough, using my worm drive saw. To get a straight line, I have to make the cut with a saw guide clamped in place, then transfer the pieces to the table saw. The plates are 9-1/2" x 15-3/8". I can rip the smaller dimension using the table saw fence, but the long dimension has to be cut with a miter gauge. Mine is sloppy. I can actually do a better, more accurate job cutting freehand on the table saw, as long as I have a line to cut to, which requires measuring each piece. Each step requires one or two extra steps to make it happen. Then, the corners need to be cut out to allow for the top and bottom joist flanges. Plenty of work.  (Detailed pictures of this on Tuesday and Thursday of this week)

I’m not happy with my table saw. It has a “splitter” behind the blade, to keep the cut wood from pinching the blade. It would be alright if it worked the way it’s supposed to. Somehow, it got out of adjustment, so every time I push a board through, it catches on the splitter and the splitter must be pushed out of the way with a push stick, reaching over the saw, while holding the work piece. Very, VERY unsafe! Next trip to The Home Depot, I’m going to complain. 

Our volunteer mechanic hard at work.