Sunday, February 17, 2008

Erecting of the Stud Walls

On friday we continued on with our construction of our stud wall frames. The majority of them were completed so only a few had to be finished off. Initially we were working in teams of three but as we progressed we found it easier to work by ourselves on each wall and occassionally seeking help from anyone nearby, generally to hold studs perfectly on lines and to help take twists out of studs. I continued on with the centre wall that divides the two bedrooms from the lounge area. This wall frame had two doors in it and 3 intersections with our walls.
I had initially started nailing in the studs from left to right but found that the plates were marked out for 35mm studs instead of 45mm, so i had to start from the middle studs and work outwards, marking out the stud positions as i went.
In the middle of the frame i had 5 studs all sitting flush against each other, two vertical, one horizontal and another two vertical on the other side. The stud that was nailed on horizontally was done so because it was where the wall between the two bedrooms joined onto the wall fram i was doing. This T-section join is located in the AS1684 booklet that we received.
The two door ways located in the wall were 900 wide by 2100 high. I decided to go with only the single jamb stud with a head trimmer butt joining across the top of the doorway height. This meant that there was only one centrally lined jack stud required for above the head trimmer. On of the doors, as a required excersise, i notched out into the jamb studs of the doorway 15mm to house the head trimmer. Later on though i found out that the required notching was a max of 10mm, but i still feel that the 15mm notch in a 45mm piece of timber should still be quite strong.
I saw that Mike was having quite difficult time housing his notches out when the jamb studs were already assembled into the wall frame so i decided to make the notches whilst the jamb studs were still separate. I placed them in a vice and then measured up (2100 - 35 = ) 2065 and marked a line, then i measured up another 45mm from that line and marked the wood. I then used my combination square to mark a depth line of 15mm on the depth of the wood. I used a tenon saw to cut out the lines i had made, roughly chiselled with a normal 25mm chisel and then finished the housing joint off with a granny's tooth planer. Using the granny's tooth was easy as to achieve a uniform depth, and i find using one quite enjoyable because of its easy and accurate use.
I shot the newly notched jamb studs into place along with the common studs onto the top and bottom plates. Then i measured the head trimmers and jack studs. Once cut i shot them in, finding that the granny's tooth notch i had made was perfect fit. During the measuring i was taking for the head trimmers i noticed that the two jamb studs i had notched into were unfortunately twisted. So Daniel and i took quite some time to try and straighten them up by cutting and fixing 3 noggings between the twisted stud and the next common stud. Two of the noggings were wedged in and also push up against the plate, creating a strong corner section to hold the timber square. This made it quite evident at the nescessity of choosing the best pieces of timber for such important studs like the doorway jamb studs.



After we had completed the frame walls we then began to erect the walls ontop of the sub floor. It only required 2 people to lift the standard smaller walls but at one stage we used all 6 of us to lift a long wall section. The first wall we put up we aligned with the chalk lines we had previously made, then levelled it using a spirit level and then shot a diagonal bracer in. This way we could keep the wall plumb whilst we positioned and nailed the perpendicular wall to it.
At corner intersections we used clamps to hold the walls together. Once we were happy that we had correctly aligned the walls with the chalk lines on the sub floors and that the joining walls were flush with one another, we nailed them together, making sure that it was sufficiently nailed to prevent the walls from coming apart.



After all of the larger wall frame sections were fixed in position, we then commenced measuring and marking out the smaller walls located in the bathroom section, which included an angled wall. We then put in string lines around the top and bottom plates to make sure the walls were perfectly in line. Whilst we had some people making these new walls, the others would be making dogs legs bracers and be aligning the wall with the string line. Using diagonally positioned temporary bracers we made the walls square with one another before nailing in the metal and wooden bracers, and also before we fixed in the dogs legs bracers.



At one point it took a bit of work to push the top of the wall out to make the walls perfectly plumb. I was applying weight to a 3.1m long joist that was wedged between the top of the stud, that we wanted to push the top out of, and the bottom plate of an adjacent wall. Rhys and Greg removed a nogging that was blocking the horizontal movement of the top of the wall, and then used a rope to effectively clamp the two end studs closer together. We used a spirit level to check if the wall had become plumb yet and when it was plumb we shot in a temporary brace to hold it square. so we could fix in the metal bracers.


No comments: