I had a great day yesterday with a large group of friends who helped me "raise the roof" on my garage!
Sunday's weather forecast had a front moving through before noon, so I got out early and got a little more sheathing up before the waterworks turned on. My friends were all set to start coming over at noon, so during the rain I ran to Home Depot for another load of lumber to use for blocking between the roof trusses. Folks started arriving by 1130, and by early evening we had up to 12 people helping to heft the trusses around. While we were prepping for the first truss, I divvied up the helpers into crews, either cutting blocking or adding bracing for the walls and gable truss. I even put one father-son pair to work cutting out my window openings with the Sawzall.
Finally, we were able to start on the first gable truss. My plans called for cutting notches in the top beam of the gable truss for 2x4 "lookouts" to support a 1-foot eave. They tie into the next truss on the other side, so we cut a pile of 3-foot long boards for these lookouts. We did the work on the saw horses and nailed in the lookouts before prepping for the lift.
Here's the whole crew lined up for the first lift. That's your's truly on the far end, left side. The trusses span a 32-foot room width, and with one-foot hangovers for eaves, they are substantial. The spec sheet says they are supposed to weigh only 120 pounds, but I suspect they are more than twice that.
We did the lift by bringing the truss in through the garage opening the upright position, and then had one person carry one end up a ladder and onto the far wall. I put one person on the skyhook to help steady the top and then used the scissor lift to do the rest of the lifting. Along the back wall, my bracing team put to gether an L-beam brace sticking up into space in the middle of the wall to "catch" the truss once it was stood up. We also added two scraps of 2x4 sticking up at each end to act as stops for the far ends of the truss. Folks on ladders along the back side helpd position the truss and hold it steady while I toenailed the bottom to hold it in place. Unfortunately, we had no pictures of the lifting phase, because it was all hands at stations to keep the truss where it was supposed to be.
I elected to add blocking between each truss at 4-foot intervals to better support the Zip roofing panels, as well as to help ensure the trusses are correctly spaced on 2-foot centers. I added the blocking on the ground so that it would already be in place when we hoisted it in the air.
The blocking-on-the-ground technique worked okay, but it added time, and we were starting to run out of daylight. Plus, my technique would have run out of manuevering room as we aproached the opposite wall. After about five trusses and several folks peeling off for evening activities, I changed strategies and asked the remaining volunteers to just help me get the rest of the trusses up on the walls, stacked against the five trusses we managed to install and brace. We got done just as twilight was fading into darkness. I thanked everyone profusely and said good night.
All in all, it worked better than perhaps it sounds. Having lots of extra hands and the lift on hand was definitely effective, and the lift gave us versatility for both lifting the load and workers to where they needed to be. It certainly wasn't as easy as hiring a crane and crew, but at $600 for a week's rental on the scissor lift, it was a good investment for a number of tasks.
Here are this morning's pictures of our work. The eagle-eyed amongst you will probably note that although the trusses are tied and clamped together, they are not secured to the rest of the trusses! After taking the pics, I went up and added a ratchet strap between the nailed-in trusses and the "loose" ones to make a more positive connection.
The scissor lift gets picked up on Wednesday, but today's a washout and I go back to work on Tuesday. To get the remaining trusses placed, I will probably build a temporary wall down the middle of the garage at ceiling height and then, starting at the far end, drag the trusses one at a time down to the far end and work back to the middle.
The other thing I obviously need to do is to get the Zip sheathing finished and taped before too much moisture gets into the seams. That will be one of my top priorities inthe next week.
