Setting Trusses

[bimmer1980]

I thought I would share how I managed to set thirty four attic trusses for my garage. Each truss is 28' and almost 11' tall and weigh just a bit over 200 pounds.

I had them delivered and rolled off onto the existing pavement that was about 45' away from the garage. That was the only place to put them.

My challenge was to get them up on top of the 9 1/2' walls safely and relatively easily.

I knew that my forklift would raise up to about 15 1/2'. That would be almost high enough, but not quite....

 

[bimmer1980]

my solution was to build a steel spreader beam. I took two 12' long 3" steel angles and bolted some short pieces on each end. This created a spreaderbeam with a pocket on each end for the top cord of the truss to sit in. The spreader beam then sits on the wooden work platform that is on the forklift. This gives it an extra 4" of lift.

When it was all said and done, the forklift would just lift it high enough for the bottom cord to clear the top of the wall.

We would hand carry the truss from the stack and load onto the forklift. The forks and spreaderbeam would stick out from the main door opening. Then I would hoist it all the way up so that truss cleared the wall. Then I would start backing up and move into position.


Once the truss was minimally braced, I would lower the forks down until the spreader cleared the truss and then back up out of the way. We would then take the spreaderbeam off the platform and then I would ride the platform up to finish bracing the truss. It was able as good as a genie lift or a sissor lift!

 

[bimmer1980]

the observant people will notice that the first gable wall was not sheathed. We also did the ridge overhang from the scaffold and the forklift platform. After that hassle I figured it was better to do all that while the gable wall was on the ground.

Doing as much as possible on the ground to the gable wall and then lifting as an assembly definitely made it easier.

 

[bimmer1980]

After setting about 10 trusses from the second gable wall, I have a 4-ply and then a gap of 10' This gap will get framed in to allow access to the other part of the attic truss. (the garage is an L-shape).

Then I figured that we needed to move the remainder of the trusses into the garage and set the remaining gable wall and set trusses from that end.

So after Thanksgiving turkey, my B-in-L and I move about 15 trusses by hand from the stack into the garage. That was about 3000 worth of trusses......

 

[bimmer1980]

Of course, the day that I wanted to hang the last gable wall, it was windy as all get out. Gusts to about 30 or 40 miles per hour.... Of course the wind really picked up once the gable wall was up in the air, but not secured. Good thing the wind was blowing the wall into the forklift and not away from it.

I came close to just calling it a day and setting the wall back on the ground, but we perservered thru it and got the gable wall set and braced.

It seems that every few days since then we have had major wind.....

 

[bimmer1980]

the last few trusses were extremely tight to get up. I had to lift them at a diagonal thru the last remaining gap of 28' x 10'. Sounds like it should have been plenty of room, but considering the thickness of the wall and the fact that the truss has eave overhang, it was tight.

I ended up lift up the last few as mulitples and then manually unloading and back up to set them.

THis was all compounded by the fact that the last one was a 4-ply truss that had to be nailed together.

It's amazing at how many nails we went thru fastening the trusses together. We were nailing for about an hour or more with the nail gun.

I'm jsut happy to get all of my trusses up!

Now I just have to start putting up some sheathing........ug....

 

[srmofo]

Looking good, those gables are sealed up nice and tight. All my trusses were the same size and we just built a ladder and nailed it to the front. Interesting to see things done differently.

Any reason you didnt lift the last 5 or 6 at the same time to avoid the dilema of squeezing the last 2 or 3 up there?

 

[bimmer1980]

I did end up lifting the last six trusses together. They would not all fit on the spreaderbeam at one time, so I lifted a set of three and then another set of three. Once I had them all above the wall, then I was able to manuever them apart and into position.

It was a lot of careful moving of the forklift--a small movement at the forklift translates into a lot of movement at the end of the truss.....

 

[rwhite692]

Nice Job! There are many times I wish I still had a forklift around the ol' ponderosa.