Framing with a 2x6 Replacement - TSTUDS!!!

on the build show today one of my favorite topics framing now about a year and a half ago i made a video about a new kind of framing with an insulated stud this is called a t-stud but on today's video we're using a whole nother type of t-stud called the bare naked tea stud now this is a trust stud that replaces one to one a two by six we've got a lot to talk about today we're going to get in a lot of details we framed the entire house with these t-studs today's video is sponsored by t-stud let's get going alright guys so what we're talking about today specifically is framing with these right here this is a t-stud and basically this is a one-to-one replacement for a standard two by six you're going to see it's the same exact dimension that's five and a half inches in depth but what they've done is because this is a engineered stud they've taken the advantage of woods properties by running a two by three perpendicular with another two by three that way we've got the grain crossed on both of those for the greatest strength and in fact in terms of compression it's a one-to-one replacement for framing but actually these are three times stronger in compression than a standard two by six but here's the difference here's why we want to frame with these a standard two by six only has a small amount of insulation value wood can insulate but it's around r1 per inch which means that when we insulate our cavities with you know whatever kind of insulation is our favorite flavor you know we're usually in a 2x6 gonna have r19 to maybe r23 insulation in this cavity but everywhere i've got a solid stud a solid two by six i've got about r5 which means that's a thermal bridge that's a place that heat is going to transfer easily inside out in the winter time we've got a lot of heat loss through our studs in the summertime we've got a lot of heat gain so by going to this you can see i've got this big open space here which means that if i use a continuous insulation a blown-in type insulation let's say i use closed cell or open cell spray foam blown in fiberglass blown in mineral wool i'm actually going to be able to insulate this space right here so now i'm going to be able to break that thermal bridge and get a much much higher overall r value where these studs are now let's talk about a couple of the specifics they call this the spline right here and you can see how they're built the dowel that they're using goes all the way through the spline and then lodges somewhere in between i'm not sure if it's halfway or what on this side and then they're using a a really top grade i'm assuming this is probably a polyurethane style glue and then this dowel that they're using also has some ridges on it to accept and really hold on to that glue now when we frame this house we didn't use them in every single location you're going to notice i've got my kings and my jacks i've got a double top plate and single or double bottom plate in solid stawn lumber but there's a bunch of different options for framing these while we're talking about framing though i'd be remiss not to bring my frame carpenter bill wood on to talk about the specifics of how you work with these so let's go find bill bill what's up buddy hey man guys if you don't know bill you obviously haven't been watching my channel for very long bill and i have been building together for about a dozen years there's a couple of youtube videos we look like kids on the bill we've aged a little bit over the years that's right um but bill talk to me about framing with t-studs and how this is different than let's say framing with a standard 2x6 well you know it's it's different because of just because of the way it's shaped um but honestly it was our first time doing it uh you brought the idea up and i thought well yeah let's give it a try it makes a lot of sense uh for many different reasons and for us and the way that we did we approached it on this particular frame job there wasn't much change at all and we actually like them a lot of benefit to them and tell me about straightness you know i know people are wondering how straight are these what happens if you get crooked ones what did you find did you find a lot of coal in the in the pile or no actually no we were concerned about that you know when we uh when we were helping unload these things and stack them we thought oh man he's going to stay straight for us and you know we had to keep him under top for a little bit but surprisingly they were great you know and what do you attribute that to why are they straighter well because engineered yeah it's engineered yeah what the what the guys that the manufacturer told us was that um you know they they build these in a jig so they actually clamp them down and then they run their their uh their whole bore through there and then and then they run those dowels through with blue and that actually locks them in place yeah those are some beefy looking dowels i don't know what species that is but they look really strong they're great they're great and you also notice they come all the way through on the spline so that dowel is coming all the way in there which i'm assuming is going to help really lock that lumber in place it it just makes sense it does and i like the alternate orientation and speaking of which talk to me about running that because you've got this two and a half inch face and an inch and a half face tell me about why we chose running them that way and what else we could have done well you know there's a lot of information on their website yeah they've got a good website and you know just in conversations with them they there's there's so many different orientations you can choose we were kind of selfish and we choose to chose the wide flange on the outside partially because we've got zip r and then we're gonna have a rain screen yeah and then we've got hardy going outside of that too so we've got a lot attaching on the outside of the building that two and a half inch flange is a nice bench right and we we always attach everything on the exterior of the house to the stud yeah and so we never just allow the sheathing to to be alright security that's right absolutely but the layout is the same you know it's like you pull your 16 inch layout and it and it lays out the same interior and exterior it's just that the flange portion whether you orient it inside or outside it's going to have a wider nailing surface yeah we could have oriented those inside let's say if this was a kitchen wall and we were hanging cabinets here we could have flopped that two and a half face to this side so we'd have a little bit more meat for the cabinet maker to attach to the cabin installer i should say or you could also alternate them where you've got one this way and one's alternating on size but i thought it made the most sense to do this now bill let's talk a little bit about top and bottom plates on this job and why we decided to go this way well we uh we talked about using zip r on this uh on this project um and because it was our first project with the t-stud uh we thought let's just simplify this a little bit let's just let's go to a solid top light solid bottom plate and uh kings and cripples as well for the windows yeah so we've got this is a remodel kind of an oddball house we could have easily done a single bottom plate we did a double stay tuned for future videos about that but we could have used a single pressure treated bottom plate ignore that there's a double down there for now and then the double top plate we could have gone a t stud for the first top plate and then probably by code we would have gone to a solid uh second top plate right now if we would have done that though we also would have had to cut our studs uh a little bit differently right you just make this one a little shorter so it lays down flat right but we decided to go ahead and cut them flush and do a standard double top plate and part of our thinking was we're going to use this zip r which has insulation bonded to zip sheathing so we've got that additional thermal break at all our double top plates add our bottom plate add our headers things like that check out their website by the way there's lots of really good details if you want to use these for bottom plates top plates and even headers and while we're talking headers let's walk over here bill and tell me about these headers now just for understanding on the video i had bill frame through these just for weatherproofing purposes so this is a window opening here and this lvl header you're seeing up here talk to me about how you built those bill uh okay so we had made also just discussing the plans for the for the house and how we wanted it to be um i think the engineer called out two by six standard lumber um and we decided to go with lvl uh and what we did though it's a five and a half inch wall structure so a two by six we used two lvls and lvl's remember an inch and three quarters so that nets us three and a half inches and so we were able to get two inches of foam in the middle of that lvl that's right so if you look down on that header you can see we've got two inch foam in between there and that's a poly iso we actually had left over from another job right and then we did a squash block an inch and a half squash block at the bottom of that header to kind of tie all that together yeah so that header now is bearing on that squash block which is bearing on these jacks and then these kings are also solid as well and i like the solid kings and jacks because now my window install which by the way this house is going to have some kind of non-standard flangeless windows that we're going to screw into the jamb which means i've got all solid lumber everything's kind of straight forward there it was going to pose some significant waterproofing and air air yeah the air ceiling's got to be tight i also want to uh say huge uh praise to bill and his crew we've been doing this sloped sub sil detail now for i don't know maybe 10 years bill yeah all he's doing is cutting these uh cripples right am i saying that right yeah cutting these cripples underneath the window sill at about a what five degree bevel or five three to so that now this is pre-sloped we don't have to put a beveled cedar piece onto a flat sill we're already sloped we'll do some videos on this window install later but really the framing if you look at it and you kind of pan around the house it looks like kind of normal framing except for this trust stud right yeah we did we didn't lose a step with it at all and especially because of the decision that we made to go with the standard plates and the standard kings and cripples i don't think that if we had decided to use the t-stud in the king and and say header or plate locations it would have slowed us down much but because it's our first time we just want to kind of simplify things a bit yeah i like that great product yeah it worked out real well and i like because we've got standard framing things like you know where our rafters are coming through here and hitting that double top plate you know we can do standard details to tie our rafter to our top light now we're using a slightly newer product from fasten master on this house where we're actually sinking a big screw in there but you could now because we've got standard lumber also use a hurricane tie just a little faster using some of the newer technology from fast master on that tie down any last thoughts from you bill from a framer's perspective on t-sets uh yeah i mean so often i'm reluctant to use new stuff because i've been doing this for so long in one particular way but these have been great and you've been helpful with helping introduce new stuff for us and having new ways of doing things and we appreciate that and yeah no and the guys the guys who supplied them to us were fantastic yeah for sure uh bill and i've been doing this a long time together we even though bill works for other builders and not just me i always feel like bill's a part of my team and obviously is a big part of my success so bill really appreciate all your hard work over the years let me transition now to talking about a couple of nerd stats i'll meet you back at the desk all right before i get into the stats actually one more thing on the framing we just used the t-studs on the exterior walls i went to standard 2x4 framing on the interior walls but notice this ladder framing bill and the crew did a real nice job we use those t-studs for where walls intersect with outside walls and then let's talk for a minute about the trades when they come you know when the electricians and the plumbers come they've got this inch and a half void in here so the electricians they're really not going to have to do any drilling coring sawing any of that kind of stuff it also means they're not going to have to do any sweeping which is kind of nice but when the plumber comes if he's got bigger pipes than that he's going to have to be a little cautious right we don't want to do any uh damage to this outer flange we only want to take out the spline if we're gonna do any cutting or coring let's say if we need to put a two or two and a half inch pipe through this wall we also want to make sure the dowels are intact we do not want to take out any dowels and as we think about cutting this spline the maximum amount on their website shows no more than one and one-quarter inch before we've got a problem meaning we've cut down the structural integrity it also says on the website that you could in theory take out one dowel but no more than that i would say don't take out the dowels be really cautious about laying out your electrical your plumbing so you don't take out any dowels but here's the fix if you needed to do that you would basically take another t-stud and you would lace that t-stud up against the other one and you would form a column with those two t-studs and then you would actually put like a three and a half inch screw here to combine these two members and then this is going to give you that structural integrity of course you could also lace in a full size one top to bottom but no need to do that you could probably go two feet top and bottom of that screw it together and then you've got that structural integrity now you're gonna have to get an engineer involved if you go too high so be cautious about that okay next let's talk insulation what are you going to use when you insulate this you know if you bought the original t-stud which is uh this one they call this the r19 t-stud this is going to come pre-foamed and you're going to go ahead and just put you know standard bat insulation let's say but i think the big beauty of this bare naked tea stud that we're framing with on this house is that i could use something like a continuous insulation so that i let's say if i use closed cell foam i could have a continuous thermal break on the whole outside of the building the nice thing about closed cell foam is it's going to add a lot of structural integrity now you could of course use open cell foam too you're just not going to get that structural benefit like you would of closed cell foam but because it's open you could also use blown in fiberglass blown in mineral wool cellulose insulation even blown in wool let's say if you wanted to and that's the beauty in my mind of using the zip system sheathing on the outside it's a perfect marriage with these t-studs because when i tape and maybe use a little bit of liquid flash on the outside i've got a really really tight envelope i don't need to use spray foam on the inside for air tightness i've got that really airtight layer on the outside and again i chose that zip r sheathing on this house because i've got now a thermal break at that double top plate and while i'm thinking about that i did want to mention on the video see those two by four blocks that are on the flat those are blocks at seam transitions so we ran our zip r sheathing vertically on this house and then did blocking there solid on the flat so that i could solid nail in my zipper sheathing at the top your sheathing is going to orient depending on your climate zone or your wind loads in our case i don't have a lot of wind load so it's okay for me to run that vertically okay next let's talk about how you could get them and what do they cost this is a hard question i got to tell you this is a company that has seen some serious demand even since i published my build show a year and a half ago they've seen a huge amount of inquiries a lot of builders want to get them frankly they're not super easy to get right now they're totally sold out for the remainder of 2020 but there are there's a wait list and you can get on that wait list and you can actually get in line to get a package delivered to your job site the best way to do that is to go to their website tstud.com and sign up for not only their newsletter but you can get information from the website there and make an inquiry about getting on the list so that you can get them from your for your job site i think in the future in coming years these are going to be stocked at local lumber yards that's not the case today unless you're in you know their home state of minnesota or somewhere near the plant where they're making them in iowa you're probably not going to find these stocked in your lumber yard but make an inquiry i think this is a really interesting framing product that really has the potential to change the amount of efficiency we get from really pretty standard construction and i think that's why they've seen the demand just absolutely skyrocket in only four years or so being on the marketplace guys big thanks to t-stud for sponsoring today's video really really nice people over there great people to work with get on their website lots lots more information lots of videos as well it's been really fun building a house with us i think this is definitely the framing of the future stay tuned for more from those guys as they expand their manufacturing operations and are building both bare naked studs and the original r19 stud in iowa but this is a premium product you're going to pay more for this than a standard 2x6 stud i think the benefit's definitely there and of course lumber fluctuates lumber's at a crazy all-time high right now so a lot of builders are evaluating engineered options like t-stud and others because that cough cost differential between standard framing lumber solid sawn lumber and engineered has really come down in terms of the delta between those as we've seen lumber rise i'm hopeful that in the coming year we're going to see those lumber prices come back down and speaking of framing there's lots more framing talk on buildshownetwork.com if you're not familiar that's the website that i started about a year ago and i've got several other builders and another architect shooting videos at their job sites lots of good framing talk on buildshownetwork.com sign up for our newsletter we send that out every friday and it'll tell you what's new on buildshownetwork.com otherwise hit that subscribe button we've got new content every tuesday and every friday follow me on twitter instagram otherwise we'll see you next time on the build show

Channel: Matt Risinger

Views: 559,076

Rating: 4.8950319 out of 5

Keywords: Matt Risinger, Build Show Network, The Build Show, Build, tstud framing, matt risinger framing, framing a house, best framing style, how to frame a house, new build framing

Id: 3zGzcn9rDKg

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020