How to Install Collar Ties, Why? and What They Do!

in this video I'm gonna show you how to install collar ties in your attic I'm also going to explain why you should have them if you don't already and we're gonna do it right now I'm up in my attic right now and today I want to talk about collar ties so let's talk about the basic structure of a house first normal typical house wood construction of course you have your outside walls all the way around that come up evenly and then you have your ceiling joists or floor joists depending on how many floors you have but we're going to talk about the top floor the Attic so these are ceiling joists they sit on top of the outside walls and go across here usually the joists are broken down here under a main supporting wall then you have your roof rafters that sit on top of the outside wall and come up here to a ridge this is a ridge and they are sandwiched right here so to hold all this together typically you put the ceiling joists and attach them to the roof rafters and then that prevents the walls from bowing out and then they're tied into that main wall there or also the other ceiling joists that come over this way in my case they actually ran the ceiling joist all the way across and that is what is holding the walls from bowing out or if going in in some cases but another thing that should be done is collar ties like this one single piece right here is a good representation of a collar tie I guess or where it should be although it should be lower and it should be bigger typically they're installed the top third of the roof rafters and what they do is they prevent this these right here these roof rafters from separating at the ridge due to wind up lift or uneven loads such as snow loads it's my belief as well that this also helps the roof rafters from not spreading this way and if there's an uneven load it will help to balance that load in between the roof rafters that it's attached to making the overall structure stronger so this is part of the living room remodel down here and I have my my lvl that we're gonna use at a later date and if you haven't been following definitely subscribe and follow along because this thing down here is going to be completely different but today I'm installing collar ties so that's kind of why you want collar ties just overall structural integrity of the house now I know when you install these you really limit the amount of space that you can have and I know a lot of people hate that my plan here is I'm not going to have any storage I know it's a lot of room and I can store some light things in here maybe some long pieces of extra baseboard heat or some lumber nothing too crazy though but I have all this storage down here and I really I'm trying at this point my life I'm trying to not acquire so many things so yes it does eliminate some storage you know with head height you can't just walk in here because I'm going to be putting mine at about this level and that's another thing to determine like I said you want to be in the upper third of your roof rafters so I've decided to make my collar size about five feet long and when you measure five feet here that will be a long point these are the board's I'm gonna be using for the collar ties these are one by eight by I got sixteen footers they're one by eight and they're called either ledger board or utility board or spring board they're called a bunch of different things but these are actually 1 inch by 8 inch whereas a lot of lumber is like you know 3/4 by 7 and 1/4 this is actually 1 inch by 8 inch so this is what I'm going to be using for my collar ties an easy way to calculate the angle that you're going to want to cut the ends of this at is if you take a level instead of calculating pitch and all that stuff figuring out what pitch your roof is you can take a level put it up top here door Kota okay but did you get scared you guys scare you did scare you yes okay Wow windy day a roof doesn't blow off without kala ties hold it right there where it's level and then you can take an angle finder and put your angle finder on here and tighten this up might need like six hands to do this now you have your angle here doesn't have to be perfect because you're gonna be holding collet eyes away yeah probably three-quarters of an inch something like that because you don't want it to rub on the decking and then check that on the other side that's good we can cover people and mark my angle like this you it my framing square to mark five feet here if I feel like this is too long I'll just cut it a little more after I kind of put it up there in place and see how it looks mark my angle and as a tip you can cut one of these and if you're happy with the length then you can use that piece as a template test fit my piece the angles a little off but that looks good so I'm happy with that so I can cut all my pieces now these roof rafters are 24 inches on center if you have 16 inch on center Center you can typically do every other rafter but since these are 24 on center which means the distance from the center of this rafting to the center of this rafter is 24 inches if they're 16 like I said which is common then you can do every other roof rafter I'm gonna do everyone here's a quick tip for you before you go measuring these and cutting the angle all at different times once you get one cut and you know how many you need you can use this as a pattern which means you flip it here and also as long as you have a good cut here that angle and these don't have to be perfect they're not they're not for looks or anything they're for structure so you can set up your pattern right here at the edge and then go down there mark it cut it and then flip it do the same thing make sure you mark the pattern with some pencil or something so you know it's a pattern because if you just cut this and then cut this one and use that it's like making a copy of a copy of a copy eventually it's gonna be different so I'm going to cut all my collar ties the same time to install pathologize now you don't have to put anything right here if you were doing a ceiling up here then you would want a mailer here but this is strictly for structural purposes so I'm gonna start my first one here where the two rafters meet the first two rafters meet right here and I'm actually gonna take this piece off it's gonna be replaced I'm gonna put some up right away take your first piece put it like I said mmm you put it about 1/2 inch 3/4 away from the actual roof plywood or decking and then get your four foot level and maneuver it to where it's level which is all right there now you can kind of stand back and make sure you're good before you go putting all the other ones in it's actually not the worst height in the world for an attic if I wanted to store some stuff up here I could but that's not really my goal my goal is to make the house structurally sound so that looks good so I'm going to go ahead and mail it off [Music] now when it comes to putting the rest of the pieces in here and knowing where they should go what you can do is take your level and hold it on the edge there and then get it to where it's level here and then mark right there and then do the same thing on the opposite side marker right here put it on your lines make sure it's level on the bottle and nail it off and just do that the whole way but I'm gonna cheat and here's how I'm gonna cheat with my voke line laser level I actually did a product review on this thing and it's awesome and it is absolutely perfect for this so I lined the laser up to the bottom of that collar tie and now I can see all the way around exactly where I want to put the rest of them now as I walk here the laser is gonna bounce but you can see I have to move this up in just a bit but there's my line and then I can find where my next one goes and where my next one goes and the next one is just super handy so like I said I'm gonna cheat you could do it where you can measure here and or level there and do it that way or you can measure the same height off of here to here if you want to do it that way mark it down here and then snap a chalk line that works too but this just makes it way easier for me so that's what I'm gonna do there we go all set I'm just doing this area for now because this is what I'm ripping apart and I need to add this for the structure you know I can continue them down this way but for right now this is all I need that's it it's really not that difficult and this thing makes it a ton easier and I'll leave a link in the description where you can buy this thing if you're interested that also means I get a small referral Commission help support this channel and I would not stay wrong I love this thing and this is just one of the many awesome uses for this thing if you want to see more of my content you can click here and hear it and go check it out if you haven't subscribed yet definitely subscribe if you enjoy this channel and check out my other links in the description to my Facebook page Instagram and my patreon page which help support this channel I appreciate it as always we'll see you next time thanks for watching

Channel: The Fixer

Views: 134,309

Keywords: Home, home owner, home owner repair, diy, how to, do it yourself, easy, house, house repair, collar tie, roof (literature subject), house framing parts, collar ties, how to install collar ties in attic, how to install collar ties, collar ties on roof rafters, collar ties roof framing, collar ties framing, collar ties rafters, collar ties attic, collar ties ceiling, what do collar ties do, what collar ties do

Id: 2afhaoR51zM

Length: 14min 20sec (860 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 01 2020