Roll the Joists Ep.40

[Music] now in the lingo of construction of carpentry floor joists are not usually installed or placed or built they are rolled you roll the joists you will see in a few minutes why this is the word that stuck it's the word that once you see it the job done there's really no other way to describe it and joisting a floor you know building a floor diaphragm is one of the portions of framing it's one of the it's one of the rare types of jobs really that you know it doesn't take long to get a lot of wood in the air and if someone goes by at starting time and they come back at breaktime and they see you know lots of joists in place it makes a big impression it's sort of a it's sort of bang for the buck in terms of it yes there's lots of preparation and yes there's lots of details to take care of before it's truly done but in the mid span you can get a lot of work done in a short period of time [Music] [Applause] now before we start into this I have to mention something I am really enjoying showing you this house building project and we've got a lot more of it to come we've really just scratched the surface on this job and probably a lot of questions are gonna arise that we will need to circle back an answer because we cannot go into every single detail at the time we simply have too much ground to get across before summers done but we will come back and answer the questions so don't give up and when one or two or ten or twenty questions surface again and again we're gonna find a way in a time to answer those questions because obviously they're important and don't forget what I said a few years ago when we first started this project before I make the announcement I want to reassure everybody and give you some evidence that I love blacksmithing if I had my choice I'd be working in here every day I still look forward to getting back into the blacksmith shop it's just such a satisfying enjoyable sort of a low-impact craft and you know perhaps you've got an interest in blacksmithing or you've thought you know someday are on my bucket list or I'm going to watch for a chance for or I wish I would have been born a hundred years ago so I could have been a blacksmith well good news I've put together a list of the basic tools that that you need to dive into this hobby in a serious way it's really a lot simpler than you may think and the link and the description and the way to get ahold of that list of tools is listed in the comments and in the notes to this video now there's a little more carpentry that needs to happen before we roll out these joists there are two different beams that will be placed into the floor system itself alongside the joists each on their own posts transferring the load that they carry down to the strip footings we don't want the floor joist to carry this weight they're not designed for it the joists are really just carrying the floor the furniture and the people the walls the roof the real weight of the house needs to be carried by the foundation and so these beams are specified on the plans the exact location the exact amount of concrete that's holding them up the depth the width everything about them and now is the time to put them in place now I don't want the beam just resting on the pony wall either I need to make sure that the part of the pony wall that is actually holding the beam is supported directly underneath with a post transferring the weight straight down to the concrete now you don't have to buy a special post for something like this you can but three or four pieces of two by the board's that the pony wall is made of anyhow nailed together cut exactly the same length and tapped into place is a very very strong pretty much indestructible post interchangeable with a four by four or a four by six now this isn't always exactly the case and an engineer can tell you exactly what the cross section of the post needs to be but for something like this it's certainly the case our pony wall that is holding up the joists is not really holding the beam the post below it is I'm sure you can understand that getting these beams and these posts in the right place is important because once the deck is glued and screwed onto these things nobody is going to be able to see what's going on there and nobody's gonna be able to change it without an incredible amount of effort so the plan spell out the location very clearly and we're double-checking that we have it right so these are a splendid example of an engineered wood product they're a wooden i-beam can you see that I think that you may know these as TJ eyes that's a proprietary name I think those guys were pretty much first to the market now there are several manufacturers and they're all essentially that I mean they compete and so they're occupying the same space and so they have subtle variations but they're pretty much the same product they have a note these particular joists have an OS B web they have knockouts pressed in there for plumbing penetrations the top and bottom cords are laminated and here's the big the elephant and living room that really makes these things worthwhile and that is their light and their long these are 31 feet long and one man can carry them by himself now they're a little squirrely and it's not good for them to be carried at the mid-span by one guy so two guys are better but they are so light you're going to see us use these in three different applications in this house starting with the floor system there are specific spans for which this 11 and 7/8 inch deep joist is rated we are well under those spans because we want a nice rigid floor and these floors are rigid they're quiet and they're very flat because the dimensions are all exact compared to a sawn joist a 2 by 12 or a 2 by 10 engineered wood products have another environmental and sustainability advantage and that is that you can make a long a big joist or in other applications beams or sheets of plywood out of small timber I will assert you know this OSB I think is made out of Aspen little scrubby aspen trees primarily up in Canada and in northern latitudes and these top and bottom cords are made out of small like little second growth fir Douglas fir from around here so now you can take the small end of the timber scale you know not the old-growth characteristic wood and turn it into joist that in years past could have only been taken out of big big old-growth sort of iconic trees which still exist and still need to be harvested responsibly but in the mean time it has certainly increased the the sustainability and versatility of the timber that grows so prolifically here in the Pacific Northwest the really huge game-changing advantage of engineered wood products like these joist I'll call him TJ eyes is affordability to buy a 31-foot to buy 12 would cost a lot of money in fact it would be a special order you'd have to wait weeks to get it and it would take really really big trees to make that happen instead you can buy one of these things and they're light and they are cheap compared to a solid wood product the way Mother Nature grew it so affordability versatility handle ability and I don't care how you describe but these things are a homerun even though these things are affordable and way less money than they would be if it was an old school board this long they still cost money and you still don't want to cut them wrong so we Mary measured the span on this little foundation three times three times because I just cut a lot of dollars worth of joists and I only get one shot at that it's something that you have to pay close attention to unless you want to be throwing away some money the other thing is you order these things long enough so that if your sight condition varies or if your plan was for some reason inadequate they won't be too short so I've cut 10 inches off of all of these pieces so 10 inches is you know roughly 131st of the cost of the material now that's way less than 10% that is about 3% I've got about 3% waste in cutting off this much length off the end that's just fine I want to have at least this much forgiveness when I actually get to ready to put the saw to the material so there's more than one way to skin a cat and there's more than one way to cut a tji the prime directive in framing when your time is worth money is that you cut the time out that you can cut out and still keep the quality where it needs to be the code on installing these is that if you don't have a vapor barrier between the end of the truss joist and the concrete wall you have to have 1/2 inch of clearance between the wall and the end of the joist on both ends that's hard to do but the takeaway from that is that the manufacturer is comfortable and code is comfortable with these things being one inch shorter than the span now that's a lot of slack I have no problem gang cutting with a chainsaw in a situation like this I also like that top edge to be nice because it needs to look nice and minimizes the slivers and so I run a guide cut down the top at the square line and then just follow it up keeping just outside of it in the same way that if I was scoring a door to shorten the door I would score it with utility knife and then cut just off the score line with my skill saw to reduce the pullout I do the same thing with the skill saw it works great anytime you can gang up your cuts your increasing efficiency and cutting TJ eyes is no different I have no problem using a chainsaw to finish this cut and as a matter of fact the accuracy at the end of the cut is just as good plus or minus that is about oh three thirty-seconds out of square that's as good as a factory end 31 feet down the line that's nothing to be ashamed of however if it was something to be ashamed of the code will really me to have up to half an inch in fact if there were no vapor barrier on these walls the code would require that the ends of these joists be half an inch away from the CMU how about that that means code and the manufacturer specifications allow and require an inch under span if there's no vapor barrier on the walls that's a long ways now that's never an excuse that is never an excuse to do something ugly if you have the capacity to do something that is handsome but you know what if you can increase your efficiency and remain within allowable tolerances to not do that is certainly unwise and and from a certain perspective almost a moral mistake for a builder full disclosure I would not be comfortable trying to do this with a short bar saw I wouldn't want to start in and then plunge the new cut and work my way I wouldn't want to do that I've got a 36 inch bar on my still and so I can set in there follow the guide cut from the skill saw and know that when I drop the heel of the saw down the square line there and the nose of the saw is out on a square line here to continue straight down that plane is going to be square I wouldn't do it with a short bar saw so you guys in the Midwest I've got you know the 16 and 18 inch little bars on yourself or lemon the stuff in the front yard don't try this just flop them over on their side and put a square line on there and and use your skill saw but if you've got a saw with a bar on there that'll reach a good long ways maybe start long make sure you can do it and then make a bullseye cut [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] glue is vital to a floor that doesn't squeak in the first place that you can use glue and a floor system like this is in the bottom of the hangers now that's not so much to get adhesion between the bottom of the joist and the floor and the hanger because that's hard to do I mean glue doesn't like to stick the galvanized steel as to make sure that every space is filled on the bottom and on the sides of that bottom flange so there's not a place for it to work or move back and forth and create a squeak against the side of that joist the best squeak insurance is glue the glue that we put in the bottom of the hangers the glue under the blocks the glue between the decking and the tops of the joist squeak insurance comes in a tube and comes out of a caulking gun the more the merrier now nails are great fasteners right but every time you put a nail vertically through your decking into a joist glue or not you're setting yourself up for a possible squeak so I'm gonna minimize the use of nails some will be necessary and installation and concentrate on screws for holding down the overwhelming majority of this subfloor system a screw if it doesn't break is not going to squeak if you're building a wood floor you're building in opportunities for squeaks one reason to have a comfortable crawlspace like this is that if you have a squeak you have at least a fighting chance of getting under there and fixing it I mean they can be found they can be played with more glue shims those kinds of things can help there are people who specialize in absolutely silent floors and I expect that this is going to be a silent floor I also expect that if there's a squeak I'm gonna find it and fix it but the only 100% take it to the bank way to have a floor that will not squeak ever is to make it out of concrete so depending on how high priority this is for you this can be one of the ways you make your decision on what kind of a floor system you want to put in your house the beams in this floor system are part of the engineering that that Dave Thomas did for the overall structure they're carrying loads of the second floor and the roof there in a particular spot there a particular size and they're bearing on exactly the right amount of concrete a stiff a flat a quiet floor is what you want I mean you don't want a bunch of vibration when you're when your son jumps off the couch onto the floor you don't want to feel that through the whole downstairs you really don't want to even hear it so there's a couple of things that that are important when you're deciding you know how how rigid you want that floor diaphragm to be the first one is how far how long is the span what is the distance between supporting between supporting points that your joists have to stretch how far are they reaching that's the first thing we are probably 15% maybe 20% underneath max allowable span the next thing that plays directly into this is how close together what are the Centers on your joists the tighter the center's the stronger the floor system we went 16 inches on Center we could have stretched these out to two feet but you know what this is one of those things where if you don't do it exactly right the first time there's no fixing it let me repeat that this is one of those things where if you don't get it right coming out of the gate you can never make it better so this is not a place to try to save you know 10% on the net cost of your floor system by increasing the span or increasing the centers in order to you know save 2 or 3 pieces of material or don't do it just don't do it this is a place to go a little beyond the [Music] the short pieces that you are watching go in here are blocking now blocking can happen at bearing conditions like I am here over the pony walls or as mid-span blocking in between burry conditions and there are different reasons to do those at different times but these here today are doing a couple of things the first thing that I'm trying to accomplish in putting this blocking in is to stabilize this floor system so I can get out here and walk on it and not have them roll over and you know cause a shipwreck rule number one never get out and walk on a wooden Eyebeam joist system until there's some sort of blocking in it because they are weak side to side and they'll spin on you the second reason is that I want to transfer the load-bearing capacity from that pony wall down below up to the floor diaphragm the decking one required way to do that to make that happen is to put blocks in at the bearing point below to transfer that strength up to the floor diaphragm [Applause] so if you decide or if more properly if your engineer decides that you're going to use wooden eye beams BCI's or TJ eyes or whatever type in your structure you're gonna want to get there in this case it's called the western specifier guide if the lumberyard doesn't hand it to you when you go out the door ask for it they're gonna have one if they don't have one put the brakes on until you get your hands on one because it could be that that joist you've assumed is what you need is not what you need the manual is going to give you instructions and show you pictures of where you can drill them how to cut them what you can't cut how to attach them and how to fasten them and how to how to strengthen them for specific loads how to reinforce them for cantilevers how to make them how to connect them if you're putting two side by side there are a lot of construction applications that these people have anticipated and probably one of them in that manual is going to match what you have to do on your job don't overlook the manual these shims are to bring the floor up to where it is really really flat because flat is part of eliminating squeaks if you have two joists that are higher than the one in between it can you see that the plywood is being pulled down to the low intermediate joist but if I sim these up to where they are all in a plane the plywood is going to bare uniformly on the glue and the joist which will reduce any tendency for sweets [Music] [Music] [Music] reducing squeaks is a real motive for using these wooden eye beams there's a reason that they are referred to as a silent floor two or three differences between manufactured floor joists and sawn that is full sawn two by twelve two by ten real dimensional lumber floor systems these will never shrink okay you're not going to have them sort of losing dimension over time and leaving part of the floor at a post or a different bearing condition high creating the opportunity for squeak they also are exactly the same depth so you don't have some that are 11 and 3/4 and something that are 11 and 1/2 and so you don't have that you have one perfectly flat floor system if you're careful in the installation you have a uniform fastener gripping capacity in that top flange you're not running a screw or a nail into a pitch see more into a knot or onto an edge that's got Wayne you have a uniform with a uniform density and so your fasteners are all going to hold exactly the same way if you are careful and put these things in flat if you're bearing conditions like these hangers are uniform and well secured it's very unlikely that you're gonna have any kind of a squeak but squeaks do happen some squeaks can be found some squeaks can be silenced but if squeaking is a Hill to die on for you you there is one floor system that will never squeak and it's called concrete and so if squeaks are one of your top one or two priorities have a talk with your builder about whether or not you should just go slab on grade it will never squeak my friend Steve who's helping me today in the crawlspace is tapping the shims into place to raise the individual joists as needed I'm up on top looking very closely at this string line and sliding a little piece of 3/4 inch plywood a gauge block in and out to tell him when the joist is exactly high enough and not too high I want the block to just touch the string as it slides under the string the string is set 3/4 of an inch off the joist on each end the block I'm using is 3/4 of an inch so I'm telling Steve to raise the joist just until the moment that the block barely and I do mean barely touches the string we're doing all this on each one now I could use a tape measure but a gauge block is much faster and more reliable now is this the most effective way to do this I don't know you know Steve could do this by himself he could manipulate the block and he could watch the string and he could tap in the shims but he and I are enjoying working together we don't get a chance to do it all that often he stopped by and said hey you need some help and I said yes I need some help and so this is as much about spending the morning together doing something worthwhile as it is about rolling the joist [Music] [Music] now there's another way that these joists could be installed or held up at the end of their span rather than the hangers the top flange hangers which are hanging down inside the crawlspace which you've been watching and this other way we did here next to the garage in the space that will eventually be our downstairs bathroom in this area instead of putting the joists into hangers we set them on a rough pony wall when I say a rough pony wall I mean the spacing of the studs is not uniform rather we pretty much put one stud underneath each joist the studs are held in place by a pressure treated bottom plate and a top plate and they are transferring the load of that individual joist which is very light down to the top of the footing the footing doesn't know anything's happening the floor will be stable it will be silent these things are nailed together and nailed to the joist so they're not going anywhere and it's a it's a an example of behind the scenes the tolerances can get somewhat wider and the function can remain perfect part of the motivation for doing this in fact let me say that the whole motivation for doing this this way is that some of these angles are unique some of them are not available from Simpson in a joist hanger that fits these joists and so the alternative was to have them custom-made or custom make them myself in the shop or set it on a pony wall and it sure made a lot more sense to just go ahead and use the carpentry skills that we already were using to create a really solid bearing condition for the ends of these choices I've known Steve hood since I was 14 years old he was a lead man on the first carpentry job I ever had and I worked with him a few times over the years I've called him a lot of times for advice and and best practice information he's tops he spent a spec home builder here in Roseburg for 35 years and it's great to have him it's great to have somebody I can't quite keep up with it's great to have just a chance on a nice day to do a little bit of production work with somebody that I admire and that really can pick out the work so thanks to Steve for helping me and thanks to you for watching and keep up the good work [Music]

Channel: Essential Craftsman

Views: 884,810

Rating: 4.891963 out of 5

Keywords: floor joists, roll the joists, blacksmithing course, pony wall, TJI, quiet floor, engineered wood products, chain saw, underspan, vapor barrier, allowable tolerances, joist hangers, joist hanger glue, floor squeaks, silent floor, blocking, floor diaphram, shims, crawl space

Id: fwIFEJPR_Ho

Length: 30min 16sec (1816 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Chancellor-1865]

Excellent tutorial on i-joist, secret tricks and tips revealed. Caveats on selection, specifying, production instsllation. All in one video...no London Fogs at all, just high quality work.

[u/Schnots]

I have been watching this channel for a long time.

It’s excellent.

[u/jcazreddit]

The piffle situation is somewhat different. Remember the shit shack is over their garage so their ijoists are effectively outside, in the garage. They have to have insulation for the cold as well as drywall/fireproofing to keep a garage fire from killing everyone.

[u/Bad--Sauce]

While at the Piffle Casa Del DoneWrong. Your not worried about a squeaky floor, your worried about falling through the floor.

[u/VZJNK]

Several times before PLFL's foundation I suggested that they should watch EC for good building practices. At that time, thinking they were legitimate, I expected a reply of some sort. Obviously I didn't get one, and obviously they screwed the pooch. ~~~ Every time I watch EC I'm reminded that PLFL built a disaster.

[u/FreshlyBrewedDreams]

PLFL bewilderness 😂 👍

[u/Alias4reddit]

This channel again, totally forgot about it. Something 'calming' about watching this episode...looks so simple to do.

[u/Dragoneyes001]

too simple a lay out. I'm used to doing specialty joists including cantilevers for decks and bays.