Tag Archives: trusses

2013_07_15 (Mon) HFH Week 2

It was 66 degrees at 7:00 AM this morning.  Very pleasant, but it is usually in the upper 50’s at that hour, so we knew we were in for another hot day.  The forecast high was 93 degrees F.

View of Bighorn Mountains to the SW on our drive to the Works site from Peter D's RV Park..

View of Bighorn Mountains to the SW on our drive to the Works site from Peter D’s RV Park.

Although reduced in numbers, our team reconvened at 8:00 AM to continue working on the Works house.  We were only scheduled to go until noon today, but we had significant tasks to try to accomplish.  First was getting the walls plumb and square followed by setting the trusses and starting to wrap the house in Tyvek.

Trusses laid out and ready to lift into place.

Trusses laid out and ready to lift into place.

We learned at “circle” that 4-6 more volunteers would be joining us for the morning.  They turned out to be a group of four, but were an experienced group from Castle Rock Colorado, and they worked right in to the tasks at hand.

Trusses being nailed in place.

Trusses being nailed in place.

Linda and I nailed some wall bracing in place, but we quickly had more bodies than we had tasks or room to work, so I took up my semi-official photographer duties for a while.   Posey , John, Linda and I then went in Brian’s HFH truck to the Poplar Grove site to fetch the 5/8″ OSB roof sheathing.  It was a big stack and if took us two trips.

We learned that being idle on an HFH build is a minor “sin” unless you are “taking a break”, so Linda and I grabbed a couple of shovels and started back-filling the small trenches along the east edge of the slab.  The sun was very hot, made worse by the reflection of light and diminution of breeze from the Tyvek, so we found a shady spot at the northwest corner of the house and moved dirt around until Jack whistled for the team to quit for the day.

We did not get lunch today as it was originally scheduled as a day off and no one expected Angel to arrange food on short notice.  Brian worked with the new crew after lunch to finish setting most of the trusses.  Tomorrow he is supposed to move them to the Woodland house to develop a final punch list and get it wrapped up.  That house has been under construction for almost a year.

It ‘s starting to look like a house.

It ‘s starting to look like a house.

Although not our personally most productive day, the team accomplished most of what it set out to do.  Tomorrow we will finish setting trusses and wrapping the house and should start sheeting the roof.  There is still a lot work to do at the Poplar Grove site, but no indication that any of us are going to work there.

When we got back to our coach we had a light lunch.  We were both surprisingly tired but opted for different solutions.  I took a nap while Linda went for a four mile walk to downtown Sheridan and back.

Jan stopped by around 3:00 PM to see if I was available to work on their Internet connectivity.  She and Kent have a WiFi Ranger X (WFR-X) and it has the same web browser control panel as our WiFi Ranger Mobile (WFR-M), so that was a plus for me.  I suspected that the SSID and Password for the WFR-X followed the same pattern as the WFR-M, but we found the instruction sheet and confirmed that.  They also had a Motorola cable modem (that they had used at a fixed location).  It wasn’t hooked up correctly, but it didn’t matter as cable modems are generally of no use in a mobile lifestyle.  I was able to connect their iPad mini to the WFR-X and reconfigure the password.  We then got Jan’s iPhone and Mac connected to the WFR-X.  Finally, we got the WFR-X connected to one of the public/open/free WiFi networks in the RV park and from there to the Internet.

I suspect that their setup is fairly typical of full-time and extended-time RVers, for whom connectivity has become a significant part of the lifestyle.  Smartphones, tablets, laptops, even cameras, often two of each, create a complex arsenal of devices with multiple methods of connectivity, including cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth.  Even if you have some understanding of this technology, this is a complex environment that requires active management by the user.  Devices like the WiFi Ranger products (X, Go, Mobile, etc.) appear to add to this complexity initially, but properly configured and used, actually simplify the user experience.

After dinner we watched an hour-long presentation by Dr. Michael Greger, M.D. on the leading causes of death and the preventative and curative effects of a Whole-Food Plant-Based Diet.  You can find it at http://nutritionfacts.org  but if you are not interested in changing how you eat in order to be healthier, you probably shouldn’t watch it as it will just make you unhappy.

 

2013_07_11 (Thu) We Finally Got To Use “Guns”

The team receiving the daily building instructions from Brian at "circle."

The team receiving the daily building instructions from Brian at “circle.”

The forecast for today was partly cloudy with 60% humidity and a high of 100 degrees F.  Most of the team was at the Works site and ready to go by 7:00 AM.  The main task today was to set all of the interior partition walls, nail them to the (concrete) floor, and tie them together.  Additional work included building the front wall and beginning to assemble the west side wall.

Assembled partition walls ready to be installed.

Assembled partition walls ready to be installed.

There was other work, of course.  At 9:00 AM six of us went over to the other building site at Popular Grove to load the roof trusses for the Works house onto a 2-ton flatbed truck.

Retrieving roof trusses from the Poplar Grove building site.

Retrieving roof trusses from the Poplar Grove building site.

The roof trusses.

The roof trusses.

When the truck got back to the Works site, everyone pitched in to unload and stack the trusses.

Unloading the roof trusses.

Unloading the roof trusses.

When it was time to install the partition walls, I volunteered to use the RAMSET to nail them to the floor.  This tool is a gun that takes special hardened nails and drives them using a .22 caliber blank.  This RAMSET was a single shot model that had a pump action for the firing chamber.  With the chamber open, a nail is loaded into the barrel and then a .22 blank into the firing chamber.  The pump slide is pulled back to close the firing chamber and cock the firing pin.  The tip of the nail must be pressed into the wood to release the safety interlock.  The trigger can then be pulled to drive the nail through the board and into the concrete floor.  Sliding the pump forward opens the firing chamber and un-chambers the spent shell so it can be removed.  We try to keep our worksite clean as we go, so I put the spent shells in a tool belt pouch rather than ejecting them onto the floor.

Installing the interior partition walls.

Installing the interior partition walls.

After lunch a couple of our team members went to work at the ReStore, and seven others went to help Matt load a trailer and pickup truck with donated materials from a closet organizer company that went out of business.  That left half of our team at the Works site, some of whom (including Linda) continued working on the 76 foot long west wall which is being built in three sections.

Bruce connecting interior partition walls together.

Bruce connecting interior partition walls together.

The partition walls still needed to be pinned together, so John, Bruce (the other one) and I worked on that.  Brian finally got the air-powered framing nailer and air compressor out for this task as we had to hold pieces in alignment and then nail them at awkward angles while standing on a ladder.  I did the ladder work with the nail gun, so that was my second use of a “gun” today.  Now I really feel like I am in the west!

 

Discussing the plans with Sandy, the architect.

Discussing the plans with Sandyy, the architect.

We wrapped up at the Works site by 2:00 PM as planned but were asked to join the rest of the team at the ReStore to help unload the donated material.  That made for a longer day, and everyone was beat by the time we finished.  But we accomplished a lot, and that felt good.

 

 

We did not go for a walk as we were very tired and I had to sanitize our fresh water system as the water in the fresh water tank had turned rather foul.  We try to travel with fresh water “just in case” we need to boondock or pull of to the side of the road and use the on-board facilities.  What we have discovered, however, is that the water can only be left in there for so long, especially with long, not days, before it goes bad.  I started the sanitizing process around 3:00 PM.

Sanitizing a fresh water system on a RV involves the dumping, adding, and pumping of water along with the use of chlorine (household bleach) and the removal/replacement of carbon filters, which will be overwhelmed and ruined by running chlorine through them.  The process takes time and uses (wastes?) water because the chlorine has to be diluted to the proper concentration (1/4 cup per 15 gallons tank capacity), flushed into the fresh water tank from an empty filter housing, circulated through all of the plumbing, and allowed to sit for hours before being rinsed out with fresh water.  First I had to dump the old, gnarly water.  It’s still considered fresh water, so it’s OK to dump it on the ground.  We are lucky in that our 125 gallon fresh water tank has a 1.5″ RV dump valve installed near the bottom that discharges through the floor of the bay and can be used to drain the tank relatively quickly.

We do not have any way to pour chlorine directly into the tank, so I have to shut off the water, relieve the pressure, unscrew the inline filter housing, remove the carbon filter, pour the pre-determined amount of chlorine into the housing, screw the housing back onto its base, and start filling the tank by opening the diverter valve and adding water to the tank.  I then have to use the house water pump to fill every inch of plumbing in the rig, and let the diluted chlorine solution sit for 3 to 4 hours and do its magic.  I know I have chlorine in all of the plumbing when I can smell it coming out of all of the faucets.

By 4:30 PM most of us had recovered sufficiently from our long, hot work day to gather at Kathy’s motorhome for our SKP social.  We were joined by Russell, a fellow SKP from Texas, as a SKP happy hour is always open to any SKPs who are around.  We’ve met one other SKP on our evening walks, but he did not attend.

We had a light dinner of Masala Lentil Pilaf.  By the time we were done it was 8 PM and still warm, so we skipped our evening walk.  The chlorine solution had been in the plumbing for about four hours so I dumped the fresh tank (again) and refilled it with good water from the campground through our sediment filter, water softener, and carbon filter, which I had re-installed in the inline housing.  The Shur-Flo pump was then used to flush all of the lines out with fresh water.

We finally took our showers and Linda headed off to bed while I replied to e-mails and worked on this blog post.

BTW:  The Shur-Flo 4048 water pump is working very well, providing better pressure and flow than we get from the campground connection.  Given that the pump is working well, it us our plan to start using the water from the tank to keep it from going bad and refill it as needed.  There is also the issue of having water pressure applied to the coach when we are not here.  Whether it’s the shore hose or the on-board pump, having the water system pressurized poses a risk of flooding and water damage if the system develops a leak.  In general, the system should not be pressurized unless it is being used and can be monitored.