I’ve got a delicate situation that has me a little nervous. As I’ve mentioned here at BT before, I am NOT a pro-builder … just a guy who really loves to build .. and I’m doing a large, unusual project … a four story ‘urban tower’ … completely on my own. Last Autumn on this project I was on the foundation raising very heavy 11′ high X 15′ long walls that were totally completed, siding and all. And I recall that at that time blueeyedevil and others were insisting on the need for anchoring the sill-plates before raising. The advice from the time applied to working off of a cement slab. But now I’m up working off of 3/4 t&g flooring, and the hight factor creates an even dicier situation.
I’ve just pretty much completed the first floor and side-studio and stairs leading up to the second floor, and I’m now in process cutting the plates and studs and posts for the second story walls. The situation for one of the four outside walls is the one that has me troubled. Because it is a wall that sits 3″ from the property line I must *finish* the outside of the wall completely *before* raising it. Also, because it sits on the line and within the normal setbacks I must employ 5/8″ fire-core drywall OVER the cdx sheathing. On top of the drywall goes felt, and, on top of that, steel siding. So, by the time it’s completed it’s a fairly heavy 13 ft. long wall. This wall must then be tilted up into place, and, because of the metal siding, (which ‘overlaps’ the wall below by 10″), cannot be ‘banged’ into place from the outside. So it must go up perfectly and allign perfectly with the wall below. To add to my nervousness there is a pedestrian walkway 11 ft. below this edge that my wall will be tilted up onto. AND, for the 3rd and fourth floor the same action will have to be completed at 20 feet and then 30 feet. An amateur, an overly heavy wall weighted to the back side, no crew and with a pedestrian walkway below = nervousness.
Now, this ‘walkway’ is such mostly in name only. It’s not like there is a steady pedestrian flow there. But needless to say I DON’T wanna be in the position of having to dissassemble a totally assembled wall .. siding and all .. twisted and damaged or in splinters on the neighboring property due to it’s having taken an 11 ft. fall.
So, what I’m asking here is what is the very best way to anchor this wall to the spot while raising it? Some way to lift it up with there being NO chance whatsoever of its ‘wandering’ backwards during the raise. My youngest son and I will be using proctor jacks. So … how to raise it and the best way to secure it in an often slightly windy spot while attending to set up for the next two walls.
This board has been a real godsend to me since I work alone and am not a pro with experience. I’m learning as I go, just seeing if I can build an entire little ‘house’ by myself with no crew and no background in the field. Very grateful for all the help I’ve received thus far.
Thanks!
Terry
Replies
Lay your plates out ready to nail together the wall and then take some steel straps that come holding your lumber together and bend them to 90 degrees and nail the strap to the bottom plate with a few sinkers move the bottom plate to your chalkline for the wall and nail the strap to the floor with more sinkers.
The strap will be nailed to the bottom of the bottom plate and wrapping around the side in contact with the subfloor and nailed to the deck through joists inside the wall hope this makes sense.
Three should do the trick one on each corner and one in the center. If your lumber doesn't come with the steel straps use Simpson strap ties.
My Mommy says I'm special.
we do the strapping trick too... the straps come from the bands they use to strap the lumber
you can nail the straps to the bottom of the shoe.. or ,if it's unsheathed.. go under the shoe and nail them to the top side of the shoe
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here's a couple pics of us doing it with a gable wall
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in this pic.. look at the shoe of the dormer wall... there are 2 small blacks things.. those are the straps.. now unnailed from the deck
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.... on the garage, we wanted the sheathing to tie the gable .. so in that case .. no strapping.. we just extended the sheathing and it acted as a stopper
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Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Edited 5/14/2006 7:35 pm ET by MikeSmith
Edited 5/14/2006 7:36 pm ET by MikeSmith
Edited 5/14/2006 7:36 pm ET by MikeSmith
Edited 5/14/2006 7:37 pm ET by MikeSmith
I was looking for that picture to show him, probably confused the heck out of the guy with my goofy explanation.My Mommy says I'm special.
nothing goofy about it... i thought you were right on..Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Terry, let me first state the obvious: anchor the bottom!
Next, anchor the top.
Now add the proctors and start raising.
Your tiny 13' wall will not be a challenge for two poles. Your challenge will be to keep the bottom from kicking out, then your next challenge will be to keep the top from going over.
The aforementioned straps will hold that tiny wall quite easily. The rigging that keeps it from going over will be the bigger challenge.
Personally, I'd use the normal brick ties that I always did. I'd put maybe five on the wall if I thought it was a heavy one. I'd make sure the nailing was into the joist.
The top achoring is probably something I'd be giving serious thought to. If the outgoing pressure was strong enough, I might bring in two additional wall jacks that would act as holders. At the point that gravity took over, I'd use the additional winches on the secondary jacks to let the wall out to the proper amount, and not one iota more. I've raised perhaps five to ten walls in my career where I needed that kind of setup. I've also been involved in several other wall raising situations where I wish we would have had those secondary winches.
Since you are a rookie, I'd suggest the secondary winches set up as "holdbacks".
blue
Guys,
Thanks SO much. This is GREAT! I do have some of that black metal strapping which I caught myself from throwing out a few months back thinking, "hey .. that just might turn out handy at some point down the line..." I had NO idea what exactly I might use it for but hey ... there ya go! This is perfect and gives me great confidence to procede.
Blue: I'll figure something out for the stop-back. I dunno if I'll use extra proctors but I'll cook on it and figure out something that's 'failsafe' (as much as that's possible). What did you mean by, "Personally, I'd use the normal brick ties that I always did. I'd put maybe five on the wall if I thought it was a heavy one."???
I'll get back with a word on how it went. I got this computer in '98 and am working through Win98 and with only 2 GB's ... a size considered quite large at that time! So it's difficult for me to do much with pics .. but at some point I'll have to try and do that for the stairs and these walls. And, eventually, for the tower itself.
Thanks again for the great feedback. GREATLY appreciated.
T.
Terry, most guys use lumber strap iron to anchor their bottom sole plates. I nixed that idea back in the 70's and started using brick wall ties. They are handy, sturdy, plentiful, just the right length and have the holes already in them. They are also free if you don't mind walking around a house that is bricked...they are all over the place.
You should know that there are two ways to nail the strap on....one is right and one is deadly.
blue
The rigging that keeps it from going over will be the bigger challenge.Blue, Am I missing something here, my proctorshad an adjustable hook at the end that you would winch the walltight to once it reached vertical. Thus being held with the proctorfrom going over.
...my proctors had an adjustable hook at the end that you would winch the wall tight to once it reached vertical...
I recall this also from my raising of the first floor walls late last Fall. I don't know if they were prominent enough for me to totally trust them ... but I'll take a look. There have GOT to be ways of setting up cable or somesuch to arrest the back-roll.
T.
I've been watching this. I've never used wall jacks, but I was thinking that if I were working in those situations, I would make one or two cable holdbacks. Option one would be to buy an inexpensive come-along, set it to approximately the right length, and attach it to the floor (eye bolt with a big 2x6 washer on the underside of the floor sheathing) and to the wall top (another eye bolt through the top plates).
Option two is to figure out the length you'll need if you anchor it 8 feet out from the wall or so, add an inch, and get a cable made to that length, with eyes on each end. anchor it the same way. If it makes the wall lean out a little bit, you can easily pull it back in with the cable. If it's too short, you're SOL.zak
"so it goes"
ZaK, your inexperience leads you to a wonderfully simple solution when you explore that comealong idea.....but.....your execution would fail on a too heavy wall that got out of control without a comealong. Either idea would be okayfor normal walls though.
The possible jarring jolt when a speeding wall hits the end of your rigging could possibly tear out the strongest eyebolt. The key to dafety when raising heavy walls is preventing any kind of jolt while the rigging is underload. Jolts to the rigging under load can be disastorous, either to the wall, or to the rigging.
I like how a guy like yourself, that hasn't had any experience can come up with great solutions. Sometimes a guy that walks into a situation just sees things from a different perspective and all the guys that have been doing something the same way just look at each other and wonder why they didn't think of that. 'I've seen this many times in my career.
Actually, I thought of manufacturing these wall retainers as a new invention many years ago, but the proliferance of Sky traks made the idea less appealing. Not many people use wall jacks anymore around here.
blue
Edited 5/15/2006 11:02 pm ET by blueeyeddevil
You're right, blue, and I hope my suggestion wasn't taken as a surefire thing. I meant it as one more backup to an already controlled system. I would definitely rig that wall raising so momentum didn't have a part to play- there should be no distance between being jacked up and held back.zak
"so it goes"
These are, of course, some great ideas.
When we raised the equivalent walls on the ground level .. slab foundation, last Fall .. we rigged them with eyebolts (which I still have) and good heavy rope. We weren't as nervous about them 'going over' as we were, at the time, on the ground level. Now .. it'd truly be a disaster. But the ropes really did seem to hold just fine then .. and the top of the arc .. from, you know, 75 to 90 degrees upright ... didn't seem to embody the 'intent' to roll on over. That is .. it seemed, on all of the raises, that to come to upright was where the wall's center of gravity seemed most ... poised .. or established. Hope I make sense. The only problem we had at the time was that I didn't anchor the bottom properly -- since blue had said just not to worry about that -- so we ended up nearly losing the wall to back-slide.
Anyway .. all these stories of walls continuing on over scare the crap outa me. I guess that's good. I'll come up with something .. but it does seem like the ropes .. properly rigged .. would do the trick.
Terry
((alright alright .. just kidding about blue saying to let go the anchoring!))
Terry, It sounds like you have this thing under control. One of the most important aspects of this wall is experience. Your already have the experience and have a good understanding of what to expect. That is half the battle. Your preplanning is the other half. You'll do fine.
blue
Blue,
An idea I've had in the back of my mine is buying one of these http://www.warnworks.com because we dont' have a crane, but there are times when we can get the forks over a wall, but we can't move it around for various reasons. This way we could still raise raise walls using the machine, but without a crane :-) http://www.warnworks.com/works/acwinches/3200AC-R.shtml
The picture in the add in JLC is the same machine we have and they are lifting walls with the winch tied off to the fork.
> There have GOT to be ways of setting up cable or somesuch to arrest the back-roll.
You could safety it with 2 or 3 ropes. I'd tie off to the top of the wall with bowlines, and secure the other end by taking a turn round something strong and using a magnus hitch roughly in the middle to make a loop. That gets you a 2:1 advantage in making fine adjustments, and in friction. Start a little on the tight side, and go around easing off the safety lines as you approach plumb.
http://www.42brghtn.mistral.co.uk/knots/42ktroll.html
If you have them handy, you could also use come-alongs. But the rope and magnus hitch would be less cumbersome and easier to adjust.
-- J.S.
I like your idea John. I could have, and would have, used ideas like yours many times in my earlier days. These days we raise everything by machine and we don't often have any need for the rigging as you've described.
I'm going to keep this idea in my memory banks though.
blue
Butch, I'm not familiar with proctor wall jacks. I always used a pair called Mac-hoists.
I am familar with the idea of using a stop hook, but without fully understanding the weight of the wall, the outward thrust and the balancing point, I can't fully tell you what I would need to make sure I'm 100% safe.
I've raised walls that were heavy enough that they would bend-break off any mechanical gizmo designed to hold them back, if the heavy wall had any momentum when it came up againt them. I've also rasied walls heavy enough to tear the wall jack off it's moorings, if it had that momentum. I've raised walls that had the center of gravity so far back, that the wall already was at it's forward tipping point before it was eyelevel. A wall like that will gain significant momentum if you continue raising it without providing some sort of resistance.
It's never happened to me, but Frank lost a huge wall with a continuous porch and he was raising it with a crane and an experienced operator. He almost lost his life but a window was luckily located right where a tire track was and the combination allowed him to escape. I wasn't there when it happened, but the story was that they ignored my teaching about using holdbacks and when the wall hit the balancing point, it faised itself so fast that the crane operator didn't have anything and he couldn't raise his cable up fast enough to catch it. It ripped the top achors and plates apart.
If I was there, I would have insisted on having both wall jacks hooked up as holdbacks and we would have reeled the wall out with control, after the crane got it to the balancing point. I've had a lot of experience learning where the balancing point is and when we're on a heavy wall, I don't leave anything to chance.
I hope I'm not going to have to tell you that "I told you so", like I had to the last time. I'm giving you fair warning. It's your wall, and a heavy one at that, according to you. You are going to have to decide if any of the problems that I've sounded off about fits your wall. You are the master of your domain.
Good luck.
blue
It's never happened to me, but Frank lost a huge wall with a continuous porch and he was raising it with a crane and an experienced operator. He almost lost his life but a window was luckily located right where a tire track was and the combination allowed him to escape. I wasn't there when it happened, but the story was that they ignored my teaching about using holdbacks and when the wall hit the balancing point, it faised itself so fast that the crane operator didn't have anything and he couldn't raise his cable up fast enough to catch it. It ripped the top achors and plates apart.
If I was there, I would have insisted on having both wall jacks hooked up as holdbacks and we would have reeled the wall out with control, after the crane got it to the balancing point. I've had a lot of experience learning where the balancing point is and when we're on a heavy wall, I don't leave anything to chance.
Blue, I'm trying to understand your post so I don't repeat Franks mistake. Can you describe it a little differnently. I'm just not getting it. I'm not understanding the mistake Frank made, and the wall raising too quickly for the crane operator. Did it flip outward at the bottom?
Tim, the wall was 40' long, 8' high. It had a continuous 8' porch on it. The porch was a hardboard product...LP primed 4x8 sheets. It had the overhang on the edge of the porch. Inside the porch structure was a double 2x10 beam. Basically, it was very top heavy.
The crane operator was a retreaded carpenter. He should have known better, but he didn't. Frank should have known better, but he was young...young guys can do anything...right?
A wall like that has a tremendous tendency to stand itself up and continue on over at a very early stage of the lift. Old guys like me remember the days when we'd raise stuff like this by hand. We'd get the wall to the balancing point, then shift everyone outside to lower the wall with control. If memory serves me correctly, we'd have gotten about ten guys to raise this wall by hand. At the point that we had to shift guys, we'd send four outside, then when the weight had definitly shifted, we'd run four more guys outside to help catch it.
Here's a very crude sketchup jpg of a wall with a porch attached. I'm showing the basic way that it was rigged. The sticks that are sticking down from the porch represent legs that are cut exactly to the right legth to land on the pads/grade. Frank had the legs on it, but he didn't have enough of them and he failed to properly tie the units together. It got away from them and the porch just wrenched itself loose and it all collased in a heap on top of Frank, who was foolishly outside trying to do something.
Thanks for letting me practice my sketchup skills.
blue
Ok, I get it. Thanks for the added explanation and the drawing. SU is a pretty slick tool eh? Not a bad drawing
for a framer hehe
Easy - Learned it on the first work I did as a carpenter in 1978. The GC used the metal banding that the lumber was wrapped in for the delivery and double nailed it to the floor with a strip hangin out the side of the building. We built the wall and placed it perfectly on the chalkline we had snapped prior. Then we nailed the metal strap to the bottom of the bottom plate with2 nails. Repeat this every 10-20 feet depending on your comfort level. Then, jack away! We later decided that a stop mechanism was a good idea.... Either a rope (works fine!) or a 2x4 with a hook at the top. Nail your diagonal braces prior to the lift. Jack it up and plumb it and nail it off. Piece of cake!
Rich
You've probably successfully raised the wall by now, but, in addition to what the others have advised, I will offer one more tip.
I like to keep two chains in my trailer for dangerous or windy situations. I fasten the top of the wall to the last link as securely as the situation demands. This could mean a couple of nails in the cap, a couple of lags, or even bolts if the situation warrants.
Then figure out how long the chain has to be with your calculator (or just do the math). The chains can then be anchored as securely as the situation demands. In the case of a strong wind, you could actually cut out a section of the subfloor and wrap the chain around a floor joist, but I would just wait for better weather in this case.
Rigging chains for safety only takes an extra five minutes. Once the wall is pretty much vertical, you can use the normal 2X4 or Proctor adjustable braces.
I store the chains in an old plastic ice cream bucket with a lid, out of the way until the next rare occasion when nothing else will do.
thanks for the vote of confidence, blue ... all that imagery of walls nearly killing people .. well ... this is a serious situation to me and it really does have me nervous.
the 'chains' idea sounds good, Sasquatch, I'll consider that as well when it gets 'round to rigging time. I'm putting together three walls ... two through walls of only 13' each, and one longer joining wall of 20 feet. Until they're all together nothing's going up... so no .. not yet too late for further suggestions. Proly be Friday or so if all goes well .. though I've got other 'paying' work that I've GOT to go to as well and that's going to eat part of the week.
Went to the big orange box late last night and picked up as much of that black strapping as I could lay my hands on ... having used the little that I had anchoring that first heavy wall. HD and all the big boxes are going to PLASTIC tape for pretty near everything now. They showed me TONS of plastic tape around loads and loads of wood ...insisting that they had no metal strapping anymore. But I kept looking and found that they still use it on cement block shipments .. so .. got a bunch of it.
Anyway ... I'll get back with how it went in case anyone's actually interested in a rookie's tale.
Thanks!
T.
put in a few peices of pianno hinge, It won't go anywhere. I normally use steels straps, joist hangers, safe t straps whatever lies flat and is quite strong. I never have to lift alone either, or over sidewalks (I'd put up caution tape if I were you) But I do lift lots and lots of big tall heavy walls every year. Usually if the walls not to heavy I'll put in hinge nails idealy driving the nail on a 45 through the wall plate into the chalkline.
we used to use hinge nails too.. but i like the straps better
Blue's brick ties would be a good choice , but they're scarce around here... load strapping is everywhere
the Proctor's have a hook that stops the wall at a certain point.. and they work.. but there is a point during the lift, before it get's to vertical... where the weight of the wall goes neutral.. usually around 60 deg - 70 deg above horizontal...
this last 30 to 20 deg. is where you want additional hold-back resistance.. once you have it to vertical, the Proctors will keep it there if you have the hooks set properlyMike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore