*
Jason,
how do you handle tying the top plates together at the corner, with one top plate a foot or so above the other? Or are you in an area where you don’t need to worry (if their is such a place?)
Just a future architect wanting to learn a few things 😉
Regards,
Gordon Price
Replies
*
In the past, on stud walls, we run the sheathing perpendicular to the studs (4' high), and down over the rim joists. However, we're just about to start work on a very tall house, and I'm wondering if we need to sheathe over the rims, or if it is acceptable to sheathe and raise the walls and then infill the rim area afterwards with a foot or so of sheathing. The other reason I'm curious about this is that I hear from others (who sheathe and raise the walla and then infill the rim), that because large joist material is so poor, when they nail continuous sheathing over the rims, they get nail pops and siding bowing from the rims drying out and twisting. What's the consensus out there? Sheathe down over the rim (or up), or sheathe the walls and then infill the rims with strips of sheathing? Thanks.
*Morning Jason,I think the easiest and best is to install your sheating with an 1" overlap on the bottom.You want the sheating to cover the seam and then later you fill in the remainder of the rim joist.You just don't want open seams.A caulking bead at the seams doesn't hurt either.Gabe
*Overlapping the rim joists at the time of wall raising saves you from filling in off a ladder. although sometimes you might be looking for busy work for your less skilled people. doing it later also provides a great way to eat up plywood scraps.structurally there might be a benefit from overlapping the entire rim joist and it will certainly cut down on air infiltration.
*I hate to see the rims filled with scrap. I much prefer the sheathing to tie the structure together. This includes the first run of ply covering the rim and up onto the first floor studs as well as a row of ply tying the upper portion of the first floor studs, the second floor rim, and the lower portion of the second floor studs together. If the concern is pre-sheathing, sheath the wall while it's still on the platform, just let the bottom row of sheathing hang past the sole plate by the thickness of the rim plus required allowances. If the wall is too large, or it would be to dangerous of difficult to get the wall right on the edge of the platform to raise it with the sheathing extending out, leave the first row of sheathing off and nail it on after the wall is raised.
*Jason,Fill in after, if you are not in a hurricane zone.
*Here in MI, we simply set the bond (that's our rim joist) out past the frame to the sheathing. We then sheath to it. Basically there is no sheathing, covering our rims. Now don't go ballsitic! There hasn't been one case of second stories falling off that I know about. Gravity does a pretty good job of holding the stuff together, and there doesn't seem to be much eathquake activity around here.If it's LP sided, we usually hang over an install the siding before we raise the wall. That way, we don't have any ladder work. If it's brick veneer, we put the black plastic on before we raise the wall.Blue
*JasonI use half the rin joist that I use to. When walls run parralel the joist I build the wall to finish out with the top of the joist. The studs in the walls are the floor joist depth taller than the walls that the joist sit on. This method saves time in setting the rim and the blocking and there is no time wasted time setting squash blocks under load points. The only blocking is a dry wall nailer on the underside.The plywood runs over the top plate of the wall.An enginneer called this out a few years ago. It does save time. I don't frame this way if there is a deck hanging of the house at this spot.
*Jason,how do you handle tying the top plates together at the corner, with one top plate a foot or so above the other? Or are you in an area where you don't need to worry (if their is such a place?)Just a future architect wanting to learn a few things ;)Regards,Gordon Price
*I didn't notice this April thread until today. Here in Western WA (siesmic zone 3) it's very common to have a "naked rim", with the outside of the sheathing even with the rim. Awhile back I had contacted both the APA and Simpson with concerns about the integrity of this method. Basically there are two structural concerns: verticle hold down force and horizontal shear. If hold-downs are used which extend past the rim such as the STHD14/RJ or MSTA-xx, you get your verticle reactance. For shear, an architect will typically call out plate-to-rim nailing such as 16D X inches O.C. The APA recommended manufactured rim joists for their stability so that the hold-downs don't buckle as the rim dries out. Rim joists are not exterior wood like CDX so bldg paper or housewrap is needed to cover them.
*Its never a good idea to run the same piece of plywood over studs and rim joist at the same time. Because the rim joist grain runs different than the studs grain..the rim joist will shrink more and if you sheated the rim and studs with the same peice the plywood will buckle. We run our wall sheating while the walls laying on the deck..cut our windows out and use the scraps from the windows for the rim joist. We also nail this stuff off leaving a 1/8" expansion joint from any other plywood, from the deck before we tilt the walls up....much more efficient than working off a ladder. Matter of fact the only time we use a ladder on our framing jobs is when we need to get off the roof after the last peice of sheathing goes down up there. Other than that we never need a ladder.