Remember the roof on the one-story “garage” client wants an upper floor over?
We’ve decided we aren’t going to cut it loose, fly it off to a set of ground-level temporary cribs, and re-use it. Out of the question, for lotsa valid reasons I won’t go into here.
It’s all going in the dumpsters, and it is a 25′ span trussed roof over a 25 x 60 foot garage.
Step us through the sequence you would follow to remove it.
Replies
Can you fit a container inside the garage?
This way you can saw it apart and let the pieces drop.
panama-
you got good thinkin'.
actually did that once, but without a dumpster.
Demo'ed a garage roof, just like the poster said, 24x24 I think it was, in the back yard of someone shoehorned into a city lot. Low, long roof overhang on house prevented any dumptruck, etc in the back yard, fences, etc. we just sawed away at it and let it fall into an unsorted pile on the garage floor. Cheap day laboreres walked it out to the street
ah ahem ...panama,
is the term 'cheap day laborers' a politically correct thing to say?
Gotta watch what you say around here anymore, you know.
Want to make sure you don't offend anyone sensibilities by misappropriating your terms.
Maybe something like 'financially challenged' would better suit the situation.
R_IGNACKI? What are you anyhow? A pollock or somethun'?
Edited 1/22/2005 11:11 pm ET by rez
>> is the term 'cheap day laborers' a politically correct thing to say?
"Cheap day laborers" is the politically correct term. It replaces a variety of more or less offensive racial and ethnic designations.
Easy tiger.
I was being facetious.
Sugar Flakes Are Great!
i've done it every way from sunday..
i'd have my digger bring his excavator over and eat it... after sawzalling all of the connector points tying it to the top plate
then he'd put it in the dumpster
I'd consider cutting it into sections with a chain saw. Cut parallel to the trusses, from one eave to the other, and make each section 3-4 trusses wide. Get a crane to pick each section off and put them in a pile so the excavator can mash them up and put them in the debris box or dump truck. Do a little searching and get a carbide-tipped chain for the saw. I've done some roof ventilation with the FD using such a saw, and it goes right thru everything... shingles, metal roofing, whatever.
I don't think I'd turn an excavator loose on the building if all you want is the roof off. That's kind of a blunt-instrument approach. I recently saw an excavator demo a garage and haul it away, and I can't see how you'd leave the walls unaffected while removing the roof.
You might want to save the trusses and re-use them. Unless something has happened to them, they should still be good.
If you're gonna change the roof pitch or something, you should still be able to sell them. Around here used trusses go for around a buck a foot.
Is that really a problem in this country? Men not paying enough attention to women's breasts? - [Jay Leno]
boss... this is not FREE labor
<<<
If you're gonna change the roof pitch or something, you should still be able to sell them. Around here used trusses go for around a buck a foot.>>>
so.. how are you going to make money by saving them
say a 30' truss..... how much to strip the nails, move it, stack it , protect it and store it..?
time is money, labor is time..... get a good excavator and put it in the dumpster..
we've stripped 'em, cut em up with chain saws , cut 'em up with demo saws.. done it every way there is..
once you've cut the roof structure free of the top plate , any good operator can get it down and in the dumpster
Mike Smith Rhode Island : Design / Build / Repair / Restore
Gene,
We do these quite often, mostly as fire restorations. We do something similar to Mike Smith. We do this to both stick framed and trussed roofs, but with slightly different techniques for each.
We use Skil worm drives with inexpensive blades for cutting through the shingles and sheathing in one shot. We make 2 cuts parallel to the ridge, about 2' below on each side of the roof. We do the same thing at the bottom of the roof for access to the wall plate and so we can remove the subfacia.
We then make a single cut through the sheathing and shingles parallel to each rafter. Each rafter is then cut off about a foot from the ridge from below with a circular saw with a sharp blade. The rafters are lifted up and out, one at a time. No need to do anything to the plate nails, they just pull out. The sheathing and shingles stay on the rafter and the whole thing goes in the can.
If we are doing trusses, we usually get a crane there to pick off the individual entire truss, sheathing, and shingles at one shot. The trusses are then placed on the ground where they are cut up using 12" gas powered tuck saws with rescue blades (nail eaters).
If we can't fit a crane in the space, we usually put some temporary shoring in to hold up the trusses in the centers and we just saw them in half and pull them out by hand in halves.
We probably do at least 20 of these a year. On a 25 x 60 building like you describe, we typically will have the entire roof off and in the dumpsters by break time in the morning (9:30 with a 7:00 start) and have the whole thing stick framed, sheathed and papered by the end of the day.
If you have room for the crane, I strongly recommend you use it. You will only need it for a few hours at perhaps $100 per hour.
Besides, if you are putting a second floor on a 25' wide building, you are going to need some kind of beam down the center for the floor system. Setting the beam is the next step after the roof is off.
carpenter in transition