The garage trusses proved to be one of our biggest challenges while building the house.
We wanted to utilize the area above the garage as a full sized storage room, so in order
to accomplish this, the trusses had to be built with 2x10's for the top and bottom chords.
Here are the garage trusses before we set the last truss
The 2x10 top and bottom chords made the trusses extremely heavy. To give some
comparison, two guys were able to lift the house trusses, which were lying on the
ground, up to the second floor with some rope and muscle. In order to move the garage
trusses around on the ground to get them ready to put on the walls, it took five of us.
Due to the weight of the trusses, we were not sure how we were going to lift them up ten
feet into the air and then turn the peaks of the trusses up so that the trusses would
be setting upright on the walls. Everything worked out great in the end as the day that we
were planning to set the roof trusses on the walls, our friend came up with an idea to
use his forklift with the maintenance platform to lift the trusses up and onto the walls.
A maintenance platform is a flat platform that three or four people can stand in and be
lifted up into high areas in order to make repairs on an item or a building. The platform
is surrounded by a steel railing to prevent a person from falling off the platform. We
were able to stand each truss up on the ground and then hook the forklift onto the truss,
lift the truss up and set the truss onto the wall.
Two of us rode along in the platform so that we could steady the truss and also nail the
truss to some 2x6's that we had attached to the previously set truss. Having this 2x6
going across each truss tied all of the trusses together. Friends positioned on each wall
of the garage would line up the truss as the forklift was settting it down on the walls
and nail the truss in place so that the overhang of the truss were the same on each side.
Here is another view of the garage trusses
The next challenge was how we were going to set the last truss as the wall below it still
had not been built. We could not build it earlier as we needed to drive the forklift into
the garage and if the wall was built, the forklift would not have been able to go past
the wall. Leaving the last truss on the ground until we got the wall built was also not an
option as our friend had to leave and take his forklift with him. So we lifted the truss up
on to the walls and nailed it flat against the truss that was already set in place. We then
proceeded to start laying out the wall that the end truss would eventually set on. All of
this took the majority of the day, so we nailed a few more 2x4's and 2x6's lengthwise
across the trusses to make sure they would not blow over in the wind so that we could
come back the next day to finish the last wall.
We had to complete the last garage wall so that we could move the end truss into place
and start putting the plywood on the trusses to form the roof. We finshed building the wall
which turned out to be quite simple as it has the three automobile doors and consisted
mainly of a few 2x4's and three headers. The final task was to move the end truss into
place without "losing it" off the end and at worst breaking it, at best, having to figure
out how to get it back up onto the walls. We nailed a whole bunch of 2x4's along the top
of the wall standing up vertically to keep the bottom of the truss from kicking out. We
then nailed some 2x4's to the top of the trusses that had another board attached to the
end to form an L shape. These were to prevent the top of the truss from going too far.
Finally, we attached two ropes at each side of the peak and tied them to the other trusses
making sure that there was enough slack in the ropes to allow the truss to move into
place, but no further.
Once all of this was done, it was just a matter of moving the bottom of the truss with
crowbars and sledges inch by inch until the bottom was in place. We then pushed the top
of the truss out until the ropes were taunt and the truss was against the boards that
we had nailed into place. We secured this truss to the other trusses and the garage walls
and we were ready to start on the roof!
This gives you an idea of how big the garage trusses are and it also shows our dads