Framing the porch roof

Once again today was another very hot day in Virginia Beach with the temperature reaching 75 degrees in the middle of November.  It seems like every girl on break packed a beach towel and sunscreen and wondered off to the beach.  I on the other hand packed my sandwich, a couple bottles of water, gloves, and safety boots.  Like I explained in my previous blog, Visiting an old friend, I promised my friend Gabe that I would come along and help with the framing of the porch roof.  Again, Gabe was not going to say no to my help.

Before starting the day, Gabe and I discussed what needed to be done.  He started off by saying that we need to set up the work benches because it is easier to cut and measure lumber.  After that we needed to move the lumber to the front of the house to where they are easily accessible.  The last thing we needed to do was get the tools out of the truck.  A few things that we needed included, hammers, nails, screws, pencils, skill saw, hand saw, ladders, nail guns, air compressor, and a level.

Hand Saw                                        Level                                      Nail gun.


I do not own one of these bags and Gabe let me borrow his for the day.  I can not explain how much more efficient I was.  Today was the first time that I realized how helpful they are.   You do not have to stop work to run around to grab things all the time. You can carry hundreds of nails in the pockets, a hammer, tape measures, pencil, and really anything small that you can fit into your pants pocket.  I will invest in one of these as soon as a start working again over the summer.  This is a must have for residential construction!

 I have showed you some tools that I used, now we get to the work.  For any building you have to start with supports.  For instance, for a house you have a foundation and then on top of that bricks or wood studs.  For decks and porches you have studs.






First, we had to install the posts to the concrete.  This was not too hard because when the concrete was poured a bolt was placed in it.  It looks like a piece of rebar that is galvanized.
Once the concrete has cured, a "U" shaped galvanized bracket is screwed to the bolt.  Once the bracket is screwed on tightly, the rest of the bolt is cut off.  Then, the post is placed in the bracket like this:

After that the post is either nailed or screwed to the bracket.  This was the easy part of the day. We ran into some problems trying to connect a header/ ledger board to the original head board.  Here is what I mean:

As you can see we placed two 2X6's next to each other with a piece of plywood in the middle. Just for those of you that do not know what I mean by 2X6, it means that the wood is 2 inches in depth and 6 inches wide. Originally we did not have enough space to squeeze these three pieces of wood in the are.  The reason we had to do the wood to go in there is because the edge had to be supported by a post or another joist.  In the picture above you can see the original building.  You can also see the stud that is supporting the joist.  These studs where measured and then cut to the right dimensions, which was specified in the drawing before they were attached to the bracket.  

Here is another angle of the picture above:  

 

 

In the pictures above, you can see how the head board bears on the studs.  The reason the head board is sitting in the middle is because the head boards are only so long and have to add another joist on that will bear on the other half of the stud. After this first phase was complete we extended the head boards all they way to the other side of the house, as shown below. 

After the large 2X6 joist is installed, the smaller 2X4 ceiling joists were installed.  The ceiling joist is connected to the 2X6 header board and then connected to the original ceiling joist from the over hang. Here is an example:

As you can see above, these ceiling joist were also connect to the original rafters.  Once these ceiling joists where installed aluminum brackets were installed for extra support and as a part of the building requirements.  These ceiling joists are measured sixteen inches on center. 

The next step was to add the rafters.  As you will see in the images below the rafters were cut on one end so that they can be added to the original roofing (Figure 1) and the other end to slip right into the 2X6 header board (Figure 2).   

Figure 1.                                            Figure 2.                                 

                                            

Tomorrow we will continue to finish up the rest of the rafters and add the plywood for the roof. 

I hope you learned something today and have enjoyed my blogs.

Thank you for reading and all the best,

Mic

Visiting an old Friend

Today I am sitting in Virginia Beach, VA with my family.  First, I want to say that it is nice to be home.  I finally get my mom's homemade cooking and weather that is not below 60 degrees Fahrenheit every day.  It's the Monday before for thanksgiving and I am home alone, and my family is busy.  All my friends were away with their families and I had nothing to do, so I called my friend that has his own small residential construction company.

Gabe, who owns GGH Construction in Virginia Beach sounded very stunned when I called him. I know Gabe through working with him. I was working on a construction site where he was doing some framing.  It was not even a week later that Gabe called my boss and asked for me. Unfortunately, I was already at school and could not help him out.  I continued to work for him during my breaks.

His contact information is 757 235 0551 if you are every looking for someone to do some work for you in the area.  His specialty is wood framing.

After talking to Gabe, he told me that I was more than welcome to come along and see what he was doing.  He was working on a small porch off of South Plaza Road, Virginia Beach, VA.  The nice thing about this was that I did not have to sit around and just watch, I was able to roll my sleeves up and get my hands dirty.  Immediately, I climbed onto the roof and started tearing off the shingles.  Gabe works by himself, so he did not mind the extra help.

We had to tear down the shingles because we needed to extend the roof over the porch.  All I did for about 2 hours was tear shingles, collect shingles, and dump shingles.  Trust me this was not as easy as it sounds, especially since it is 73 degrees outside and I was bent over for hours.   I know 73 does not sound very hot, but when you are on a roof and the heat is reflecting off the shingles, it is pretty toasty.  I can't imagine how hot and hard it gets over the summer.  After all the shingles were dumped, I had to sweep the entire area to collect all the nails.

I only got to work a short time with Gabe, but I promised him that I would be back the next day because I am very interested to see some wood framing being done. 

So, please read tomorrow's post if you would like more details.

        

Gilbane

The new Virginia Tech signature engineering building is on its way.  Well, it was suppose to be on it's way.  There was definitely nothing going on while I was there.

Earlier this year we had the project manager from Gilbane, Roger McFarland, come to our class and talk to us.  Roger is a very enthusiastic, but very serious gentlemen.  He came to my Construction Principles class with a lot spunk, jokes, and stories.  Roger explained to us the challenges that he has had with Virginia Tech and some of them were the drawings and schedules of the building.  He explained that he wanted to start the caisson drilling early because he knew that once the winter comes there will be a lot of obstructions.  This makes sense because in one of my previous blogs, Virginia Tech's own Center of Arts, I explained the complications of drilling in the Blacksburg area.  Blacksburg has a creek that runs through it and unstable bedrock in certain places.  Mr. McFarland wanted to jump ahead of the game, but today it seemed like there was not any progress.  I think that Gilbane was waiting for a delivery of materials or equipment because the site was very organized and open.

On my way to the site, there was a worker sitting on his phone in middle of a blocked off lane (Figure 1).  This was one of the two things that was happening.

In Figure 1, it looks like it is some kind of pump that they put out in the road.  The reason that they might have located it in the street is so that it could be hauled away easier.  When I saw the pipes crossing the road I immediately peaked over the fence to see where the pipes were leading to.  The pipes went straight into a hole (Figure 2).
                                Figure 1.                                                                Figure 2.

Maybe this was a pump to get water out of the hole, but if it was then where did they pump the water? I have tried to research what this may be and I have yet to come to a conclusion.   I still think that it could be a sump pump system but I do not see where they pumped the drainage too.

The other activity was a dump truck on site delivering gravel (Figure 3).

                                                                                                           Figure 3

Just because there was not much going on the site I decided to take a few pictures just to show where everything, such as equipment, materials, and offices are located.

  
I took the pictures while standing at the top of the parking garage next to the site.
I also took these notes.

 


I hope you are enjoying my blogs.  I will be posting again soon.
Thank you and all the best,
Mic

It feels like Freshman year again.

Today I visited my Freshman home again.  Our class is going on our first tour of West Ambler Johnston.  While everyone else was tailgating, or preparing for the big Thursday night football game, I showed up at West AJ for a site visit.  I showed up at the site very unprepared to see the transformation of my old residential hall.  The dorm is being converted into a residential college just like East Ambler Johnston was renovated last year for the same purpose.

Our visit started out in the conference room, where questions were answered and minor details were given to us. For example, it is a lead silver project, the seventh floor (top floor) is most complete, and the building could not be renovated so quickly if it was not for BIM.  More interesting facts, such as the multi million dollar staff apartment in the residential hall, and that one mock bathroom was built and copied for every floor. There is also approximately 200 laborers on the site on an average work day and some of them work 10-12 hours a day.

The site was completely shut down because of all the traffic for the football game.

Here is the lay out of the building as we walked to the top.  I will break it down per floor so that you can see what is done one each floor.  Unfortunately, we moved through the building very fast as a group and I could not take many pictures.

1st Floor.
Framing + waterproofing

2nd Floor.
Framing + Insulation

    Figure 1.                                                      Figure 2.                                                Figure 3.

  

        Figure 4.                                                     Figure 5.                                            

Figure 6

 In Figure 1, you can see the framework that was done for the drop down ceiling.
Figure 2 was taken while walking through the hallway.  You can see the frame work for the arch way. On the 3de floor you will see the framework of the archway covered.
 Figure 3 shows the insulation in the rooms.
Figure 5 is the framework for all the pipes and utilities that goes into each room.  All those utilities and plumbing are located above the door.
Figure 6 was taken in the bathroom.  The very fascinating thing about the bathrooms are that the first room was rebuilt off site and all the utilities and plumbing that goes into the bathrooms where built in that mock room. Once they found that all the systems worked together and there were no obstructions that mock room was copied for each floor. Everything in the bathrooms were pre-manufactured to the mock room.  This picture shows the bolt where the plumbing for the toilets will be joint to.

3de Floor.
Frame + Insulation + Drywall



4th Floor
Frame + Insulation + Drywall + first coat of primer

5th Floor 

Frame + Insulation + Drywall +  1st coat of paint + 2 finished coats of paint + Casework for sink.

                                                                                                                             Figure 7.

                                                                                                              

  

Figure 8.

Figure 7 shows where a worker has gone through the rooms and posted these pieces of papers that indicate that the area had to be patched up.  Figure 8 shows the case work for the sink. The fifth floor is also getting ready for tiling in the rooms.

6th Floor.
Frame + Insulation + Drywall +  1st coat of paint + 2 finished coats of paint + Casework for sink + counter top for sink + Completion of drop ceiling.
                                                                                                       Figure 9

I took Figure 9 because part of the drop down ceiling was missing.  This is because the fire department has to come inspect the alarms and sprinkler systems.  I am sure there are other inspectors that have to inspect it too.  The 6th floor has the fire alarms, tiles in bathrooms, and lights all installed. 

7th Floor

Frame + Insulation + Drywall +  1st coat of paint + 2 finished coats of paint + Casework for sink + counter top for sink + Completion of drop ceiling+ glass in common room.

The 7th floor has its final coat of paint, sinks, outlets, vents, and toilets installed.













Below I have posted more information about the site.

I hope this gave everyone a good perspective of what is going on at West AJ.  I hope everyone enjoyed the game. GO HOKIES!

All the best,
Mic

The power of machines

I was walking out of the Mill and Mountain coffee shop (located on Main Street), with my girlfriend when I saw two big excavators were moving constantly behind the Wendy's.  I could not help myself but  grab my camera and girlfriends hand and rush closer. It was funny because I found this site of the excavators to be very intriguing, but I could see in my girlfriend's eyes that she was not even slightly fascinated by the site, dirt, or the machines.

Here is what was going on.  There were two excavators and one loading truck.  The first excavator was stationed on what seemed to be a little pile of gravel.  The same excavator was loading gravel into a dump truck.  Once the truck was full, it took the gravel and dumped it on the other side of the construction site.  The second excavator was located behind the pile of gravel.  The second excavator was removing soil from a hill and piling the earth behind the first excavator.  This is the brillance of the whole operation.

Step 1.

Excavator 1

 

During step one the truck gets loaded by excavator one.  The excavator takes about five buckets of soil before the truck leaves to go dump the soil.

Step 2.

                                                                                                        (Excavator 2)

While the truck travels to go dump the soil, and during step one, excavator 2 is compiling soil behind excavator one.  Excavator 2 is excavating the hill that you can see in the picture above.   

Step 3.

During step three, excavator 1 is moving all excavator two's soil closer, so that it is easier and quicker for him to reload the truck when it comes back.  The great thing about this is that excavator 1 never has to move and is ready to load the truck when it comes back (about 8 min later).  I don't think you can see it in the pictures above, but excavator 1 was always sitting on just enough soil around him so that the excavator does not fall or tilt. 

In our Construction Principles lecture, with Dr. Andrew McCoy, we talked about efficiency, truck cycles, and cost of equipment.  As far as this operation goes, I think this is very efficient and well planned out.  I would say bring in one more truck so that the excavator can load two at a time and still have enough soil to sit on but after looking at the site it would be very hard to cram in another truck.  The reason is because there is only enough space for one truck to drive.  If there was two trucks, then the one truck will have to wait for the other. So, the second dump truck will be just waste of money.  As far as having two excavators, that's great because if there was one then the truck will have to wait longer for the excavator to reload.  With just one excavator it has to excavate the soil, move it, and load it.  The other problem with having just one excavator is that the truck will have to travel farther to dump the soil.    

In class we learned a few usefull eqautions, such as this one to find how productive equipment is per hour. 

Here is some other information that I gather while I was watching the excavators work

Well, that is all I have for now.  Check in later because there are more reports to come. 

I hope you enjoyed reading everything. 

Thank you and all the best,

Mic