My sister, Bonnie, arrived in town mid-day Tuesday (after driving for 4 hours) to give us a week of her vacation time. As a kid, Bonnie was a Lego Maniac, so she was pre-wired to be really into this building project, but I also assume she came to visit me ;^)
Bonnie is competitive and a hard worker, and, as siblings, we work well together. She was eager to get started right away and things progressed quickly.
With my timelapse camera snapping a pic every 10 seconds and playing them back at 15 frames per second, an hour goes by in 24 seconds and an 8 hour day takes just over 3 minutes… So this video ended up being over 9 minutes long… (half day, 2 full days and another half day)
For the time-lapse…
For the story.
Bon and I got out there early Tuesday afternoon and started on the steel stud prepwork… marking stud locations, drilling extra holes and adding extra Tapcons to better secure the track in those locations.
Meanwhile, we hired a young guy, Robert. This was my first “hired hand”. He is planning to go into the military soon, but in the meantime, he needed some cash to fix up his car. He was a friend of a friend and we found him by posting to our Facebook friends that we were looking for young muscles to move all the dirt around last week. This was before I simply hired the excavator to do it in less than 45 minutes. By the time we heard from Robert, it was mostly taken care of, but there was still a little dirt to level and I figured I could use him to drill pilot holes for the rebar after that. These were fairly basic jobs that didn’t require too much skill or supervision and that I wasn’t looking forward to doing myself. I showed Robert the business end of a masonry bit and told him that he should check it frequently and change the bit when the corners of the “spade” wear out. I also got him to bring down some extra scaffolding and steel studs.
Bonnie and I quickly got up 5 of the 20ft studs, braced them, strapped them in and added the lath in a relatively short time. We got a 6th one in and tied it in also, which is pretty good for just a few hours out there.
Sherri and Michael also arrived to help out. After getting all his chores done, Michael really enjoyed building sand castles on top of each of the hills. (You can see him in the top of the timelapse footage).
Wednesday morning, Bonnie and I got really aggressive with that outer curved wall on the north west side. Robert started the day bringing us studs and then got back to drilling the pilot holes with the ¼ inch bit. I checked his bit at the start of the day and it looked fine, but I handed him 5 more and reminded him to swap it out when it wore down… (Play suspenseful music here.)
I was busy working with my sister to get the studs in, and noticed that Robert was taking lots of breaks to let the drill cool down, but I thought he was handling it. About an hour in, he wanted to switch to something else because the “drill had shut down”. I thought maybe it had a thermal switch to prevent damage, so we had him do some other minor things, but after half an hour, the drill was cool and still wouldn’t start up. I guess it is burnt out. These things happen, but I also noticed that the drill bit tip was worn to a smooth ball bearing finish. We sent Robert home with 1.5 hours pay for his second day. I guess I am not ready to properly manage young help while also trying to break speed records on other tasks.
Bonnie and I continued working on the outer wall. At one point, we did a check and realized that we had just run 20 ft studs the whole way and had missed a doorway in the second floor that called for us to put a 9 ft stud in that location. We left the bracing in place and just swapped out the stud. It just took 3 screws, and we were on our way again. More studs, more strap, more lath. It was our most productive day ever. We got the whole outer wall done (up to the 9 ft mark).
That night, we discussed what to do with the remaining 2 days. We decided to skip ahead and tackle the 26 ft tower so that we could have time to secure it properly. We could then go back and do other simpler sections if we had time.
On Thursday morning, I brought a simplified install sheet that showed the angles and orientations for each stud. But as we laid it out, it seemed like something might not be right. Rather than proceed in a wrong direction, we switched to the more straight forward 21 ft section. After that was complete, we decided to apply our improved lath skills and redo all the metal lath on the inner curved wall that I had done the previous week. Having that smoother internal surface will save us lots of stucco time later.
Friday was going to be a short day because we were going to pick up my older son from camp and then go down to Toledo for a Mud Hens baseball game, so we decided to start early. We had already rechecked and confirmed that the tower install sheet was actually correct. On the way in, we bought a new hammer drill (for over 200$).
This time, I bought a Dwalt D-handle SDS hammer drill and several SDS bits. These hammer drills don’t use regular bits. One the one hand, I didn’t like the idea of paying to replace my bits with special SDS bits, but on the other hand, all the new drills are using SDS bits now because everyone prefers being able to click the new bits in without needing to find a drill chuck.
But the best part was actually using the drill. It went in nice and smoothly (like butta’). This drill also had much better shock absorption, etc. Suddenly, I wished the previous drill had died sooner, perhaps I could have got that track in much quicker…
We decided to finish off the top layer of lath for the inner curved wall before starting on the tower.
The track marking and prep work went pretty smoothly (except I ran out of Tapcons again), and we soon got to work on the studs. We got the first four 9ft studs in and strapped very quickly and then we took a break before tackling the 26ft studs. I was really concerned about them, but it ended up being not much more difficult than the 20 or 21ft studs.
The studs pick up sand when we set the down, so after I got them up vertical, Bonnie would give them a good tap and let the reverberations dump the dirt on my head while I was struggling to maintain balance. That is what sisters are for. I eventually managed to get her back in similar fashion.
We didn’t want to start on another section of the tower with only a couple hours left, so we took down the strap and lath from the first wall. We redid the strap and added additional straps to the 26 ft studs…
It was a pretty good week.
Bonnie left Saturday morning, my parents are coming out to help this next week… I am still pushing towards shotcrete before the end of the month… But I know I have a lot of work between now and then.
On Friday, another friend, John H., drove 4 hours (from Canada) to help out for a couple days. Unlike my previous volunteer help, John builds for a living. So, he brought a bunch of tools and experience with him.
For those who want the timelapse video first:
And then the story..
I knew John was a pro when the first thing he did on site was plug a tool box with all his chargers pre-wired up inside it. I had been carrying and plugging in all my chargers separately, so this was revolutionary for me (I have since put my own toolbox full of chargers together).
In fact, John quietly demonstrated a quicker way to do pretty much everything I was doing. The most important thing was simply using an impact driver to get the metal screws into the studs without pre-drilling. Yes, that may sound pretty basic to many of you, but I didn’t realize how much better those were at driving self-tapping screws into steel. I had just assumed that my driver couldn’t handle it because the screws were not designed for the 20 gauge steel. I ended up buying my own impact driver Friday night so I could be much more productive on Saturday.
John H. also brought a radio, which Sherri thought made the construction site much more official. The radio “game” was to hit seek whenever we heard something that we really hated… We ended up listing to a lot of country, which is not my usual genre. Maybe I will get a radio eventually also.
John also had a better hammer drill and reciprocating saw than I did. I guess I was always trying to save money and just ended up wasting time with tools that were not really up to the task. I also ran out of screws on the first day, so the next morning, John wanted me buy the “big” box… I said I didn’t think we needed that many, and John said, “Simon, you are building a house!” Point taken.
However, working with this style of construction (Steel studs, metal lath, strap and shotcrete) was as new to John as anybody, so we were still figuring things out as we worked. For instance, we found that installing the metal strap before the metal lath was much more efficient. It made it much for straight forward for us to plumb the studs in the second direction so we could hang the metal lath without pulling it later. This kept everything flatter.
I am still working out the best methods for attaching the metal lath, but I will write up whatever I figure out at the end. At this point, it looks like the 2.5 lb/sqyd lath is more cooperative than the 3.4 lb/sqyd lath. Making sure the lath is stored in a nice flat spot and no one steps on it is also important (sections of my wall will have a big footprint in them). The lath comes in 27 inch wide strips and we found that it is not worth overlapping. 4 of the strips, edge to edge, adds up to 9 ft, which is the exactly what I needed to cover the walls from bottom to top, we will just need to wire them together later. But the most important thing so far is that you can’t use the lath to pull studs into position… It is good at holding the position of the studs, but if you try to use the lath to pull the studs, you just end up with surface buckles and ripples. It is better to re-adjust the straps to control the studs and then add the lath later.
On Friday, we ended up erecting the 20 ft studs in the play room apse and tying them into the surrounding 9ft studs and door bucks.
Initially assumed we would dig in the footings. When plans changed, I forgot to plan for filling the footings. Doing it with a wheel barrow would have taken a lot of time (or a lot more friends). We tried to hire some high school and college kids so we could keep working on the steel, but none were available right away. Then it occurred to me that the excavator’s biggest piece of equipment was still on site and could probably reach over the steel we had already erected.
We called the excavator first thing Saturday morning and he was available.
It took him a while to get setup, during which time, the sand around my site nearly collapsed and dumped his giant machine into the site. He got himself back onto stable ground and managed to dump the sand in several locations. He says it was about 12000 lbs of sand per scoop and he did about 10 or more scoops in 45 minutes. I would hate to think how long that would have taken with wheelbarrows. John and I spread most of it out right away, and then took a break. The day was half over.
Then we got in a couple window bucks… That took about an hour as we figured out how to attach them to the steel and make everything solid, plumb and level. Then we got in some more metal straps and a bunch more metal lath before the end of the day.
Next week, my sister (Bonnie) will come out to help for a few days.
The key bits and the video for this were posted on Facebook closer to real time… If you want to see those posts as they go out, you can use the button on the right ===> to like us on Facebook.
If you are just looking for the time lapse, here it is:
For more of the story…
The steel studs arrived on Tuesday July 1st, stacked nicely at the end of my driveway… It looks like only one of the 9ft studs was damaged (see the inset), but I had anticipated some loss and ordered extra studs, so no problem.
My wife (Sherri) and I went out there for a few hours on Wednesday and got the first corner with 10 studs up. I had bought the self-tapping screws, but my drill couldn’t drive them into the 20 gauge steel, so I was forced to alternate my single drill between the drill bit and the Phillips driver. Other than the poor tool situation, we were pretty happy with how easy it was to get the studs in and plumb.
We had one issue after we put in a stud where the track was only fastened by a single screw. We got called away (by my skid steer being delivered) and by the time we got back, the wind had blown it over and bent the track… From then on, we always made sure that every stud was well connected to a piece of track that was well connected to the footing right in the same section.
Then on Thursday, my brother-in-law, John R, used up another one of his vacation days to come and help out. John started by fixing the “stairs”, which was a mixed success initially, but now, after some repairs and settling in, are pretty helpful.
I brought my second cordless drill so we could use one to pre-drill and the other to drive the screws in… I also found that my hammer drill (connected to my generator and run in “drill only” mode) had a lot of power for easy drilling. We worked together and made pretty good progress. By the end of that day, we had raised most of the 9’ studs and a couple rows of metal lath to help tie it all together.
My biggest concern was that the metal lath was not lying flat. It would look fine to start, but then later it would bow in or out. Clearly we were doing something wrong (we figured it out, mostly, on subsequent days ;^).
At 6:00, we quit and started playing with the skid steer. I moved some of the big boulders down to the bottom of the driveway and scooped some soil to put in front of the steel shipping container (we had quite a step down because we had jacked it up to make it level). Along the way, we found a couple problems. The skid steer really tears up the sand and, in the process, wastes most of its power. It has two new tires, but they are in the front (probably because it is easier to change the front tires on a skid steer). The back tires (where I need the power during digging) are pretty bald…
However, I don’t think new tires will be enough of a solution. Instead, it looks like I may need to get some “Over the Tire” tracks (OTT), and those are pretty expensive. So far, used ones are hard to find and new ones cost 25% to 45% of what I paid for the Skid Steer. Another issue is that the right throttle doesn’t seem to work as well as the left, especially in reverse. Skid Steers are like a tank with each side driving forward or backward based on pushing that lever forward or backward. If one side doesn’t keep up properly, it makes it a bit tricky to drive straight. I will get my Dad to take a look when he comes down to help out the 3rd week of July.
Meanwhile, we hired a young guy, Robert. This was my first “hired hand”. He is planning to go into the military soon, but in the meantime, he needed some cash to fix up his car. He was a friend of a friend and we found him by posting to our Facebook friends that we were looking for young muscles to move all the dirt around last week. This was before I simply hired the excavator to do it in less than 45 minutes. By the time we heard from Robert, it was mostly taken care of, but there was still a little dirt to level and I figured I could use him to drill pilot holes for the rebar after that. These were fairly basic jobs that didn’t require too much skill or supervision and that I wasn’t looking forward to doing myself. I showed Robert the business end of a masonry bit and told him that he should check it frequently and change the bit when the corners of the “spade” wear out. I also got him to bring down some extra scaffolding and steel studs.
This time, I bought a Dwalt D-handle SDS hammer drill and several SDS bits. These hammer drills don’t use regular bits. One the one hand, I didn’t like the idea of paying to replace my bits with special SDS bits, but on the other hand, all the new drills are using SDS bits now because everyone prefers being able to click the new bits in without needing to find a drill chuck.
