We found our straw, and it was close to home too! There was
a farm just over the Anthony gap around 15 minutes from our
building site that had a big pile of straw pretty cheap. They
were closing the farm down for the Christmas holidays so we high
tailed it over there and got all the bales we needed. It was
around 425 bales in all!
The bales had sat out in the weather for the past 6 months,
so we had to sort through them to find the good bales. Some of
the ones on the top and the sides had been damaged by the rain,
but there were plenty of good ones.
It took us about two days to get all the bales home.
Next step: Framing the trusses.
We had some great help getting the trusses up on a late
December Saturday. We had great weather and plenty of help. In
about 4 hours, we had them all placed and temporarily secured
with a brace along the top edge.
It's always helpful to have someone with a nail gun. It's
too bad we didn't have two, but it still went pretty well. We
had pre-measured out the two-foot center marks where the trusses
went, and put wood blocks to slide the trusses up against. Then
we nailed them in place and moved to the next one.
We had one guy in the center in charge of running a
temporary 2x4 brace along the top center of the truss for extra
support. It was also helpful having the plenty of scaffolds and
straw in the center of the building to stand on.
After taking several days of rest, we put on the perlins or
2x4 horizontal braces across the trusses. These braces are what
the metal roof will actually be screwed into. We didn't get them
perfectly straight, but that's the beauty of our design - There
are very few places where precision is necessary.
Spending several days up on the trusses is brutal on the
legs.
In addition to preparing all the trusses with the 2x4
horizontal perlins, we completed boxing in the 2 foot overhang
on all 4 sides. This was a pretty slow process since working
that close to the edge of the roof (around 13 feet off the
ground) was pretty awkward.
Next Step - Metal roofing!
If you are interested in helping or would like to see how we've put
our plans together, or just want to hear how things are going, contact
the
