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.