We may have stopped work on the project early, but I certainly did not stop thinking about the 36 foot trusses and the best way to handle them safely. By this morning I was still aprehensive but determined to complete this difficult part of the project. Mark arrived by 9:00 AM and I was working on supports for the east gable end truss. This was the heaviest truss of them all and a key to completing the trusses. We raised this one with hardly a hitch and got it fastened permanently in place. Then we stock piled three common trusses next to it and tied them off for use later. The picture shows this stock pile after wed had set one of the three.
The reason for this is that it takes about 7 feet of space to swing the point of the truss from pointing down to pointing up. Once we got so far we would have run out of room to swing them up so this made it possible to raise the trusses by swinging them up. Following a short break we started raising the trusses on the west side where we left off yesterday. The picture above shows Mark on the outside of the south wall nailing the truss down after we had it set in place.
We all lost track of time as we worked our way through the remaining trusses. The last three were a bit of a challenge to move across the 6 foot of wall and keep them standing upright. But we took our time and finished up by 2:00 PM. When we completed this part of the work we had lunch and Mark left for other activites at home. The rest of the afternoon was spent bracing up the trusses and then cutting off the rafter tails on the south wall of the shop. I stapled two more sheets of OSB to this roof line. I also ripped some scrap plywood and filled in the last remaining opening to the underside of the floor. I had left this open as long as possible to alloow it to dry out from the heavy rain we got the day we installed the styrofoam to the joist.
My primary motivation to take the time for this detail is the change in the weather over the last week. It has started cooling off at nights, down to the low 50's, and with this change I was concerned that mice would find the opening and decide it was a warm place to winter over. I have no way of knowing if any were under there but with all the noise we made all day I would suspect that if any were there they would have left.
