Post date: Jun 7, 2015 1:06:04 PM
This is a time-lapse video of the construction activity this week. This week much of the activity took place behind walls, so I cut out more portions of the time-lapse video.The week started with nailing the green sheathing to the outer walls. This entailed aligning the walls so the corners are all vertical. We left sheathing off over the doors and windows, because the lintels (beams) have not arrived from the sawmill.
Then the inner and outer walls are connected at the top, using strips of 3/4” plywood. This required the crew to align the inner walls. Occasionally the inner wall was not perfect, and required adjustment in addition to just straightening.
Once the walls were correct, the built three of the walls of the mechanical room, which sits atop the main structure. Part of this mechanical room sits atop the roof trusses, which we don’t have yet, so the room is left open to the west. (The video camera is northwest of the building, in the community barn across the road.)
The house needs to be airtight, so we applied a sticky membrane (“ice and water shield”) to the tops of the walls. The purpose of this membrane is to connect the green exterior sheathing with a polyethylene sheet above the ceiling. (There is already a foam sheet sealer between the walls and the floor slab to seal the lower edge of the walls.)
Finally we built the parapets on the floor of the house (mostly out of sight of the camera), then lifted them onto the walls. These parapets need to be securely braced against winds until they can be joined at the corners. We only install the north and south parapets at this time because we need to lift the roof trusses up over the west walls. In addition, the parapet and the ends of the roof trusses would collide if not aligned exactly.