Up on the rooftop…

One thing you hear about within the Log Home Builders Association community is using SIPs (structural insulated panels) to insulate your roof.  They sound awesome for insulation and easy to install.  What you don’t find out until later is that SIPs are rather expensive.  The first quote came in around $18,000, including delivery.  Monty called several SIPs dealers and received similar quotes.  In frustration, he contacted Ronnie (www.wileyloghomes.com) to ask if there was any way to get a better price on SIPs.  Ronnie pointed out that we didn’t need SIPs, but Nailbase Panels.  They are the same thing, except they only have wood on one side of the foam, rather than both sides.  Monty searched the LHBA Forum for “nailbase panels” and got a tip from a fellow log home builder about a cheaper way to get them.  Apparently, you can buy 4’x8′ sheets of EPS foam (a.k.a. styrofoam) with one sheet of OSB on the top from Universal Foam Products (http://univfoam.com/products/eps-sheets-blocks).  Monty requested a quote for 72 panels to cover our roof.  The price was right and they could deliver them in 7 to 10 days, which worked well with our building schedule.  See the post called “Shaving” for pictures of the delivery of the panels.  It turns out the panels were actually manufactured and delivered by Starr Foam in Fort Worth, Texas.  Anyone looking to make an order might call Starr Foam directly.

On Saturday, December 17th, Monty and Ricky decided to start moving all of the panels from the metal barn up the hill to the log house and even try to get one installed.  To attach the panels to the rafters, we had to order 14″ screws.

Monday began the panel installation at full speed.  Ricky, Monty and TC had all of the panels hauled and installed by Wednesday, December 21st.

The last panels along the ridge had to be cut at an angle to fit together.  Of course, we were unable to do this so perfectly as to leave no gap.  We filled in the gaps with expanding foam, which worked exceptionally well.

Cutting the panels was very messy and made what we like to call “Styrofoam Man”…

After all of the panels were installed, they went back to the ends of the house and trimmed any pieces that were hanging over.  A chainsaw turned out to be very useful when shaving styrofoam.

We had one very cute visitor to the site this week.  She is good at reminding Monty to use all of his PPE every day.

Now all that was needed to put the metal roof on was underlayment and our goal of having the roof on by Christmas was coming down to the wire…

T&G from Idaho

The first piece is the hardest.  As with most things in life, the first step is the most difficult, because it determines the ones that follow.  After measuring both sides of our roof diagonally and adjusting the screws slightly, we chalked a line to use as a guide for our first row of tongue and groove boards.  We had a mixture of 20′ and 16′ boards.  All of it originated in Idaho and made its way to Texas via Redwoods Inc.

It really went down pretty fast with three guys, a telehandler and a nail gun.  We got about 75% down in one day.

End of the day before closing up the ridge…

Monty is putting some of the last boards on before TC cuts off the tops of the rafters.  TC is awesome!  He’ll do anything, even stand on a platform made of scrap wood 25 feet in the air running a chainsaw and leaning over to cut 4″x12″ rafters tops!

View from inside of the house:

Ridge was closed in with practically no gap.  For a bunch of non-engineers, this was truly an amazing feat!
After ripping the first board along the bottom and trimming all of the rafter tails to be flush, we declared victory on the T&G!

We had a little helper on Friday.  Michael screwed scrap wood together to make what he called toys for the kids that live in this log home in the future.

On our way out to the ranch, Monty and Michael saw about 6 wild hogs cross the road ahead of them.  Monty quickly parked the truck on the side of the road, told Michael to stay inside and jumped the barbed wire fence to go catch a hog.  The smallest one could not run very fast, so Monty easily picked him up and ran back to the truck, while scanning the horizon for an angry mama hog.  Michael was in “hog heaven” with his new little pet!  He named him Max.

This week was hard one on Monty physically, as he was injured three times.  The first incident happened when he was driving the telehandler.  He raised up to tell TC to move an extension cord and his head rammed into the metal bar above him.  That’s not the worst part, though.  His immediate reaction after hitting his head was to jerked his head down.  As he did that, he smashed that place between your nose and upper lip on the steering wheel.  This knocked him silly, opened a gash under his nose and blood started dripping from his nose and mouth.  TC began singing “I fought the LULL and the LULL won” (the brand of the telehandler is LULL).  The second incident involved a board on a trailer breaking under Monty’s foot as he was carrying stuff and hurting his ankle pretty bad.  He is now walking normally again five days later.  There’s nothing like working on a roof with only one good ankle.  Notice Monty is wearing his double lanyard, full body harness thanks to Private Ryan.
The third incident happened when Monty’s truck slid off the country road into a cedar tree.  He was fine, but can only use the passenger side door.

Panorama on Saturday as the fog in the field was lifting:

With all of the T&G on, it was time to start transferring the Nailbase panels from the metal barn to the log house site…

Shaving

Shaving Logs – Ricky and Monty stacked their 2 sets of 10 foot scaffolding together in the middle of the house, so they could reach the Ridgepole to start notching it under the rafters.  This may sound like no big deal, but standing on scaffolding 20 feet in the air and trying to push and pull the connections of the rafters to one side to notch underneath will make every muscle in your body tighten up.  They hung a string under the rafters from one end to the other and then began shaving the Ridgepole with a chainsaw to lower each rafter to the string.  This is very time consuming and required disassembling the scaffolding and reassembling it due to the Ridgepole being in the middle of the house and the Girders on the sides.  Next, Ricky and Monty began shaving the Cap logs under each rafter to ensure they were all level for installing roof decking.  This was also exhausting and felt like our progress slowed to a crawl.  Finally, all of the log shaving was done and we were ready to install the Bird Blocks.

Shaving Bird Blocks – It was hard to decide whether to go with logs or lumber for the Bird Blocks, but in the end lumber seemed to be the better choice for us.  Ricky and Monty cut Bird Blocks out of the 4″x12″ Doug Fir beams from Redwoods, Inc.  They decided to double them up for additional insulation.  The first row, which will be exposed to the outside air was pinned with 3/8″ (#3) rebar in two places.  The second row was attached to the first row in two places using 6″ lag bolts (5/16″) from the outside of the first row.  The tops of the Bird Blocks stuck up above the rafters in most places and had to be shaved off.  This was another tedious task, but very necessary.

Shaving Ourselves – After nearly two months of growth and an awesome Movember mustache, Monty took a razor and made himself look younger on December 1st…

Ricky did not want to miss out on the body part shaving extravaganza, so he shaved (accidentally) one leg with a chainsaw and the other leg with a circular saw!  Don’t worry.  He’s fine and only has ripped pants.

Shaving Private Ryan – Monty worked with a great young guy named Ryan in Korea and when we left in October, Ryan offered to put all of our stuff in his shipment back to Texas.  This “shaved” is over $1,000!  Well, the time had come to drive to Beaumont to get our stuff from Ryan.  Monty’s mom kept the kids and we drove the 7 hours one-way just the two of us.  It was a lot of fun to have time to talk and even think about the next steps of the log house building project.  That was until we ran out of gas about 30 minutes from Beaumont.  Again, Ryan was the one “shaving” with a ride to the gas station to buy a $25 5-gallon gas container and then fill it up.

Shaving by Air Force Jets – We live in a city close to an Air Force base and have now had multiple fly-bys from pilots wanting to get a closer look at that log cabin below.  We are doing our best to look like patriotic Americans and not like terrorists.

Shaving Time & Money – After researching on the LHBA forum, Monty found a company that would sell the nailbase panels for less than half the price of the competitors.  The company is called Universal Foam and we bought the 10″ foam with 1/2″ OSB on top.  Delivery day was December 13th.  They were stacked upside down and packed into the semi-truck so tightly that we could not figure out how to get them out.  We ended up stacking all 72 panels in the metal barn.  It was the only place we had to store them out of the weather.

Another benefit of the nailbase panels is the ease of construction.  We’re hoping to install them very quickly 

We also had some much appreciated hard-working help from Monty’s cousins, Caleb and TC.  Not only was their physical contribution noticeable, but the encouragement they provided was of equal or greater value.  Building a log house is not for the pessimistic or the impatient.  Taking pictures and documenting your progress from week to week is a must, as it will remind you that you are succeeding, even if not as fast as you hoped.

On Saturday, December 10th, Ricky and Monty finally got rolling on the installation of the much-anticipated Doug Fir Tongue & Groove for Roof Decking…  Post with pictures coming soon!