Setting Roof Trusses By Hand

The beam extends to the far end of the roof hanging over.

Setting roof trusses by hand.

Erecting the first gable truss. They support live and dead loads by efficiently transferring the loads to the building walls or supports. Roof truss basics roof trusses are engineered wood alternatives to hand framed rafters. Also measure the length of half of the roof from one side of the ridge beam to the edge of the building.

Those who have built and used them rave about the time spent building the hand lift jacks was well worth it. Any roof truss that s over 30 long and has a pitch greater than 5 12 is probably too big to be lifting by hand. However with a few erection tips you can erect wood trusses safely and efficiently. The workers manually position the first truss at the end of the roof on the corresponding number on the wall plate.

They then nail it to the wall plate and attach temporary braces to hold it upright. I ve successfully lifted two sets of 80 foot span roof trusses along with all of the roof purlins and truss bracing using winch boxes. Wood truss erection can be dangerous and time consuming. The first step in wood truss erection is setting the gable truss first truss.

If the roof rises 7 inches 18 cm for every 1 foot 0 30 m its pitch would be written as 7 12. Not only is it really heavy it s going to be too wobbly to safely set by hand get a crane. Trusses are made up of diverse even members that can be made of wood or metal and then arranged into triangular shapes. Setting subsequent trusses the workers then set the second truss in a similar manner to the first and attach a ridge beam at the apex of each truss.

After setting the second truss in the same manner workers attach a ridge beam to the peak of both trusses. And these days so easy to resell on ebay. Because trusses are set on the outer bearing walls of a building the interior layout can change before and after construction.