Nubee alert and lifting questions

[Woodbender]

Hiya folks.

New guy on the block hailing from Michigan.  We're long term dreaming of some acreage for harvesting Post & Beam timbers for a Bed & Breakfast.

My background is the design and engineering field and although my first job out of college was designing at a Post & Beam outfit in Ma. I've never raised a single timber. I've been in hobby woodworking for years and my son and I just built a cedarstrip canoe.

I'm fairly confident I can do the milling /kiln drying, I can do the joint work -  etc, - but I have questions on physically raising the frame. Do most of you framers use/rent a crane/boom/hoist - or are most of you using a couple tripods and some winches for the upper story stuff?

I've dreamed since I was a kid to cut my own timbers and raise a house but life kept getting in the way.

Tim Eastman

[scsmith42]

Tim - welcome to the forum - lots of great and knowledgable folks here.

I have a 60' articulated manlift, which is what I use.  It's nice in that once the frame is up I can use the lift for installing purloins, siding, etc. 

For what I would have spent on crane and scaffolding rental, I was able to buy the manlift and keep it.

Good luck.

Scott

[TW]

Whatever you do: think first, lift later.
We assembled a 14x7 metre two storey loghouse by hand with no problem, using homemade lifts and ginpoles. Then I got my back out of order after stretching to pick up the corner of a tarpaulin when we covered the house for the winter.

There are several competent people on this forum who taught me a lot about rigging and lifting the cheap way. I hope they will teach you the same thing.

Do you have access to a farm tractor with front loader? It helps a lot.

[Jim_Rogers]

I guess it really depends on the job, site, customer, and your abilities.

You do what you have to do it get it done.
I'm sorry that doesn't really answer your question, but that's the way it is....

Jim Rogers

PS. oh yea welcome to the forum....

[Raphael]

I used the same Volvo excavator that dug my foundation and leach fields.


We needed to extend it's reach a bit to get the top plates in position.




As Jim said a lot depends on the geometry of the site and what's generally available.

[Stumpkin]

I have dismantled several old barn frames using a Telehandler, and put them back up the same way.


Sometimes you need a crane.

Sometimes you don't.

I have also used the 12,000 lb. winch on my truck and a gin pole to raise and lower bents, and set plates and purlins. A lot of rigging and a little ingenuity goes a long way. Tom

[Roger Nair]

Hey Tim, I am new here also but have been timberframing for eighteen years.  A b&b sounds like a large structure, so I would suggest looking for a crane/rigging service to aid in your project.  Talk to several companies first and evaluate the level of services you need and offered.  I have learned a lot from crane operators and skilled riggers over the years, it is a demanding and potentially dangerous field.  The most stress your frame will experience, other than a tornado, will be during the raising, so get the best help you can find.

[Thomas-in-Kentucky]

I raised my frame with a crane that I bought for $7,000.  The crane is still earning its keep (albeit wearing a diaper) and I used it to build a bridge to the house, help pour the basement walls, install SIPs, put a slate roof on, and am now using it to install solar panels.  Man lift, telehandler, or excavator would have worked too (with different approaches).  I like the option of taking time to figure things out without stressing about what the crane rental is costing.  But greasy equipment ownership (and liability) is not for everyone.  Renting heavy equipment is usually better.  But do not rent a crane (they come with an operator most times) without having an experienced timber framer help you plan and coordinate the raising.  You do not want to be scratching your head, re-rigging bents, looking for missing beams, or enlarging undersized mortises while the meter is running at $120 to $180 per hour.

I had an ex iron worker helping who showed up with his own rope grabs, tag lines, lanyards, yo-yo, safety harness, etc. etc.  This fellow was worth his weight in gold - especially when it came time to climb up and un-rig the bents and purlins after they were in place.

Echoing what Roger Nair said... there are some wicked forces at play on your frame when you take large bents from horizontal to vertical.  Be sure you know where to rig them and how to brace them during that process - so your bents don't fold up like tacos.  There were a few times when my rigging subjected the frame to undue forces (evidenced by unnatural out-of-plane deflections), but I had no choice but to complete the lift, because lowering the bent and raising it again might have been worse.  These particular bents (hammer beam bents for instance) did not have continuous tie beams, but it became obvious that the bents with continuous tie beams must have had significant lateral stress on the tie-beam tenons when they were lifted.

BTW, on the other end of the scale, there's a substantial Amish built timber frame house in this area that was raised one timber at a time, using nothing but scaffolding and a car-engine-hoist.  The owner of that house (a friend of mine) offered to enlist motorized equipment (especially since he was paying the builders by the hour!), but his builders declined and everything came out fine too.  Just goes to show you there are as many ways to raise the frame as there are to join it together.  Just make sure your joinery and raising methods are compatible!

[Jim_Rogers]

Welcome to the forestry forum Roger.......


Jim Rogers

[FrankLad]

Hey Woodbender!

I really like your goal of cutting and raising your own frame.  That was my initial idea as well (and those Foxfire books sure helped fuel it - ) but we figured it would take me years to do it, having a 40-hr-week job, so we decided to spend the $$$ to get it done faster.

I'll share some recent experiences with our home currently being built...

We had a total of 5 timber framers work on our house.  Two were down just for one week, to hit it hard and cut through a lot of timber.  The entire cutting, fitting, and raising took only 4 weeks.

Going into this I pictured the frame being raised by hand, the "old fashioned way", and was really excited to see it happen.

We quickly learned that apparently it isn't done this way as much now.  We had to rent a 17-Ton crane for a couple of days at $135/hr.  Was pretty disappointed about it but in the end I realized that it would have taken more than a handful of people, and been a bit more dangerous.

Also had to get them a 7-Ton all-terrain forklift for the month they were down for general handling of the timbers.  (Another surprise - I thought they would set the timbers up on sawhorses, etc. by hand.  ...but again, in the end I think it turned out better to work smarter, not harder...and to me, keeping them happy was important.)

We put the SIPs on the roof last week.  Found a better crane rental company...got a 40-Ton for $100/hr, since it was all they had and they based the rate on a smaller capacity unit.  Again, we wanted to put these up by hand - and we were able to get some of them up by rope and manpower - but factored in how long it would take to do all of them, plus the safety factor, and decided to rent a crane.

So far, for one forklift and two separate crane rentals, we've paid over $7,000.

I say that to say... it might pay to consider just how much you'll be spending on renting, and consider purchasing some equipment.

[Raphael]

  I payed extra to have my SIPs intalled by the manufacturer.  They brought their own truck crane and used it to raise the office portion of my frame as well as set the panels.  This worked out best for me as I have time to wrestle timbers solo and cut joinery but lack the man power to raise and install panels.

  The excavator portion of the raising was pretty cheap as Howard (the owner/operator) gave me a "learning how it's done" discount.  From what I've seen in my search for used telehandlers and tractors, buying and then reselling a crane could cost you more in trucking than Howard charged for raising and he came with an assistant who is smart enough to take over the ground level work once we started to climb.

  If you do buy a crane to operate yourself make sure it's got good over balance fail safes on it, we don't want to be reading about you in the Health and Safety forum.

[scgargoyle]

If you really want to do it by hand, you can use the technique they may have used building Stonehenge. Simply pile dirt up, drag the timbers to the top of the pile, assemble, then dig the dirt away! :D

[Woodbender]

Thanks guys - boy do I have a lot to learn. I started adding up the bd feet that needs to be cut up if I am going to do the cutting of timber.

Holy cats am I in trouble :D  :D

[Raphael]

Holy cats am I in trouble :D  :D

I can relate to that.  :D

[Joel Eisner]

We raised a majority of our frame by hand.  The only hired help was the fiddle player to keep everyone in good spirits.  I did have a fellow forum member show up with his tool (a manlift) and that was very helpful in placing the purlins. 

We used about 30 people to lift each bent by hand and there were no injuries, but a few close calls.

It was a year ago and my wife said that other than our wedding day it was her best day ever.

[Max sawdust]

I have also used the 12,000 lb. winch on my truck and a gin pole to raise and lower bents, and set plates and purlins. A lot of rigging and a little ingenuity goes a long way. Tom

So how do you keep your 2000 lb truck in place?
I have a 7000 lb winch on my small tractor which has a blade that digs into the ground to hold the tractor down.  Still even with logs in the bucket, I get that baby in the air with a full pull.  Just wondering ;)


max

[Furby]

The logs in the bucket are hurting you with that type of pull. ;)
Try rolling your bucket all the way over and then pressing it down to slightly lift the front before a pull like that.

You'd be much better off lowering the snatch block at or below the level of the top of your winch and using a gin pole between the snatch block and bent.

[Max sawdust]

Thanks Furby,
The pull in the picture was nothing, tractor idling.   ;D
My problems have been in the woods logging.  (We are talking about pulling 20"+ 16'+ logs up hill here.)
Lowering the point of pull makes good sense.  I will try that.  However, if I were sliding into the pull I could see using down pressure on the bucket, but my problem is the actual front end lifting up, so the logs in the bucket help hold it down.  Most likely lowering the point of pull would help with that too;D 
max