One man's struggle to take it easy
Cabin: How to raise walls in the most frightening way possible
Monday, Aug 02, 2010
How to raise walls in the most frightening way possible:
- Make sure you’re working totally alone.
- Make your walls 11 feet high with 2x6 studs 16” OC. Install some sheathing before raising for added weight.
- Build your own wall jack from a 16’ 2x6, a $12 hand winch, a gate hinge, and a garage door pulley.
- Try to pick a moderately windy day.
Building and raising the first wall went well until it was actually raised to about 45 degrees and the wind started to whip it around like a sail. I had to lower it back down and install some braces that would be raised with the wall and then immediately secured to the floor. The DIY wall jack actually worked fairly well at this point. Here are photos of building the first wall, the wall jack, and raising the first two walls (after braces added).
The excitement really started when raising the third wall. About halfway up, the gears on the hand winch stripped and it wouldn’t raise any further. Luckily they didn’t strip enough to send the wall crashing to the ground. Lesson learned: $12 hand winches aren’t very high quality. I eventually managed to finish raising the third wall using a long board on one end to push the end up a little at a time and a tie-down strap to incrementally push up on the existing brace on the other end. Took about an hour to get the third wall up the rest of the way.
For the fourth and final wall which has two windows and a door, lacking a wall jack, I just installed the top and bottom plates and the full studs, hoping it would be light enough to manage. It was still very heavy and I raised it a little at a time using two ladders and a long board to push it up. I then started framing out the doors and windows. Finished the door framing and most of one window when a thunderstorm rolled in and I didn’t want to be standing on an aluminum ladder with lightning in the area so I called it a day. All that’s left is some window framing, the top plates for the walls, and the rest of the sheathing (roughly 14 sheets). I’ll tackle that this coming weekend.
how do you determine where to mount the winch? can you show a picture of the garage door roller?
If you look in some of the pictures you can see that I had boards temporarily attached to the outside edge of the floor to act as stops for the bottom of the wall. So the bottom of the wall would push against those boards and when upright would be even with the edge of the floor.
The winch contraption I had clamped down but I also had it screwed down to the subfloor. That's why you see my cordless drill in some of the images. I used it to drive in the screws. It looks like I was using deck screws judging by the box in one of the pictures.
I imagine a 4x4 would work as well but the 2x6 would be lighter and easier to work with.
It doesn't really matter where you mount the winch. You just want it somewhere you can crank it while standing so I'd say 3 or 4 feet from the base of the long upright.
I don't have a picture of the garage door pulley but it was just a steel pulley about 2-3 inches in diameter. I can't even remember how it attached to the end of the board, sorry. It was a while ago.
I'd think an 8 ft x 12 ft wall would be much easier to raise using this method since your wall jack wouldn't have to be nearly as long as mine. If you attach the hardiboard before you raise the wall it's going to be really heavy though. I've done enough walls with hardiboard siding and I'm determined to never use it again. I hate working with that stuff.
My improvised wall jack actually worked pretty well until the winch broke.
This was still the most difficult and dangerous part of the build to do alone. I was constantly worried a wall was going to fall on me. Overall, I did it all in one day though.
My dad, who was in his early 70's at the time, helped with most of the roof and he still tells his friends how hard that was, but I had the roof framing planned out really well, so even though it was difficult, it pretty much went according to plan. The hardest part was getting the ridge beam up and in place since it was so big and heavy and also getting the OSB sheathing up to the roof. We used a powered winch to lift the 4x8 sheathing panels up on to the roof framing, but I had to support them from underneath as we lifted them so they wouldn't get stuck on anything going up.
I put the steel roof panels and all the other parts of the steel roof up by myself which was not too bad but involved a lot of "acrobatic" roof climbing. I just took my time and didn't rush anything. I think it took six day total.
Finally, it's been eight years since I started the cabin and I'm older now (51) and it's not something I would start at my age. If it burns down or something, I would probably do a shipping container home or something like that. But I'm glad I built the cabin. Nothing has been a major failure. There are some minor things I want to change like using composite decking for the front porch instead of real cedar. I still have quite a few minor projects I want to complete over the next few years.