Building A House: Day 19

Lately I’ve been reminded that I never finished documenting how we built our own small house. I didn’t think anyone even read that series. Interestingly enough, I’ve had several people ask me about it this week, so let’s jump back into it now that I’ve found my notes.

This will be a little chaotic until I get back into the swing of things. Deciphering my notes is like translating some ancient language. On day 18 we finished placing the upper rafters.

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We then began securing all the rafters. Thus, according to my notes, we spent the entire day 19 placing spacers and hurricane straps (Simpson straps).

It’s hard to believe that it took the whole day for that, but the notes don’t lie. If I remember correctly, we had 15 upper rafters and 15 lower rafters. That would require 14 spacers on the top and 14 on the bottom.

Maybe I should clarify what I’m calling spacers. The rafters were 16″ on center, so there would be 14.5″ of void space between each rafter. Therefore, a 14.5″ spacer was placed in between each rafter on the top of the rafters and the bottom of the rafters.

The spacers were then placed on top of the top wall plates. They provide rigidity to the rafters as well as filling in the void space between each rafter. Without them, even after the exterior walls were finished, there would still be a gap between the rafters and above the wall.

This took a long time because it was all ladder work. Constantly climbing up and down the ladder and repositioning it makes a simple task unending.

To further reinforce each rafter, we added Simpson straps to both the upper and lower ends of the rafters. The straps allow for more surface area of the rafters to be secured to the top wall plates. They’re called hurricane straps for a reason, and I’m thankful that we took the time to install them.

The front of our house has a 4′ overhang from the shed roof. Since we’ve finished building the house there have been some dangerously strong wind storms. Every single time it gets windy I envision that overhang acting like a sail to tear the entire roof off the house.

Thankfully, the hurricane straps are doing their job wonderfully. It might have taken us a little bit of extra work, but the peace of mind in knowing our house is more secure is well worth it.