Only with Jorgies

[Bob Smalser]

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[Don C Peterson]

Invention's mother must be proud!

Now if that's your house you are building, you are one lucky guy. What a beautiful location.

[Jim Dunn]

Coming along nicely on the homestead I see Bob. Those clamps are being put thru their paces as well.

[Bill Brehme]

HEADACHE!!!:eek: Just kiddin':D

[Dennis McDonaugh]

Bob, is that the same house you were working on last year?

[Brett Baldwin]

That's where the price of good clamps becomes a moot point. Looks like your floor will have a nice place to rest on. Being who you are I've got to ask, are those beams hand hewn?

[Bob Smalser]

....are those beams hand hewn?

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And yes, we've been working on this house for a couple-three years now. When your time comes, remember it's not as easy to break away from your business interests as you might think it is. ;)

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Here I've installed and leveled the 5X12's for the cantilever base. Once the remainder of the joists are hung, those cantilever beams will be rimmed with double 2X12's on the face and extending 45 degrees back to the rim joists on the outside of each cantilever beam.

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The hooded bay window in question is the one on the ground floor lower left.

You can also see heavy 1 1/4" allthread bolts and connectors at the building's corners in my top pic. Allthread will eventually extend all the way from foundation to rafter plate. I'm not dreaming this stuff up...it was all engineered to meet the local earthquake codes.

All the solid wood you see was milled from the DF trees cleared from the site and thinned from the surrounding forest. Sills, rafters and cantilever framing are all 100% heartwood for rot resistance. Once closed in by a floor, all that airdried wood will be sprayed and scrubbed with a bleach solution to remove any mold and dirt.

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The basement is insulated with 4 1/2" of hard styrofoam which were the concrete forms we left in place. Brick veneer was applied atop expanded galvanized lath and poly-modified thinset mortar mixed with liquid acrylic, which is more epoxy than mortar.

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Betty erected most of the foundation formwork, and set the bricks. And now that Hitachi makes nail guns that shoot real nails....galvanized common 10 and 16d nails with full heads...will frame walls with me, too. ;)

[Brett Baldwin]

Looks like a great beginning to a beautiful home Bob.

With all the codes they have for earthquakes, I'm surprised someone hasn't come up with a high tensile strength jello foundation that would absorb the energy. It could go between the concrete and crush and let the whole house float during the shaking.

[Bob Smalser]

Looks like a great beginning to a beautiful home Bob.

With all the codes they have for earthquakes, I'm surprised someone hasn't come up with a high tensile strength jello foundation that would absorb the energy. It could go between the concrete and crush and let the whole house float during the shaking.

The only thing all those anchors achieve is keeping the wood box intact so it doesn't collapse on you. With all those bolts and straps crowding the concrete beneath the sills, the upper 2 feet of the foundation will disintegrate in the big one, and the house'll likely have to be torn down anyway. Only demolition will be a lot harder than usual. ;)

[Mike Henderson]

With all the codes they have for earthquakes, I'm surprised someone hasn't come up with a high tensile strength jello foundation that would absorb the energy. It could go between the concrete and crush and let the whole house float during the shaking.
Here in California they do put buildings on flexible footings - you don't see it on houses but large buildings are often done that way. You know those vibration isolation devices that you can use to mount an electric motor with? Well the devices they use on building look like giant versions of those things - and there's a bunch of them between the foundation and the building.

Not only do they build new buildings that way, but they retrofit old buildings with them. They actually "tunnel" under a working building while people continue to work there, lay a new foundation and put these isolation devices in. All the plumbing has to be connected with fittings that will move when the building moves - otherwise the pipes would break.

Very interesting to see a retrofit done - and very expensive.

Mike

[Brett Baldwin]

How are the straps going to help when the shoreline moves 100 miles inland? :)

I've seen those Mike. I imagine it only slightly less expensive to retrofit than to do it all again.

I saw a program about Tokyo buildings and they had one where the top was a counterbalance to the rest of the building. It was on rollers of some sort that allowed the building below to move and it would act as sort of a reverse pendulum.

[Bob Smalser]

I've seen those Mike. I imagine it only slightly less expensive to retrofit than to do it all again.



I have sufficient large footings in the center of the basement that if the box remained intact but the basement walls disintegrated all the way to the bottom of all those 18"-deep anchor bolts and straps, I could maneuver some steel beams and jacks beneath the house, jack the box up, and convert the remaining basement walls into a crawl space using jackhammers and saws. ;)

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[Brett Baldwin]

It seems like my great-grandchildren might be hearing about this amazingly stout house on the shore of a small lake in the Northwest on the DIY 2100 holo-channel Bob. When I get to the point of building my dream house, I think I'd like to hash out a few ideas with you.