Category Archives: Construction

As an amateur carpenter, I am always looking for simple and cheap construction tools. Recently, I have been working on improving my roof framing knowledge. During my reading on this topic, I saw this roof pitch protractor in a Journal of Light Construction (JLC) article . Notice how the template has a handle to make hauling it up a ladder easier. To get an accurate roof pitch, all you need to do is clamp a spirit level onto the template – simple, fast, accurate. Continue reading →

I plan on retiring at my lake home in Northern Minnesota. The first step in my retirement preparations is building a large garage on my retirement property that will allow me to work on my various projects – I have not mentioned it before, but I love doing auto body work. I am currently building a garage similar to that shown in Figure 1. Because northern Minnesota is quite cold in the winter, I needed to insulate and heat this structure. This post will review some observations that I made as to the value of insulation and of using modern ventilation systems with heat recovery capability. Continue reading →

Because the winters are hard in this part of the country, I have become interested in the insulation value of different types of wall construction. My contractor has his preferred approach, and I am curious as to how it compares with other framing methods.

In this post, I will put together a simple model for computing the R-value of different types of wall construction. This analysis will provide me a quantitative basis for understanding which methods are the most economically sound. Continue reading →

In this post, I will show how to generalize my previous stair solution to handle these three cases. I also present some illustrations of what is involved in adjusting the stairs. The general solution used a Mathcad program to compute both the final riser height and the thickness of the shims or trim cuts required for each step. In general, you may need a combination of shims and trim cuts to resolve a riser height problem caused by changes in flooring height. Continue reading →

I am an amateur carpenter, and I work hard to ensure that I always comply with the applicable building codes. The various codes include requirements for a properly nailed joint (examples). Since I like to understand where these requirements come from, I have been the reading some sections of the National Design Specification for Wood Construction (NDS) that address fastening. During my reading, I saw many interesting formulas associated with determining the NDS design ratings for nail withdrawal (covered here) and lateral force resistance – the subject of this post. Continue reading →