Odd's & Ends Finished Off - Dragon Ties & BL1's

Back on site today & loads to do to catch up with Marty's house so that we are ready to have the facia's attached as well.    Again, we spent our time finishing off little jobs that needed doing.  Rich was away from site today, so we were working with Joey & mainly tried to get all of our bracing elements done to stop uplift.

We inserted a BL1 on the interior wall.  As we had not done before fixing the wall down, it was a little tricker to achieve.  We had to measure out the length of a trim stud to put against the stud rather than try and get the bracing attached to the existing wall stud (this is so that it doesn't affect wall fixings to the stud & also because it is easier to feed the strap under the bottom plate here, than near the stud).  Before we attached the trimming stud, we routed out a thickness of 4mm deep and 300mm long on it, which was to provide an area where the strap could sit so that it was flush with the wall frame surface.  This was also done on the bottom plate where the strap would sit.  To do the trimming stud checking, we used a skill saw (but a router would also have done the trick) & for the bottom plate

we used the chisel & hammer method.    Once the trim stud was attached, we then thread the strap under the bottom plate, by jacking it up with a dogyu bar.  Once done it was run up the trim stud 300mm & secured using 6/30x0.25mm nails on each side.  At a minimum of 100mm, a bolt was also put down in the bottom pate to the floor joist below the floorboard.  

Exterior wall braces also done, this involved a double metal strap running down adjacent studs to the boundary floor joist.  The same method was applied with routing out an area for the strap to sit, however nails to fix it in had to be spaced so that there were 6/30x0.25 in the stud, 3/30's in the bottom plate & 6/30's in the boundary joist.  No bolt required in this area.

We also inserted the dragon ties today.  These had to be inserted at a 45degree angle and could be no more than 2.4m from outside wall inwards (along the span).  These were secured along the bottom chord on flat, with 2/100's on each truss it crossed over.  An additional nog had to be inserted to fix the end of the dragon tie to.  These were skew nailed in with 100's as well.  Dragon ties were inserted over the lounge area on either corner.  These were needed due to the lack of interior walls in this area to add support to the loads running through the walls from the roof trusses.