Lulu said, "Please please build me a boat house." Part 4

As a disclaimer, this is not an instructional blog.  So don't attempt this.  And if you do its at your own risk.  We are not experts.  Some of the stuff dad and I did on this project was pretty dangerous and risky.   Suffice it to say that we've been pretty lucky so far.

For the previous blog I wrote about the boat lift installation.   Now its time to write about the roof framing.   Unfortunately,  I do not have cost estimates in this blog like I indicted they would be in the last blog.  Mega apologies to my readers who were expecting that material in this blog.  Once the boat house is finished they will be made available.  Here is a sneak peak of the roof framing.

Due to the excessive heat here in Florida where it gets to 95 degrees in the broiling hot sun and the feels like temperature reaches 108 degrees, the boat house progress has been going slowly.   Currently,  I have been putting in 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening on weekends to avoid the merciless sun during the afternoon.  Its so bad that when I work in one spot for an extended period of time I can see a large puddle of sweat form on the scaffolding plank below me.  This link sums accurately what summer time in Florida feels like.

I also work sometimes in the evening during the week, but have been allowing myself some free time to hang out with friends at the fun runs here in town.  Typically we run a 5K from a restaurant that hosts this event and when we are done we sit down in the restaurant drenched in sweat and cool off with a nice cold beer like my favorite beer Shock Top or a unusual beer like Hopseucutioner.  Nothing makes a beer taste better than having one after working out in the Florida heat.

So back to the subject at hand, when faced with the prospect of building the roof, I realized that the height of the structure was pretty high and getting dangerous if I were to fall off.  Its about 15 feet.  The first thing I did was invest some time in some very good scaffolding.  I ran four rows of planking two planks wide along the top of boat house frame and nailed those planks down securely to the 8 x 8 cross beams.  Even though the planking was terrific it was shaky and I was to scared /  smart to walk it since there was no hand rails.  Yep, I crawled it until there was structure to hold on to.  It was rough on the knees.

 

Once the planking was in, I had a decision to make.  What kind of roof would I build.  Actually I designed a hip roof and it was part of the plans that the building department had approved. But to me what I want to build is all open to change until its actually built.  And even then I might tear it down and build something else.

Throughout the entire time that I have had the permit for the boat house (1 year 8 months), I was set on building an amazing hip roof that would shine out across the canal like a beacon of light.  Sometimes I had arguments with my dad about it because he was thinking it would be easier to build a gable roof.  That's probably true due to all the complicated compound angles that the lumber has to be cut to to make the hip roof.  But I don't always do things because they are easy and I almost always over build things.  Not only that I felt that the hip roof would fit in nicely with the rest of the neighborhood because that is what every one else has.

But now it was time to actually build it.  I took a spin in the boat and started looking at boat house roofs once again.  I came to the realization that hip roofs for boat houses were the most common type of roof in the neighborhood but gable roofs were also pretty prevalent.  As I compared the two and got a feel as to how they would look on my boat house I had a sort revelation.  The hip roof was actually a kind of a silly looking roof.   Especially the ones that have a shallow pitch and don't complement the height of the boat house structure.

I also realized the boat houses in the neighborhood were kind of silly.   They had no walls!   This would mean that the elements like rain, wind and sun would get to the boat.  I knew this to be true as I have a table in the middle of a cedar covered porch and it gets soaked when the wind and rain pick up.  The roof then only helps a little in protecting the boat from the elements but is really more for esthetics.

With this new prospective, my blinders had come off and I felt that the gable roof would look better on the boat house I am building.  I even considered putting walls on the boat house but that is scope creep and I just need to get the permits done.  Focus on the goal!  So I committed to the gable roof.  I just can't wait to see what the inspector says when he sees a gable roof instead of the hip roof called for in the plans.  Will they fail my inspection and make me get the plans signed off by the engineer again?  We shall see.

Designing the gable roof wasn't too hard.   I decided building a 12/5 pitch (12 inches horizontal run to every 5 inches vertical rise) roof would make the gable end look large enough to be pleasing to the eye.  I also decided to use rafters instead of trusses which makes the building process easier for a single person.  The rafter span is about 7.5 feet and the spacing between rafters is 2 feet.  The handy dandy rafter / joist span tables found here and design values for lumber found here helped me to settle on using 2 x 6 southern yellow pine treated lumber for the rafters.   This more than meets the 20 psf live load / 10 psf dead load requirement to meet code.   

To help in the design and to get an idea on how to build a gable roof, I watched these three very informative videos 1 , 2 and 3 which are by a professional carpenter named Larry Haun.   There are many more videos by him and they are some what dated but his work quality, efficiency and skill level is amazing.  Also I found this shorter video helpful too.

My first step then was to put the ridge beam up.  I used a 2 x 8 lumber and unlike the videos where Larry has a helper to help him set the beam up, I did it myself.  To do this I first used a laser level to find out that from one end of the boat house to the other (30') there was an inch of slope.  Considering the unevenness of the large lumber and the use of the crude chainsaw to cut the pilings off to the same height, this was not to bad and was something I could work with.  I consider making the ridge beam follow the slope of the boat house but instead settled on making the beam level and I split the 1" difference by making it  a 1/2" low on one side and a 1/2" inch high on the other side.

Next I made 6 extra pair of hands out of old waste lumber.  These lumber hands had a slot to put the ridge beam in loosely.  The beam itself is made of three 2 x8 boards.  Initially the hands held the 3 beams lower than they had to be.  To make them the right height I lifted them up by hand (about an inch) to the right height and then temporary nailed them to the lumber hands.  Using this method, I was able make the ridge beam level by running the level down the top of the ridge and securing each board in place when it was level. The lumber hands holding the ridge beam is shown in the picture below.

Once the ridge beam was up, I marked the boat house for two foot spacing for the rafters.   The marks I placed were on the top plates and on the ridge beam.  This turned out to be one of the most important steps I did in constructing the roof frame.   This insured that each rafter was placed accurately and square and it was also very helpful for cutting the sheathing to size.

Next I prepared the rafters.  First, I cut the ridge diagonal on the rafter and much to my surprise I was able to use the 22.5 degree notch on my Dewalt miter saw.  Apparently I was on to something with the 12/5 pitch I chose.  Each rafter was cut precisely the same length by using a board length stop with the miter saw.  Getting all the rafters the same length is a very important thing to do when building the roof and makes the sheathing step go much smoother.  I also cut the diagonals for the overhang so that the ends would allow the Facia to be vertical.  This is known as a plumb cut which is shown in the picture below below in addition to a birds mouth which rests on the top plate.

 

I also used my scales on my circular saw for the first time.  The 22.5 degree notch and depth gauge was very useful and quick to adjust to for cutting the birds mouth. One thing I learned by looking at the code is the birds mouth cannot be more than 1/3 of the width of the board.  This allows the tail end to support a decent load without breaking.  Unfortunately, the top plates were not  quite accurately placed in the distance from the ridge beam.  They varied about 3/4 of an inch along the 30' length of the boat house.  This meant I had to make some adjustments to the position of the bird's mouth or elongate some of them I had already cut.  This resulted in a small variation in height from one rafter to another but not enough to worry about.

To check the height of the rafters relative one another dad recommended that I string the middle of the rafters along the length of the boat house.  I didn't do this.  They all looked pretty good just I by eyeballing except the one overhang rafter at the gable end which was about an inch lower at the tail.  I figured the discrepancy would be covered up with the drip edge and I also didn't want to hang my body over the edge of the gable end to fix it so I decided not to.

Another reason I was not to keen on fixing it was I shot my finger with the nail gun while working on that troublesome gable end.   What can I say.  I was holding a board beneath the 2 x 4 verge plate that I was attaching it to and instead of the nail securing the plate to the board it attempted to secure it to my finger.  My hand was just to close to the verge plate and the nail missed the board.   Why did this happen?  It was starting to rain and I was rushing to meet my goal to get the gable end done. 

Needless to say, the nail gun is definitely a dangerous tool.  A nail gun can fling a nail at 1500 ft / second.  A gun can fling a bullet at 1500 ft / second.   They should be handled in the same manner.  Every year it causes 42000 injuries in the US and 338 million per year is spent on medical care.  In my case I got away with lots of  band aids.
 
As what happened in my case holding a board to close to what your nailing is not recommended.  Even if the nail hits the wood correctly it might also hit a knot and bend out and make contact with your hand.  I have also had the nail gun double nail by bouncing and the second nail go flying across the room.  So it is important not to nail towards your body whenever possible.  In addition a nail should not be fired into a knot or another nail because it may ricochet

Another situation that is dangerous is the nail gun bump setting.  When using the bump setting you hold the trigger tight and every time you bump the wood with the nail gun it puts a nail in.    For safety you should never press the trigger when your not nailing.  If you do when using the bump setting and accidentally hit the nose of the gun against your body you will get nailed.  Dad recommends to never use the bump setting because it is so dangerous.

A few days later, I finished putting on the verge plate and outriggers to create the overhang at the gable end.  Every time I ran my finger into some object I was reminded of my mistake with the nail gun.  Boy did it hurt and there was only so much banging of the finger against hard objects that I could take before I had to quit.  Hera are a few pictures of the roof framing work below.

 

In the pictures below the collar ties and ridge supports are visible.  A collar tie is a tension tie in the upper third of opposing gable rafters that is intended to resist rafter separation from the ridge because of wind or unbalanced roof loads.

 

To help the roof withstand hurricanes, I added a MTS12 hurricane strap on every rafter.  This strap is made to attach to the plate and wrap around the rafter although it doesn't have to to achieve its full 1000 lb uplift rating.  The air tool know as the palm nailer is extremely helpful in getting this task done quickly.  See picture below showing the straps:

Once the roof framing was done I felt that I could take off the first story scaffolding which I used to construct the boat lift structure.  With the scaffolding removed, I was able to put the Bimini back on the boat and finally test out the boat lift to see if it was tall enough to lift the boat out of the water with the Bimini in the up position.  In fact there are a couple of lifts in the neighborhood where the owner has to take the Bimini down each time to raise the boat out of the water just because the Bimini would run into the top of the boat house.  Raising and lowering the Bimini would be a 20 minute ordeal for my boat.  Below is the picture of  the boat lifted out of the water and the Bimini in the up position.  It always gives me great pleasure when things are built the right way.

So that finishes the roof framing discussion and at this point my finger has healed up nicely and I seem none the worse for it.  Nevertheless I watched some nail gun safety videos (they are gruesome) to reinforce the idea that safety is the number one priority on the construction site.  Not a goal or the schedule.

There are only a few tasks left to finish off the boat lift.   They are to sheath and shingle the roof and finish off the electrical.   One issue remains though.  The 12/5 roof pitch is not that steep to a professional roofer but it is hard to do work on it safely without falling off.  See what I do in the next blog to finish off the remaining tasks in a safe and careful manner.

Happy Building!

The Dr.