My wall is bigger than Trump's wall...Part 2

In the previous blog I discussed my decision to make a 1.5 foot retaining wall.  Once I made this decision I got to work digging.   In the beginning of digging the trench behind the seawall, I didn't know how much of the retaining wall I was going to do for the first pour.  Keep in mind at this stage it was all an experiment and I wasn't really sure it was going to work.  I pondered if I should do a test pour for 20' of wall.  Part of me wanted to see instant results to alleviate my doubts and besides digging was taking so long.  But every time the concrete pump guy comes out its $250.  So realized I wanted to minimize this expense.  Eventually I ended up doing two pours as a compromise.  One was for 36' of wall, the other was for 44' of wall.  

Digging was tough.  I wanted to dig as deep as the water depth on the canal side of the seawall.  But I found that I could only get to within a foot of that depth and then no further due to the sand filling it back in.  Did I mention I was digging in waist deep water?  The water was soothing and kept me cool during some very hot days but it was a muddy smelly mess and I couldn't help to think about all the bacteria and what not that was in the water.  In fact in the past I shined a light out over the water at night and it is amazing to see hundreds little sea creatures appear.  For that reason I decided to never swim in the river.  And yet here I was waist deep in water.  Not only that brown algae was present at the time in the lagoon making the visibility less than 6".

Here is a picture of the trench I was digging.  Notice the dead man tie bars that hold the seawall up.

As I was digging in the watery trench, I noticed a few flounder floating in the canal.  I had never seen flounder in the canal yet alone realized they even existed in the canal.  But it didn't dawn on me till later that there was a reason the flounder were floating on top of the water and not the bottom like they usually do.  They were having trouble breathing and were coming to surface for air.

 

A day later there was a massive fish kill in the Indian river lagoon.  What had happened was the brown algae had grown so prolifically in the lagoon that it had used up all the oxygen in the water and it killed the thousands of fish.  Check out this link and this link for more info on the fish kill.
 
The lagoon is filled with water that is not circulated or exchanged with fresh water very much.  There is a port to the north about 20 miles (port Canaveral) where ocean water comes in but that is under lock control.  The port to the south (Sebastian) where ocean water is free flowing but it is 40 miles away.  Because of this the canal water is not tidal and only goes up and down when it rains.

Being immersed in this brown algae water and with all these fish dying made me wonder if the brown algae was toxic to humans but after some internet browsing I came across some articles that said it wasn't

During this period I came home one day after work and it smelled like hydrogen sulfide gas or rotten eggs.  It was so bad that I drove away from the neighborhood and contemplated staying in a hotel.  But I came back and turned on the air freshener in the house and stuck it out.  In fact one of my neighbors called the fire department that day and reported a gas leak but when they came out they found no leaks and explained to him that it was the rotting fish that was causing the smell.

With the fish kill and the terrible state of the water,  I understood now why I was required to go through all this effort to build a swail.  The swail was to help protect the lagoon from pollutants such as oils, tars, fertilizers and other pollutants that would normally be carried by rain water run off into canal.  It would cause the runoff to be filtered by the sandy soil before entry into the water.  It is well known that the brown algae really likes the lawn fertilizers and that is what killed the fish and made the lagoon look so terrible.

Digging was going slow and I was really worried that the water level which was low would rise to above the dock as it had last year making my job even worse.   One of the reasons why it was so slow was the filter cloth which was buried in the soil.  This stuff was buried deep and hard to get out especially when there was tree roots involved.  I resorted to attaching  the end of the cloth to a 1500 lb harbor freight electric winch.  The winch worked somewhat but I had to do a lot of digging to assist it.  Because of these issues I decided to get day laborers to help me.

I had always wanted to see what it would be like to hire somebody to help me.  There is really only one legal way to get someone to help you on your house if your going to pay them.  They must have workers comp insurance.  A licensed contractor will have this insurance, however since I didn't want to pay $16800 to hire him and since I don't own a construction business that has insurance for employees, I hired day laborers with insurance through the company they worked for.

The rate for a trench digger is $17 an hour part of which is to pay for that insurance.  Every day I wanted a trench digger I got someone different and I ended up with five different people helping me out.  I think the one important thing I discovered was I could dig the trench twice as fast as they could.  However, with the day laborers I did end up with another point of view on what I was doing.  Every time some one came out they would say something like why are you not using a back hoe.  It was a funny comment.  Using a back hoe would put them out of their trench digging job.  Nobody really wants to dig trenches!  haha.  I would explain that the property was sloped and I was afraid the back hoe would end up in the water.  Also I thought I could get the trench dug by hand for cheaper than the back hoe rental.

One laborer with another perspective recommended I use a bigger winch or come along to get the filter cloth out.  This hadn't occurred to me actually since I had relied on the harbor freight winch for all my construction work.  It was a golden nugget of an idea.   And luckily the winch broke as it usually does so I returned it and I picked up a come along for 30 dollars at harbor freight.

The come along was amazing.  For 30 dollars I could apply 8000 lbs of force to the filter cloth all without electricity.  The filter cloth came out much easier with it.  In fact I was able to get all the filter cloth out except where it was pinned down with concrete.  Remember in the earlier blog I mentioned unloading bags of cement in holes to plug them?  The filter cloth not coming out in two spots was the result of that.  With the 8000 lbs of force applied to the filter cloth pinned down by concrete the filter cloth started to rip.  In the end I just cut the filter cloth off at the bottom of the trench and moved my digging operation down the line.

Here is picture of the come along in action.

 This a good picture of the filter cloth being pulled by the come along.

 

There were a couple of other things I found when digging the trench.  In one case I had found some old seawall sheet material.  Apparently in the past the seawall had been repaired and the old sheet material had just been left there.  This repair was not successful as the seawall in that spot had a five foot long horizontal break in it.  I didn't try to hard to get the sheet out, I just figured I couldn't.  The decision was made to leave it be and cover it with cement when the time came. 

The other thing I found was my tape measure.  I was very happy to have found it. Yep.  I had lost it in the watery trench about 6 months ago.  It actually worked for about a day.  Then it froze up.  But that's not the end of the story.  It was a Kobalt tape measure which means it has a lifetime warranty so I got a new one at Lowes no charge.  Based on my experience with tape measures and how they always break, I highly recommend either a Kobalt or Husky (Home Depot) tape measure due to their lifetime warranties. 

In addition to the trench I also dug the new dead men and tie bar holes.  A dead man is required to be a concrete pad 3' by 2' by 1' buried 2' deep.  The tie bars are 5/8" galvanized rebar about 10' to 12' long with a hook at one end that is buried in the pad and a plate at the other end which is placed in the wall.  There is supposed to be a dead man every 10' along the wall.  However, all these code requirements are for building a seawall.  I was actually building a retaining wall for landscaping purposes and not altering the existing seawall.  But just in case I put them in.  Since the old dead men were still good and went through the new wall, I ended up with 18 dead men along the 80' of wall.  That wall is going nowhere.

Below is picture of a new dead man tie bar hole set up.  The galvanized rod is in the picture but I had not bent it yet so that there is no hook visible.  Also in the picture are some white sprinkler pipes.

I used the trench diggers for the first 36 feet.  They cost me $487 dollars.  Together without a good winch we spent 52 hours of trench digging.  For the second half I dug 44' of trench myself with the aid of the come along and it took me 24 hours.  For the second half the learning curve for the job was over at this point I had become a hell of a digging machine.  It showed in my callousey hands and bigger muscles.

After the trench was done on the first half, I took to building the forms.  Luckily dad was able to help me 2000 miles away.

To be continued

Happy Building!

The Dr







 

My wall is bigger than Trump's wall...Part 1

After about 1.5 years of renovating the house (I added a cedar covered porch in the back, expanded a single car garage to a two car garage in the front and worked on  the boat house) while holding a full time job I found myself at the point where I needed to work on landscaping.  Since I live by a canal which connects to the sensitive banana river I am required by the department of natural resources to build a swail.

A swail is a shallow depression and in my case it is about 5 feet wide 60 feet long and 3" deep.  Because of the additional square footage, there is the concern that the runoff from the roof will go into the river.  The swail helps capture the runoff before it goes into the river so that the water is filtered by the sand before it enters the canal.

However, there is  steep slope in the yard due to the fact that the house is about 5 feet above the water level in the canal and the house only sits 20 feet away from the water.   Because of this the swail becomes ridiculously deep on the house side in order for it to have a level base. 

Another problem that I as well as many other homeowners around the area have is that the seawall is made of corrugated sheet material that allows dirt to pass through its seams.  Over time this results in a watery trench behind the wall.  Its a tripping hazard and the steep slope near the seawall doesn't help.

Many home owners in the neighborhood have put in new vinyl seawalls that are as much as three feet higher than the old seawall.   The u shaped vinyl pieces are placed in the water and sunk down into the sand with a jet pump.  The vinyl is then capped off at the top and the wall is anchored to the land by using tie bars attached to cement pads located 12' from the seawall buried in the sand.  The cement pad and tie bar combination is known as a dead man.  Then fill dirt is placed behind the new wall and the old wall is covered up.  The end result is very nice and seems very durable.  The only problem is the water becomes somewhat inaccessible due to the seawalls new height.  But the homeowners are prepared for global warming!  The price of such an installation is $210 per linear foot or about $16,800 for the 80' of seawall I have.  I think those professionals should work a step into the design to allow easier access to the water.

Below is an example of some typical seawalls used to replace the 70 year old corrugated asbestos seawall that was originally put in the neighborhood.  The one on the left uses pressure treated wood and the other uses vinyl sheets.  Note the height of the vinyl seawall.

My seawall seemed fine even though it was 70 years old.  There was a 5 foot long horizontal crack in one section of the seawall and the seawall was tilting out at the bottom about 6 inches but even so it was good for another 50 years.  However it did leak sand.  One method that is commonly used around here to fix the leak is to use filter cloth.  This black plastic holey cloth lets water pass but not sand.  The idea is to dig a trench behind the seawall and run a 6 foot wide filter cloth sheet all the way along the 80' of seawall and then back fill with sand  Theoretically the idea should work.  However, for one reason or another the filter cloth over time slips down into the ground and you end up with the same leaky sand problem.  For my seawall this was done about 15 years ago.

When sand leaks out in one spot around the seawall a common method for a quick fix is to throw bags of dry cement in the hole.   This theoretically should work and the cement should harden an plug the leak.   I personally unloaded several bags of cement in the holes that appeared along the seawall as I was living in the house over the years but it always seemed that it did not really fix the problem or if it did it was temporary.

There are many other ways to fix the leaky sand problem on seawalls.  However I had a land height problem as well.  I considered putting in a new vinyl seawall myself, but I had two issues.  I would have to remove and redo the dock and there was coquina rock next to the seawall making it hard to sink the vinyl sheets.  Because of this and the pricey cost of using a contractor to do it, I decided to build a 1.5' cement retaining wall behind the seawall with a deep footer all by myself.   I don't think anyone in the area has approached the problem this way.  So it ended up being new territory to explore and new methods to develop.  Little did I know I was in for some really shitty work.

To be continued in the next blog

Happy Building!

The Dr

Cinder block work is so easy

Often times do it yourselfers will call in the professionals to help them along with a construction project.  There are many reasons for the request such as the task is just beyond and above the do it yourselfer's skill or abilities or maybe time is an issue and the do it yourselfer doesn't want to spend the rest of his life working on the project.  A lot of the times the reason is waaaa don't wanna...

So lets talk about the definition of DIY.  Really its kind of like the term made in America.   The Made in America mark is a label indicating the product is "all or virtually all" made in the United States.  Sounds simple right?  But wait it is a little more complicated.  Consider a car.   An “American” car sold in in the USA may have rolled off an assembly line in Tennessee with parts made in a dozen different countries.  As long as 75% of the manufacturing costs are US related then the car can be considered made in America.  This link is kinda funny and yet depressing at the same time.

The term DIY has the same problem.  For the blog I have been defining DIY as not using contractors.  For example dad and I made the concrete slab for garage ourselves.  But we did not mix the concrete ourselves. we did not drive the cement truck over to the house ourselves.  We did not cut down the trees and mill our own wood for the forms.  We did not grow the trees to get the wood.  We did not make the truck to haul the cement.  And it goes on an on.  So when you are a do it yourselfer you stand on the shoulders of many others in this great vast and cooperative society which allows us to do great things and then take all the credit for it.  I found this link kinda funny.

For the garage addition, dad and I decided to get the block work done by professionals.  Our reason was we wanted to speed things up.  On one hand I was a little disappointed in our decision since I would not be learning how to do block work but on the other hand I was excited that I would not have to wait three months to finish the block work phase of the project.

To do this we looked at the building departments list of licensed contractors and made a few calls.  We got a few estimates and went with the cheapest block contractor.

To prepare for the block builders, dad and I had to trim the tails off the roof trusses to get it ready for the girder truss.   The face of the girder truss had to interface with the cut off tails which required the tails to be flush to the girder truss.  To cut the tails accurately we used a string line along all the truss tails so that all cuts were the same length  This allowed for the Simpson brackets to be securely fastened to the old truss ends and the new girder truss.

 It turns out that a colleague of mine at work had hired some professionals to make an addition that required the same truss tail trimming task that dad and I were faced with.  "The professionals" did not use a string and naturally the tails came out all different lengths.  What a rookie mistake!  In the end new lumber had to be scabbed on the old trusses so that the girder truss could be connected to the old trusses in an acceptable manner.

The picture below shows an example of what we did.  Also shown in the picture is the truss repair we had to do to two of the trusses.  The trusses were damaged when the front wall was ripped down.  To repair the truss properly we contacted a professional engineer and he gave us some drawings to follow for $300.  The repair basically consisted of plywood,  southern yellow pine two by fours, construction adhesive and lots of nailing in a prescribed pattern.

   

Once the roof was trimmed the block builders came in and did their thing.   They were quite quick having the whole job done in three days.

Some of the key components of the job include the rebar installation and the lintel.  In the above picture the lintel is a cement and rebar filled steel beam that supports the wall and roof above for the garage opening.  The lintel was empty when the block layers placed it which is in contrast to a preformed concrete lintel which would be too heavy lift without a crane of sorts.  Below the rebar along the bond beam is shown.

 

If you look close you can see the rebar in the hollow metal lintel in the picture below.

 

In addition to the bond beams columns of the wall were filled with cement and rebar.  Below shows the inspection holes in the cells used to show that cement made it all the way to the bottom of the wall when it is filled.  You can see the rebar sticking up from the slab and the rebar that is tied to it to go up the wall.

 

The block layers were quick and the work they did was on the rough side.  One thing they did to make the wall was to cut a hole in the existing roof so they could slide some rebar down in on of the cells of the wall.  Because they cut through the flashing it caused me a major headache down the road.  In fact I repaired the roof five times in that location to try to get it ti stop leaking.   I think the most valuable lesson I learned from the repair was not to nail through the flashing and to be one with water flow when fixing a leak. Ommmmm.

Another shortcut they did was to use steel (instead of galvanized) bolts to anchor the wood goal posts that the garage door rails are fastened to.  In the end they got rusty sitting outside so when I was ready to use them I had to wire brushed them off and spray Rustoleum galvanizing compound on them.

So the question is did I save anything when I hired a contractor to do the work for me?  Surprisingly yes.  The reason being is that I was acting as a general contractor.  Typically general contractors charge 10 to 15 percent on top of the whole project cost.   The cost of putting in 47 feet of cinder block wall was $2850.

So about $430 dollar was saved.  Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building!

The Dr

High end cedar porch construction: the finale

In the previous blog putting the heavy awkward rafters up by myself was discussed.  The result was beautiful and the structure looked like a pergola.   I pondered should I stop and leave it as is? No way Jose!  Now it was time to put on the planking.  Really the planking  has two functions.  One is to provide the finished ceiling and the other is to provide the roof sheathing to attach the shingles.  Since  I was required to use use roofing nails that were 1.25" to attach the shingles, I had to use  2" inch thick planking otherwise the nails would poke through the ceiling and make an unsightly mess

The 1.25" nails were galvanized which is not a good for cedar since it will make a black stain.  However, I figured (time will tell) that since the nail did not go all the way through the planking and was covered by shingles that I would never see the black marks.

I almost went with a tongue and grove system.  But in the end I decided on using ship lap with a beveled edge.  To make the ship lap I used my harbor freight dado blade on my table saw and cut the lap in in one pass.  It was actually a pretty big cut to take out of the wood all at once but I was impatient.  In fact my saw blade would slow down a lot and the saw would get all choked up with saw dust requiring that I clean the port out when it was running.

Below is a picture of the table saw setup.  Notice I have fence that embeds the dado blade, one feather board to press the board down to the table and two feather boards to keep the board up against the fence.  This assured that the ship lap is consistently and precisely cut every time.  I probably could have used another feather board to press the board to the table on the out feed end.

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In addition to the ship lap joint I used my Milwaukee router to bevel the edges.  Below are 6 ship lap boards after they have been finished with Olympic elite wood land oil.

Installing Planking can have its challenges.  It can be warped and when it is installed it can end up uneven and unsightly.  One thing I had going for me was the top plate or main beam was really close to being parallel to the house and the rafters were all really close to the same length.  So my attention to detail in the beginning meant I was set up for success.

To combat the problem of warped wood, I devised a system to take out the twists and turns making all the planks straight and parallel to each other.  To do this I made use of pipe clamps which pressed the wood together and made the lap joints tight.  In the end this required some long pipe clamps as more and more planks were added and even using multiple pipe clamps to grab on to each other to get the job done.

 

To fasten the planks to the rafters I used 3.5" stainless steel ring shank nails.  I put three nails in per rafter.

During the design phase of this project the designer was very insistent on using diagonal bracing to shore up the cedar porch.  But dad who had structural engineering experience knew it was unnecessary.  We submitted the design without diagonals to the professional engineer and he passed it. When the designer found this out he said, "he bought it" referring to the professional engineer and indicated that the p.e. would sign anything.  I decided to trust my dad on the diagonal brace issue and went to building the the porch.

It was actually quite wobbly in the beginning before I had installed the planks which made me think that maybe some diagonal bracing needed to be done.  But when I finished adding all the planks, the porch was as solid and sturdy as a brick shit house and wasn't going anywhere.  Dad was right!

After the planking, I had a number of finishing tasks for the porch like putting on the fascia and drip edge all along the perimeter.  The end result was beautiful and shown below.

 

 

 

 

In the end I am so glad that I stuck with the cedar porch idea.  But the question is, did I save anything by doing this work myself?  Exactly how much I saved is hard to estimate.   I really doubt that I could find any one in town to do the custom cedar porch that I had made.  Because I did it myself and went through several iterations of design I was able to get in touch with what I really wanted.  In fact I'm sure people have asked a contractor to do work for them and then realize once it is all done that its not what they really wanted and they end up unhappy.  Case in point what I had originally conceived of when I started the porch is totally different then what I ended up with.

But what rate would  a contractor charge?  I know one thing for sure is that every time I asked for a change in the plans, which there were many, the cost would go up a lot and it would be way more than the initial estimate.

My estimate is as follows:

For materials cost I spent about $7050.  The complete break down of materials is listed below:

$7.54       dowels

$30.13     gloves

$237.03   nails

$154.41   Simpson connectors, anchors

$17.47     anchors

$12.69     sand

$33.74     ledger anchors

$4329.32 cedar

$14.97     saw dust bags

$326.4     olympic oil

$89.07     sand paper

$70.2        mineral spiits

$26.87     paint brush

$$450      permit/

$450      engineering

$750      drawings

The number of hours I worked was 231.  Keep in mind that these hours are onsite physical labor hours and don't include things like planning and running to the store to get materials.  So I think my recorded hours are conservative and comparable to what a contractor would spend doing the job.  After looking at the site homewyse.com $50 dollar an hour for contractors labor rate seems to be on the low end.  Drywallers make this much and I think that the fine work required by the cedar porch is at a higher skill level and would probably cost more. Anyway based on $50 dollars an hour labor rate a contractor would have charged $11,550 for labor.

The total contractor cost for installing the cedar portion of the porch would be about $18600.

That's means s whopping $11550 or 62% was saved.  Cue the cash register sound.

Happy Building!

The Dr

 

High end cedar porch construction: the rafters

In the last two blogs, the ledger and the main beam (top plate) were discussed.   After having put these two structural members in place it was now time to make and place the rafters.  There were a couple of challenges that I had to  overcome with the making and placing of the rafters.  One of the challenges would be I had to make my first birdsmouth ever on a large beam without any second chances and the other was I had to place these awkward rafters up higher than I could reach.

The porch required 10 4" x 10" rafters.  8 of them were exactly the same.  Each of them had to be cut at an angle at one end so that they would be flush to the house and account for the roof pitch of 12/2.5.  In addition I had to run a router bit down the two edges to make the rafters more appealing to the eye.

Each rafter also had to be drilled at an angle at each end for two countersunk 14" 1/2" lag bolts which secured the rafters to the ledger and main beam.  The lags provide 1000 lbs withdrawal strength and have the nice feature that they are hidden from view.

In addition each end of the rafter needed a birds mouth which allows the rafter to sit nicely on flat surface on the ledger and main beam.   The positioning of the birdsmouth is important.  If you don't get it right then there will be an unsightly gap or it will cause the wall it sits on to become out of plumb..  Also the angles of the heel and seat must be perfect to make it look professional.

To help me with these challenges I made a guide out of 2"x8" lumbers.  I already knew how to position the birdsmouth against the wall of the house.  So I made a birdsmouth in the end of the guide.  But for the other birdsmouth that rests on the main beam I did not know the position.  In fact the position is slightly different depending on what part of the main beam the rafter sits on.  So I left that birdsmouth off the guide.

Once the guide was made I attempted to put it on the ledger and main beam by using brute strength and a ladder.  It didn't take much to cause it to fall to the ground and leave a mark on the ledger.  Time for plan B!

To assist with the placement of  the guide, I built a crane using the cheap harbor freight winch and dock lumber which is shown below. 

This helped stop the guide from falling to the ground and allowed me to mark where the birdsmouth should go at my leisure.  Only there was one problem, if the rafter were to be installed with the crane I had built it would be difficult to get the crane removed from the rafter.  Woops!

The next step was to cut the birdsmouth.  I followed the procedure used in this video for the seat cut in the birds mouth.  I actually had to come at the birdsmouth from both sides of the beam because it was too thick and my circular saw was too shallow.  To make sure the angle was correct I marked it on the rafter and followed the mark with my saw.

For the heel cut I had to tilt the saw to 21.8 degrees and make the saw the appropriate depth.  Since there were a number of birdsmouths to make I took a spare block of cedar and cut it when the saw was adjusted.  The block served as a means to quickly setup the saw when going back and forth between saw adjustments.  I would just put the saw in the block and make the saw match it.  Once adjusted I made the heel cut with one pass.

Since the saw blade is circular the wood was not completely freed from the rafter, I had to use a chisel to knock out the wood from the birdsmouth where it was left attached.  It was easily done but left an undesirable uneven surface so I used my Makita 1/2 sheet sander and smoothed it off.  The end result is shown below.

 

Next I drilled the countersink hole and the shaft hole for lag bolt holes, sanded the rafter and applied Olympic elite woodland oil to finish it off.

After the beam was ready I redesigned the crane and installed the beam shown below.

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As was said before 8 of the rafters were the same but there were two rafters that were not.  These beams rested on the ledger but not the main beam.  The reason that these different rafters came about was because the way the house sits on the property.  The porch I wanted ends up crossing the set back line.  This required that one corner of the porch to be cut off at an angle in the design.  Well if one corner gets cut off then so does the other to make it nice looking.  Even though the set back line is a pain in the ass, the end result was much more architecturally pleasing cedar porch.  So I'm kind of glad I had the problem to deal with.

Because the 2 different rafters did not sit on the main beam they had to sit on posts.  This called for a more complicated joint.  It required a two oak peg mortise and tenon joint and an embedded lag to secure the rafter to the post.  In addition a birdsmouth is involved.  The mortise was difficult for me to make due to its angle in the wood but I'm happy with the end result.

At this point the cranes broad base made it impractical to use at the end of the porch without wasting a bunch of time to try make it work.   So I placed a call into the cavalry and asked my friend Glen to help me put in the last two rafters.  Nice to have backup when you need it!   The end result is shown below.

  

Now that the rafters were all installed, it was time for the cedar planking.  The planking job came out perfect and after having done it I can see how it is easy to totally screw it up making the job look unprofessional.  In the next blog we will discuss what techniques I used to make the planking come out as good if not better than a professional would have done even though it was my first time.

Happy Building!

The Dr.  

High end cedar porch construction: the main beam

In the previous blog I talked about the ledger which required that I make my first ever lap joint.  This time around I want to focus on the largest piece of wood in the whole cedar porch.  It is the main beam that holds the other end of the rafters.

The beam was a very nice piece of wood.  Its dimensions were 6" x 12" by 20'2".  I actually really needed the extra 2" in the 20' measurement because of the patio slab dimensions and was lucky that 20' beam I ordered came a little longer. It was rough cut western red cedar.  It was gorgeous and smelled wonderful.
 
To start off I decided to plane the beam. Luckily before dad left he helped me plane the beam through my inadequate 6" porter cable thickness planar. It was ridiculous shoving that huge piece of wood through there.  The beam was actually 6.25" wide so we were maxed out with the planar.

One trick I learned through this process was to put Johnson Paste Wax on the the wood bearing surface of the planar which would make the wood slide more easily.  Also I had bolted the planar down to the sturdy shop bench I had made but even so everything was just too small so that the beam never quite aligned right with the planar and so we ended up pushing with all our might to get it through.  We ran it through a couple of times but it was not the best planing job. 

Once the 6" dimension was done it was time to tackle the 12" dimension.  I decided that a joiner would be the way to go.  I have a 6" Joiner from Lowes and there was no way I could run this huge beam on this little joiner which only has a 31" long table.  I had a hard enough time with 8' lumber.  20' lumber would be impossible.  Ever since I owned the joiner I wanted to get a better one I just never could find one for a decent price.  But now I was forced to put in an order for a joiner with a 6' long table for about $1000.   I wasn't sure that this would work but I had to try something.

Luckily, the item was discontinued and I did not get it.  I say luckily because my dad came up with the idea to use the joiner I had upside down.  When I did this I was quite amazed how well it worked.  The joiner even has two convenient bars on the bottom that function well as handles to hold the joiner as I guided it along the wood beam.   Its almost as if the joiner was made to work upside down.  After working so well my opinion of my little joiner had changed from I want to get rid of this piece of shit  to I kinda like this useful tool.  I think I'll keep it.

After planing the 20'2" beam I worked on the post joints.  By this time dad was gone and I had to do the rest of the work myself.  For the post joints Dad and I had designed a mortise and tenon joint with two oak pegs.  The joint was stronger than hurricane ties but also provided the beauty of a natural wood joint.  The mortise was designed to be 5" deep by 2.75" by 5.5".

To make a 5" deep mortise, I turned to youtube for instruction.  I found this video which makes use of chisels.   After watching several videos like this I decided to buy the cheapest mortise chisels I could find which are still pretty expensive.  They are Narex mortise chisels from the czech republic found on amazon.com.

I also saw this video of a chain saw mortisor and started drooling.  A chain  saw mortisor would have been so nice for this project but its hefty price tag of $1700 dollars put it out my reach.  I did think of using my drill press with a Forstner bit or mortise attachment on it but the beam height of 12" made it so that it would actually not even fit on the drill press once the bit was in the chuck.

What I actually ended up doing was using my milwaukee router with its plunge base and a 5 inch straight bit.  The five inch bit was the longest I could find.  I really wanted a 6" one, but this is just another example of why its so hard to make anything custom in the world today.  For making such a deep mortise I found that a 1/2" shank bits work best because I actually burnt my router out on a previous project with a 1/4" shank straight bit that bent.  Because the bit was bent, it vibrated the armature and then the router went up in smoke.  Long story short I got a professional to fix it and he screwed up the repair by not torquing it so that it fell apart when I was using it.  Luckily I was not hurt.  I had to buy the expensive tool to fix it and I decided not to ever let that guy repair my tools again

To aid in the making of the mortise I used a wood guide so that the mortise came out accurate.  Unfortunately, the mortise I made was only 4" deep. 

 

To carve out the final inch I resorted to a using a cheap drill guide,  drill extension and a Forstner bit.

The Forcner bit left a pretty rough bottom in the mortise so in the end I used my czech mortise chisels to clean the mortise up.  The end result is shown below.  Luckily the shoulder of the tenon covers up the roughness of the mortise edge so it is not seen

The next step was the tenon.  This was easily done with my harbor freight dado blade on my Dewalt table saw.  I also used a table saw sled that I had made previously from this video so that the shoulder and tenon would be square and accurate.  Shown below is half a tenon cut on the sled.
  

 

Once the tenons were cut it was time to fit them into the mortises.  Because I made the mortise and tenon accurately it was a tight joint.  There was a little clean out of the mortises to get the tenons in all the way and in fact it was necessary to apply Johnson paste wax to the tenon to prevent the tenon from getting stuck.

The next step was to drill the holes in the beam and tenon for oak pegs.  There were two pegs per tenon and I made sure to drill the holes when the tenons were fully engaged in the mortise.  I also made sure not to mix the posts up since each had a custom mortise and tenon joint.

To finish off the beam I ran a router bit down the edge, sanded the whole beam with my Makita half sheet finish sander and put Olympic elite natural woodland oil on all the wood pieces.  

Before I move on here I would just like to say that through this process I was sweating bullets and was stressed.  I feared making a mistake on this beautiful ancient wood and rendering it useless for the project.  What a waste that would be.  This is kind of the way it is for all my wood working projects.  All tasks have to be done with precision which requires great focus.  It pays not to rush things.

Once the wood was dry I was ready to put them in place.  But the question was, how could I possibly do this?  The wood was so large that a helper seemed to be the only way to mange it.  But because of liability concerns with bringing uninsured people over to help I came up with another way. 

To get the wood out of the garage and onto the patio slab in the back yard I made two dollies out of harbor freight caster wheels and some leftover wood.  This allowed me to easily transport the lumber to the porch.

 

Next I assembled the posts and beam and secured them with the oak pegs.  I then installed the ABU66 Simpson brackets on the cement pad which already had the anchor bolts sticking out ready to accept them.  With brackets in place I made use of a harbor freight winch and wood crane to erect the wall.

 

The winches from harbor freight are great for short time use.  When I buy them I use a 20% coupon that I can find online on my phone when I'm in the store.  I actually have owned 5 winches now and had to return 4 of them before the 90 day deadline because they broke.  I actually had to pay for one because it broke after the 90 day period.

Notice from the picture, I took care to protect the wood from the cable by wrapping it in wood and cardboard.  Once the beam wall was up I made sure the posts were plumb and the right distance from the house and nailed the posts into the Simpson brackets.  I left the top secured to the crane because it turns out that you cannot rely on the nailed Simpson post brackets to keep your wall up.  The nails could pull out and the wall can come crashing down.

In addition to the nails I put two through bolts in each post to fasten it to the  Simpson bracket.  The bolts are required because a hurricane could  strike my location and the roof would tend act like a giant sail creating a great force on the posts that could cause them to separate from the foundation. The bolt nail combination provides 2300 pounds of uplift protection through each post.  The porch would eventually have 5 posts.

Now that the main beam wall was up, it was time to start thinking of putting the rafters on.  This of course required more ingenuity on doing the task myself.,  This time the heights involved  were as high as 15', the rafter lumber dimensions were 4" x 10" x 14' long and the rafter weight was about 150 pounds.

In the next blog I will explain how I mastered putting these rafters up by myself.

Happy Building

The Dr.