One of those days where you don’t get a lot done in terms of raw numbers, but it was definitely a good day.
Gathered two materials hoists (wonderful things that they are) and some scaffolding to get the main shed beam installed. This beam started life as a 450×85 LVL, and during some back and forth with the engineer changed into a 450×83, a 450×63 and then a doubled 450×63. The single beam would have technically worked, but the engineer sounded marginal about it and I’d rather have the leeway to do stuff in the future without worrying about bringing my roof down.
So anyway, I had to get two 450x63s almost 4 metres up, and do them both at the same time. Mounted them on the pair of lifts, bolted them together and shaved them down a bit where they meet the huge brackets – I’ve belatedly found LVLs tend to go a bit fatter than spec, but my brackets were all specced as though they would be exactly to their measurements.
Hoists behaved beautifully again, had no problems with stability or moving them around – I had to lift the whole thing on an angle to clear the other beams then rotate it all over the brackets and lower the beams in. Did it twice – didn’t shave quite enough off one end, and opted to bring it back down and take some more off rather than try to force it in and get it stuck.
Next up was the bent portal beam over the carport. I’d been debating whether to try this with one or two lifts – while one lift was rated to carry the weight, and would allow both forks to contact the beam, I thought two might give more control.
In the end we opted to try it with one lift, and it went very smoothly – because the portal beam is bolted to the columns on the ends, we could align it at ground level, lock the lift wheels and just raise it until the bolt holes lined up.
