Another brutally hot day (forecast to be 41°C in the hills), so I got an early start and got to work cutting posts. Set myself up in the cover of the carport to avoid the worst of it – the ceiling is really good, stopping all the radiant heat, so I only had to deal with the ambient temperature except for briefly scooting out to put a post on the slab.
Got all the posts cut for the big base brackets, so I can stand those up tomorrow, and along the way cut about half of the rest of the posts to length rather than have all the random-length offcuts sitting around.
Dug out the rest of the top brackets, which have been marinating away in the back shed for a few months, and attached them to the top of the posts before putting the posts up (another lesson from the shed…). After a few hours solid work I had a nice array of posts ready for installation:
I was going to try a different construction order for the house – when I did the shed, I put all the posts up and then put the beams on top. This time I want to get the critical posts up first – which is mainly the ones with the big bottom brackets, because they’re nice and stable. The intermediate posts tend to flap around a bit on their supports, and they just get in the way when putting the beams in.
Another technique would be to put one bolt through the posts into the bases, lie the posts down and attach the beam lying on the ground, then stand the wall up barn-raising style….I think the alignment of my big brackets isn’t consistent enough, (and the sloped top-walls make me too nervous to try this) but it’d be interesting in a more ‘normal’ building 🙂
