Flutterby™! : Because you asked 2011-12-13 18:56:19.142243+00

Because you asked

2011-12-13 18:56:19.142243+00 by Dan Lyke 8 comments

Because you asked: More pictures of workshop progress http://www.flutterby.net/2011-12-13_Workshop_Progress

#Comment Re: made: 2011-12-14 14:03:59.400674+00 by: andylyke [edit history]

In a more serious vane - apropos the screws. I put some Pella windows in the back porch. The mounting screws that came with them were stainless steel, and soft as butter. predrilling and all still resulted in stripped out phillips heads.

These were just the screws that held the disposable protective wood on. I've complained to Milgard and gotten a response(!). Doesn't help me, but might help the next guy.

Off to pick up trim, and I can start putting on the siding. Goal for the next few days: Siding and finish the rough electrical. If I run out of things to do, I'll dig the trench for the main electric feed.

Is there a path from the front of your house through a gate or something by which a motorcycle could be driven and parked inside the workshop?

Tyvek happened that way because we had to leave the west wall uncovered for inspection, and the north wall has the door in it on the western side, so it was easier to start at the southwest corner and work counter-clockwise (looking down).

I'm curious; you seem to know a lot about code and inspection processes. How did you learn this? How did you know you needed to leave the wall uncovered for inspection, and how did you learn that the wall on that side needed to have certain fire-resistance characteristics?

I wouldn't have known these were questions to ask, much less known the answers, so I'm curious how you dug into this body of knowledge.

The knowing that the wall had to have certain fire resistance characteristics came from talking to people at the city planning department. I went down and said "I've currently got this structure in my back yard, I suspect that it wasn't permitted, I'd like to build a replacement. Where can I build it?".

They told me that for my lot the setbacks were 5' on the back, 4' on the side, but that any wall within 5' of the property line had to be a 1 hour fire wall. So I started by searching on "1 hour fire wall", figured out that I needed to add "assembly" to that search, and figured out that the U.L. has a bunch of stock assemblies that the various materials organizations sponsor. I found the staggered stud setup I'm using I think on one of the gypsum/drywall industry web sites, as a 2 hour assembly. I was also looking at sound transmission characteristics and decided that the staggered stud assembly didn't cost any more than resilient channel to hang the interior drywall, and allowed me to hang shelves off those walls better. And since I needed to add shear sheathing to the wall, I figured the 2 hour assembly was a bonus, because I didn't know how the sheathing would impact the wall characteristics.

The leaving the covering off came because every time the inspector comes by I pick his brain hard. I've found that our building department is actually pretty good about sharing knowledge with me. And although on the initial plan check for this building the head of the department and I kinda got started on the wrong foot (largely because of one detail on my front drawing that I should have drawn differently), I think now we're in the "hey, this guy is trying to do everything right, and we support that" stage.

As for all the rest of the stuff... uh... I've tossed a couple of notes I made along the way at http://www.flutterby.net/Workshop_Notes , mostly it's been starting by drawing a box, saying "what don't I know about this?", and Googling the hell out of those details, along with the awesome Code Check and a few other books. They're great for "what nail do I need to use here?" or "what should my nail spacing be?" and similar questions.