Wall raising question

[MushCreek]

As usual, the more I think, the more I confuse myself  The first building I'm going to put up on my property will be a 28 X 48 barn (yes, it will be bigger than the house ). I had planned to put 2' high concrete walls to keep the wood separate from the termites. Recently,  I saw the same barn done with 4' high split-face block walls- it looked great! Plus, the eave walls would only be 8' to give me a 12' ceiling. Since I'm going to sheathe with T1-11, 8' is ideal. But how do I raise walls on top of 4' walls? I had planned to build them flat on the slab, including sheathing, and then stand them up. Now I can't figure out a clever/easy way to do this. Should I build giant sawhorses, and build them at the 4' level, with the bottom end resting on the block wall? Or build them on the slab, and then raise them....how? I wouldn't try to build and raise a 48' long wall in one piece, so I'll probably do the long walls in 16' sections, or maybe 24'. I don't have a lot of man-power available; I was planning to use wall jacks and one other person. Any ideas?

[n74tg]

Question 1: How much can you lift?  I built walls 10.5' high out of 2x6 on 24" spacing and raised them myself.  From experimentation I found I could handle a section 12' long by myself.  What length you and one other guy could handle would probably be twice that length (24')(ie half your long wall), and that's without wall jacks.  And of course that is without sheathing already installed.  

Question 2:  How to build/raise them. If you don't sheathe them, I think you could actually build them flat on the floor and then lift the bottom end up on top of the 4' wall.  Your biggest concern (I think) is going to be stabilizing the bottom edge so it won't slide off either side of the block wall as you lift.  There are quite a few ways to stabilize it.  Since the top of the wall will be 12' up when vertical you're going to need push sticks, though going up this high wall jacks will probably be a lot safer.  Just make sure you have the bottom of the wall jack real well secured to the floor. 

As for bracing the walls, since your wall tops are 12' up, you're going to want to attach a diagonal brace on the "high" end before the wall goes up.  I did it that way and just let the floor end of the brace drag along the floor as the wall was raised.  Of course, that adds yet more weight for you to have to lift.  Once the wall is vertical I nailed the floor end into a 2x6 cleat that had been prepositioned on the floor.   

As for sheathing them after you raise the walls, I wouldn't worry too much about that.  My exterior walls were on top of a block wall/crawl space foundation that was up to 8' tall.  So, the top of some of my walls were 18' above ground. I used a block and tackle to raise each piece of sheathing (5/8" OSB).  The method worked out just fine.

Here's a link to my blog post detailing how I sheathed the walls.

http://n74tg.blogspot.com/2008_10_05_archive.html

[RainDog]

Geez... there must be some standard way that folks construct and lift a wall up onto a masonry kneewall. It's not so unusual.

Someone here will know.

[diyfrank]

Boom truck

[MushCreek]

A boom truck certainly would make it lot easier! I'm trying to minimize my costs, so I'm looking for old-fashioned ways to do it with minimal manpower. I'm toying with the idea of buying a loader/backhoe for all my excavation needs, and then sell it (hopefully for about the same price I paid) when I'm done. I certainly could add a boom to that for lifting. If not, I guess I could frame a wall section on the floor, lift the bottom of it up on to the wall, sheathe it, or at least partially sheathe it for stability, and then crank it up with wall jacks. I could make a couple sheet metal 'hinges' to keep it from sliding off the wall. Since I will be using nail guns, building the wall at the 4' level might not be so bad, either. I would have to make big saw horses to hold the other end up. The other tricky part would be bolting the sill down to the concrete knee wall. If I cast J-bolts in, how do I tilt the wall up? Do they cut slots to allow the bolts to fit as the wall goes up? Or would I be better off drilling and using lags?

[rocking23nf]

I dont see any easy way of doing this.


I built my walls on the floor, and sheathed them on the floor, and put my tyvek on while it was on the floor. Then I raised it. These were 12 foot sections, with me and the wife raising it. And boy it was heavy. Any longer then 12 feet and we would not have got it done.

One way could be to build the wall on the wall, not actually raise it, it would be more work, but I would think it would work.

[Don_P]

I usually bolt the mudsill to the stemwall and frame the walls with an untreated second bottom plate, countersinking paddle bit holes as necessary for j bolt nuts. tip it up and nail the plates together. For a 4' stemwall I'd probably build it in air if I didn't have equipment.

[MikeT]

On my project, I had concrete knee walls of differing heights (Stepped foundation), and I built the walls on top of the knee walls.  If you premark your stud locations on the plates, it really is not that bad.  And if you don't like toe nailing, you can always go with simpson A 34 or A35 clips...