Talk:Framing (construction)/Archive 1

Merge
I have moved Light frame construction, Balloon framing, Wall framing, and Platform framing to Framing (construction). The idea being that this, together could constitute a GA or FA eventually. Obviously some major cleanup needs to take place as well as referencing. And, indeed, if some of the sections prove to be long enough through expansion, they could again be broken off into their own separate articles per WP:SUMMARY. Hopefully this doesn't step on any toes. IvoShandor 10:53, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Question - Combination Frame
Quick question, which might lead to an expansion of the article. I was thumbing through the old Kidder-Parker Architect's and Builder's Handbook and noticed that they discuss two types of framing methods: Balloon, and Combination. Combination framing appears to have some similarities to modern platform framing, but it's not quite the same. Any comments? What are other (older, obsolete, etc.) methods of light frame construction?BSMet94 (talk) 23:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Balloon frame is opposed to one built using joins and mortises. The article does not cover this properly. It makes nailed together platforms and nailing to tall beams seem like separate construction methods. In reality, these are both properly called balloon construction. The "balloon" term came from the fact the wood was not connected with joints. Probably in the modern era few people can envision a non-balloon construction. Like much on Wikipedia, this article needs to be corrected or else the knowledge will be lost. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Timjowers (talk • contribs) 19:59, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
 * What are you waiting for? –  j ak s mata  20:07, 16 June 2010 (UTC)

frame house
will this kind of house hold up to strong winds— —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.118.108.225 (talk) 01:40, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Depends on many factors including exactly how strong the wind and the techniques used in building. The two-story wood-framed house in the picture (at the top of the article) is in the Houston area, and it survived hurricane-force winds during Hurricane Ike along with hundreds of thousands of other wood-framed structures. Wood-framed houses in the path of Ike's tidal surge did not survive, but they were destroyed by water, not wind. –  j ak s mata  16:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Steel frame split?
Steel framing likely warrants it's own article. This should also probably be renamed "Light frame construction" once it gets fleshed out. Savonneux (talk) 07:26, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

Link to cold-formed steel
Pretty nice Wikipedia page on cold-formed steel that the "light metal framing" should be linked to.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.220.58.64 (talk) 18:58, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

cheap nails
"The advent of cheap machine-made nails..." Actually, nails were relatively cheap before they were machine-made. A blacksmith can make about a dozen nails a minute. He'd likely fill his spare moments (if any) making nails.

Of course, even machine-made nails nails weren't so cheap they could be thrown away. Abandoned homes were sometimes burned down to recover the nails.

GE published a lot of comic books promoting electricity. One of them had father-and-son blacksmiths leaving work. "It was a good day. We made four horseshoes and a dozen nails." If blacksmiths had been that inefficient, they'd have starved to death. WilliamSommerwerck (talk) 09:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

edit summary
i meant "bibliography" not "biliography"68.151.25.115 (talk) 14:05, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Platform framing
Currently in Canada and the United States, the most common method of light-frame construction for houses and small apartment buildings as well as other small commercial buildings is platform framing. In builder parlance, platform framing might also nowadays be called (only partly correctly) 'stick framing' or 'stick construction' as each element is built up stick by stick, which was also true in the other stick framing method, in the obsolete and labor-intensive, but previously fashionable, balloon framing method, wherein the outside walls were erected, headers hung, then floor joists were inserted into a box made of walls.

In contrast, in platform framing a floor box and joists making up the platform is built and placed on a supporting under structure (sill plates, headers, or beams) where it sits flat and gets fastened down against wind lifting with galvanized metal tie straps. Once the boxed floor platform is squared, leveled and fastened then subfloor, walls, ceilings, and roof are built onto and above that initial platform, which can be repeated floor by floor, without the slow downs and dangers of fastening and leveling rough-sawn joists of a new floor together to the walls from ladders extending one or even two stories up.

Generally, the flooring ('platform') is constructed, then the walls built on top of that layer, then another atop that, and so forth, making for quick, efficient, labor-saving construction methodologies, and those have quickened further as technologies such as joist hangers have been developed to speed and enhance the technology. The methods and techniques have become so common and pervasive that even skyscrapers use a modified form of platform framing techniques and indeed the same tools and technologies once construction builds the initial structural skeleton. Once the platform floor is laid down, the builder's crew can with chalk line, rule and pencil directly transfer an outline of the exterior and interior walls, their openings and relative locations with ease and precision from the plans or builders blue prints.



As the survey group lays down the notations and chalk lines, a carpenter crew can follow behind and lay down 2x4 'bottom plates' and tack them to the floor box. The topmost wall plates are cut only to the outside dimensions of the walls. Butting two other two by fours against these cut to size and fastened bottom plate allows the crew to rule across all three with square and lay out studs, cripple studs, and openings for that particular wall. The two loose studs are then quickly flipped on edge after openings are cut in, and studs added on the marks with quick reliable end nailing through the respective top and bottom plates. A few minutes later the whole wall section can be levered up and aligned in place and braced for later application of the top plates and adjoining walls.

The method provides builders options and flexibility such as when and where there is a floor-level opening (doorway) the next wall section can be aligned and fastened in place separately with the top plate added then used then a lintel and cripple studding added, or the entire wall could have been cut and joined at the top all along and lifted up as one entity. In the end, the outside walls are plumbed and fastened together with 'ell-configured reinforced corners' that provide nailing wood in the interior angles and strength to the building forming in effect wide posts at each corner and fastened lastly by overlapped top plates which stagger their joints from the ones capping each plate by which the studs are end nailed together. Each wall from top to bottom ends up with a doubled plate, studs, and a doubled plate, where structurally the doubled plates spread the weight of the roof and loading across the studs of the wall, ultimately to the foundation.

Overall, the framed structure sits (most commonly) atop a concrete foundation on pressure treated wood 'sill', or 'beam'. When on concrete, the sill plate is anchored, usually with (embedded) 'J' bolts into the concrete substrate of the foundation wall. Generally these plates must be pressure treated to keep from rotting from condensing moisture. By various standards the bottom of the sill plate is located a minimum 6 in above the finished grade (the surrounding ground) per standard builders practices, and frequently more dependent upon building codes of the relevant jurisdiction's local building codes. In North America, building codes may differ not only state to state, but town to town, the tighter specification applying at all times. This distance, together with roofing overhangs, and other system factors, is most often selected both to prevent the sill-plate from rotting (due to the invasion of splashed water) as well as providing a termite barrier. The latter is particularly (more or less) important than anti-rotting considerations depending upon the geographical location.

Alternatively, the room, room extension, deck or even a house can be built above concrete columns U.S. builders call piers some others call pilasters, another of many term misuses common to building trade parlance. In such cases, the pier (column) is usually required to rest on bed rock or extend well below the zone of average freezing soil depth (the same as a foundation) locally, and frequently is required to also have flared out or mushroomed bottom of greater surface than that the pier top (these are called 'big foots' in the building trade, and building suppliers carry PVC molds to conserve concrete which allow a builder to satisfy area requirements and the building codes). Rigid pressure treated 'beams' (usually doubled or tripled up wider types of 2x boards) are attached to the piers using galvanized metal brackets and serve the same function as sills in foundation supported framing.

The floors, walls and roof of a framed structure are created by assembling (using nails) consistently sized framing elements of dimensional lumber (e.g. 2×4s) at regular spacings (typically divisions of 4 and 8 feet, or such as 12, 16, 19.2, or 24 inches on center). The empty space formed between elements is called a stud bay in the wall and a joist bay in the floor or ceiling. The floors, walls and roof are typically made torsionally stable with the installation of a plywood or composite wood skin referred to as sheathing. Sheathing has very specific requirements (such as thickness and spacing of nailing). These measures allow a known amount of shear force to be resisted by the elements. Spacing the framing members properly usually allows them to align with the edges of standard sheathing. In the past, tongue and groove planks installed diagonally were used as sheathing. Occasionally, wooden or galvanized steel braces are used instead of sheathing. There are also engineered wood panels made for shear and bracing.

The floor, or the platform in this framing type's name, is made up of joists (usually 2x6, 2×8, 2×10 or 2×12 depending on the span, on edge, with larger joists supporting weight for a greater distance) that sit on supporting foundation walls, beams or girders within and at right angle to an outside members also on edge (the header, rim or band), forming a box. The joists will generally be installed across the shortest distance of the largest floor span rectangle. The 1 1/2" thick band allows through-nailing directly into the ends of the joists and 2" joist bearing on a 2x4 wall.

The floor joists are spaced at 12 in, 16 in, and 24 in on center, depending upon the live load needs of the design – the closer the spacing and the wider the floor joist dimension, the less the floor will flex. It is then usually covered with a 3/4-inch tongue-and-groove plywood subfloor. In the century past, 1x planks set at 45-degrees to the joists were used for the first subfloor layer, and a second layer of 1x planks set at 90-degrees to the floor cladding topped that as the second subfloor layer. In that same era, all flooring choices were a very short menu of choices between finished wood types or ceramic tiles versus today's extensive multipage menu of manufactured flooring types.

Where the design calls for a framed floor, the resulting platform is where the framer will construct and stand that floor's walls (interior and exterior load bearing walls and space-dividing, non-load bearing partitions). Additional framed floors and their walls may then be erected to a general maximum of four in wood-framed construction. There will be no framed floor in the case of a single-level structure with a concrete floor known as a slab on grade.

Stairs between floors are framed by installing three 90°-stepped stringers attached to wall structures and then placing the horizontal treads and vertical risers (usually about 14 of each for an 8-ft. ceiling) upon the planes formed by the stringers.

A framed roof is an assembly of rafters and wall-ties supported by the top story's walls. Prefabricated and site-built trussed rafters are also used along with the more common stick framing method. Trusses are engineered to redistribute tension away from wall-tie members and the ceiling members. The roof members are covered with sheathing or strapping to form the roof deck for the finish roofing material.

Floor joists can be engineered lumber (trussed, I-joist, etc.), conserving resources with increased rigidity and value. They are semi-custom manufactured to allow access for runs of plumbing, HVAC, etc. and some 'common-needs' forms are pre-manufactured as semi-mass-produced standard products made on a per order basis, like roofing trusses. Such products have a post-order lead time from several weeks to several months.

Double framing is a style of framing used in some areas to reduce heat loss and air infiltration. Two walls are built around the perimeter of the building with a small gap in between. The inner wall carries the structural load of the building and is constructed as described above. The exterior wall is not load bearing and can be constructed using lighter materials. Insulation is installed in the entire space between the outside edge of the exterior wall and the inside edge of the interior wall. The size of the gap depends upon how much insulation is desired. The vapor barrier is installed on the outside of the inner wall, rather than between the studs and drywall of a standard framed structure. This increases its effectiveness as it is not perforated by electrical and plumbing connections.

Shaded0 (talk) 03:08, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

File:Salarom Sabah Frame-of-a-new-house-01.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Salarom Sabah Frame-of-a-new-house-01.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on May 9, 2018. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2018-05-09. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 05:50, 27 April 2018 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that Residential frame engineering be merged into Framing (construction). I think that the content in the Residential frame engineering article can easily be explained in the context of Framing (construction), and the Framing (construction) article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Residential frame engineering will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. Geoff &#124; Who, me? 16:59, 18 May 2018 (UTC)