Truss day is a wonderful day. I love it for several reasons: 1) We get seemingly a lot done in a short amount of time (2ish hours). Before we fly trusses, the house just looks like a bunch of walls standing on a foundation, because well that's exactly what it is. Afterward, it really looks like a house. It's just so nice to see everything coming to fruition. 2) Generally for me, it's an easy day. I'll explain more about that later.
Some background on trusses. It can be very dangerous. You have to take some precautions otherwise you could end up in the hospital and worse, the morgue. (Not to be too dramatic). This is the basic process: Lumber company drops off your trusses (def: rafters that support a roof), you arrange them on the ground to make it easier (and faster) for the crane to lift them up and set them on the walls of the house. Some trusses you have to prep, meaning, sheet them. Usually those are the trusses on the very outside of the house (on the front porch, on the garage, on the sides of the house). The crane comes once everything is ready with the house and trusses. A ground crew (which I usually am a part of) attaches the chains on the crane to the trusses, the crane lifts them and the flying crew stands on the walls of the house, nails the trusses in where they go and braces them so the trusses don't fall over. As you can imagine if it is windy, or the trusses aren't hooked up correctly, it can be pretty scary. Groud crew ALWAYS wears hard hats and the flying crew has to be super aware of where the trusses are coming down at.
This was Skylar's first time flying trusses, he had to work during the time we were flying on the other 2 houses and he was up on the walls. Good thing he was there because our good friend Adam who I am so happy is in our group got smacked in the head with a 2x4 an hour before the crane was supposed to get there and ended up leaving to get his head stapled back up. He came back. Trooper doesn't begin to explain it.
Adam has quite the history with truss day. On our very first time flying, he shot himself in the arm with a nail gun. The second house nothing significant happened. On our house, the third house, his head cracked open. If the pattern continues, his house, the fifth house, there should be some crazy incident on truss day for him. Poor guy.
On to the pictures!
Skylar is in the red hard hat bracing the trusses across the middle
On the left: Brandon and Adam (post head-stapling)
On the right: Nathan (our supervisor who teaches us everything) and Skylar
JC is in the blue hard hat, our next door neighbor. He's legally blind so he doesn't do much climbing
You can see the trusses laid out on the ground. This is what it looks like as they are first being lifted into position
JC has a guide rope tied around the trusses to help maneuver them to the correct place on the house
After all the trusses were on the house!
Skylar looking excited to be close to done after standing on the walls for 2+ hours
The finished product! (More or less)
Our view from the kitchen
