Hi everybody. I recently bought a house that is framed using a technique I have never seen before, and I was hoping one of you might know what it is.
When I first looked at it, I thought the studwalls were framed with the 2x4s sideways. Wrong! In fact, there appears to be no framing in the walls of this place. Its walls are what looks like clear fir 1×6 t&g, quite tight and very nice wood, which has been nailed to a sort of wood lattice made of 1x4s and 1x3s on the interior side. To this lattice, the 3/8-inch gypsum board has been nailed.
So in other words, the sheathing under the siding is the load-bearing part of the wall! The lattice is secured together with those wavy ribbon nails — I don’t know what they’re called — and the whole wall panel appears to have been put together somewhere else, on a flat (probably concrete) surface — the 1x6es are nailed to the lattice rather than vice-versa, so there’s no way the wall was put together in vertical position on site.
The floor joists are 2x4s on 16-inch centers with 5’6″ between girders. Finish flooring (1″ t&g clear fir, 1×3 I think) is secured directly to the joists. That in itself seems really, really weird and inadequate to me. But this wall thing has got me totally stumped, and I’m not sure what I need to do to fix/normalize it. Or perhaps this is my cue to strip it down, salvage the sticks and start from scratch.
Anybody got any ideas? I sure appreciate any wisdom you can share.
–Finnster
Replies
Greetings Finnster.
You may want to post this over at Breaktime. Lots more experienced construction types over there. Someone might recognize this style/technique.
My preciousssss, I wantsss my precioussss NOW.
I really hope you are in the south..that is common way to build in backwoods southern areas..did you not see this b4 you bought it?..how are the wall outlets mounted? do the walls rattle when ya close a door hard?
you may want to make some changes..head over to breaktime forums..2nd from the left up top of this page. well get ya covered.
You chummin' for work?
Who ever invented work didn't know how to fish....
Nah..just moving the livestock into the proper pens..lol somethin about the wolf and sheeps clothing..."give me back my dog".
I hope this guy knew this before he bought the farm..realators...aaarrrgghh...most are wanne be lawyers.
One of the shacks I lived in in the smokies , had walls like that..freaked me out when I was drilling holes for my satellite cables..then I noticed the switch boxes were those little metal shallow ones with clipped corners..uh, oh. Man , talk about cold, I froze my butt off there..
In the pacific northwest there are some cedar home manuf. that use a stacking tongue and groove plank system. most of these kits are sold to d.i.y. for smaller cabins etc.
Orca Builders
Killer homes since 1988
Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I knew it when I bought the bugger -- sort of. Initially, I thought it was a homebuilt job by some bozo who thought he'd get some extra floor space by framing the walls with the studs sideways. So the discovery that it's actually some kind of engineered wall is actually good news! It's on a half acre, and I paid maybe $15K more than the land is worth for the whole setup.
Location is Albany, Oregon. New evidence suggests its origin may be Vanport. The sheetrock, which I've been happily horking off the walls all week, has "KAISER GYPSUM" (boy, does he ever, yuk yuk) labels on the back, and since Vanport was built to service Kaiser Steel's shipyards in Portland, well, I figure that's a pretty good poss. It's 40 by 24.
Cheers!
--Finnster
It sounds to me like a kit too. I have seen and worked on several kind of like that that were built in sections of premade panels about 5-6' wide. They were mostly from 1930 to 1950. The Seabeas used similar construction methods for quick erection and light shipment in WW2
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