Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?

keyridge wrote:
Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?



When I built my 12x20 shed, used tilt up construction as you are suggesting.

A BBQ and a couple of cases of beer to encourage the neighbor's
participation beats the hell out of a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

It is also a lot less expensive than renting the necessary equipment.

Back in the old days, people called it a barn raising, at least where i
lived.

Lew

"keyridge" wrote in message
ups.com...
Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?

Walls this size should be handled with no problems by two guys. I mean, I
don't have a huge bank of buddies that I could enlist in such an enterprise,
but even I could convince at least ONE to stop by if there was a beer or 5
and a burger waiting on the other side.

todd

John Carroll, Working Alone: Tips and Techniques for Solo Building
(Taunton, 2001), p. 43 ff has three suggestions. Any of them will work
fine.

1. Hire a crew to stop by on their way home (you can have it securely
braced in 15 min. or less)

2. Build the walls in manageable sections.

3. Use wall jacks

Good luck,
H

"keyridge" wrote in message
ups.com...
Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?

I think house framers use their Craftsman levels as levers to raise framed
walls. We used to have barrels of them that carpenters had returned for new
ones under the Craftsman lifetime warranty at the Sears store in Arizona
that I retired from. They were all pretty well bent from something other
than checking level. Just an idea.........

Tom.

On 7/5/2005 11:05 PM keyridge mumbled something about the following:
Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?


I built my 16x24 shed using tilt-up wall construction, took 3 of us to
raise the walls (no siding, just bare framing) and set into place. All
it took was a couple 6 packs and a BBQ to get a couple of friends over
to help.

--
Odinn
RCOS #7
SENS(less)
SLUG

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never
worshipped anything but himself." -- Sir Richard Francis Burton

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rot13 to reply

Yes and it can be done by one person - I've done it several times. See ASCII
art below.

Temporarily secure 3 sections of 2x4 (about 12" long) to the outside of the
footer, one near each end, one near the center. These "Keepers" for lack of
a better term will keep the wall from sliding off the base while you're
raising it. They also align the wall with the outside edge of the flooring.

Before raising the wall, temporarily secure another 12" long chunk of 2x4
scrap to the floor about 5' out from the edge and centered on the wall. This
stop will be used to hold an 8' long 2x4 brace that you secure to the center
stud of the wall once it is raised. With the footer of the wall placed
against the keepers, raise the wall, grab the brace, jam it against the
stop, hold the wall vertical and secure the brace to the wall. That keeps it
from falling back to the floor but keep hold of it and drive a screw thru
each of the keepers into a wall stud to keep the wall from falling the other
way. Be sure to secure the brace to the floor with a long screw too.

Now, with the wall fairly secure, you can add other bracing to hold that
wall. Don't add any bracing on the end of the wall that is adjacent to the
next wall you'll be raising. When you raise the next wall, you do the same
but now it's easier since you have one wall to use as a tie-in to help hold
the 2nd wall. With 2 walls up and temporarily secure, go ahead and readjust
the bracing as needed to get the walls vertical.

When raising the walls, your hands are pretty full and there's no way you
can check vertical with a level - so eyeball it during the raising and tweak
it later. Obviously you have to do some prep work and have the brace (8' or
longer 2x4) at a point where you can bend down and grab it while you're
holding the wall, have your drill and screws handy etc.

Now - to address your concern about lifting the wall. Build the walls on
the floor, laid out in the direction they are to be raised. The footer of
the wall you're building will be parallel to the edge it will be secured to.
The whole wall is made on the floor and all you have to do is raise it up.
You're not having to carry the wall anyplace.

Do the short wall first (12'), then the adjacent 16' long wall, then the
other 12' and 16' walls. Once you get started, use the keepers and the
bracing and you'll see it's harder to describe how to do it than doing it.

Bob S.



Wall
|---|
| |
| |\
| |\ \
| | \ \
| | \ \
| | \ \
| | \ \
| | \ \ Wall Brace
| | \ \
| | \ \
| | \ \
| | \ \
| || | \ \
| | |___________\|---|_________Floor
| | ___________________________

^ Keeper ^ footer

Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?

Build the walls in sections you can lift yourself.

My wife and I built a 24'x28' garage and a 40'x40' house by ourselves. I
would build the walls in 8' sections, and she would help me tilt them up
each evening. She would hold the section in place while I lined it up with
the existing walls, plumbed it up, and screwed on a diagonal brace. We did
a few 12' sections too, but the eight footers were a lot more manageable
for the two of us.

You may use a few more studs than building the walls in a single section,
but it's not a huge difference.

If you absolutely have to work alone, you could raise 4' sections on your
own (or maybe 8' sections if you're up to it). Or, build the frame first,
and apply the sheathing once it is in place. I had to do this for the front
wall of our garage, and screwed blocks of wood to the top edge of the
plywood. I could then "hang" the sheet on the wall and it supported itself
while I nailed it in place.

If you take your time and think things through, you'll be amazed what you
can accomplish by yourself. Use bar clamps to hold or pull things together.
Screw on blocks of wood for guides or additional supports.

Anthony

Thanks for all your comments. Very helpful!

In article . com,
keyridge wrote:
Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?


If you can, find a book called "Working Alone" by John Carrol. It has
lots of tips for this and similar tasks usually done by 2 or more
people.


--

Larry Wasserman Baltimore, Maryland

"keyridge" wrote in message
ups.com...
Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?


Seems like whenever I have to lift something extremely heavy, I would rather
'finess' the item than have the help of others. Even moving heavy
machinery, if your helpers are not experienced somebody will get hurt.

I am no He-man, but raising walls up to 40-50 ft length, 10 ft. high is no
issue for a single individual.

Follow all of the bracing suggestions by poster "BobS", posted above mine.
ADDITIONALLY, if you are building the wall on a wooden floor, simply align
the wall before the lift so that when vertical, it will be in its final
position. BUT FIRST, toe nail your bottom plate, at a 45° angle to the
subfloor. Toe nail in a direction such that, when you lift, the nails will
bend right at the final location of your inside face-of-wall line. When
finished, either leave or remove nails. Keeps wall from sliding whil
lifting. You can adjust final location of wall with a 2 lb. hammer.

To raise a long wall by yourself, simply nail a short (1-2 ft. long) 2z4
along side you studding near the top plate. Do this about every 4 to 8 feet
on center. Go to one end of the wall and lift about 6 inches to a foot by
whatever means (muscles, lever etc.) available. As you lift 6" to a foot,
let this short 2x4 swing down to the floor and become a 'stand' to hold up
the section you just raised. Go down along the wall near your next brace
and raise that section an equal amount. Let the brace swing under to become
a 'stand'. Repeat down the full length of the wall.

Now go back to the beginning and nail on swinging braces that are about 2
feet long, repeat along full length of wall, repeat your lifts, etc. As an
expedient, I usually use a three foot piece of scrap 2x4 and nail it at the
one foot point. On my first lift I rotate it using the one foot leg. On my
second lift I flip it so I now have a 2 foot leg. etc.

After you have the wall up about 45° it becomes lighter and lighter. While
I have never 'lost' a wall that I was raising, I make sure to stand in the
window openings while I am lifting in case it comes crashing down.
THE CHANCES OF THE ABOVE METHOD HURTING YOU IS MUCH LESS THAN PLYING FRIENDS
WITH BEER.

I'm getting to be an old fart now and avoid the foolish lifting I used to do
when younger. I can't recount how many times I was moving something with
levers, rollers, rails, planks, etc., when one of my buddies would suggest
"why don't we simply pick up each end" ?. Yeah, back then, we could each
pick up about 300 lbs., and I can still do half of that today, but, I have
time and would rather move things by myself inch, by inch. Takes longer,
but much safer.

Ivan Vegvary

On 5 Jul 2005 20:05:54 -0700, "keyridge" wrote:

Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?

Only thing that hasn't already been mentioned is the technique I use
for lifting trusses. If you've got a comealong, hook it to a branch
in a nearby tree, and use that if the wall is too heavy to lift on
your own. If you don't have one, those nylon straps with the
ratcheting handles that you use to hold down stuff on a trailer work
pretty well also.

Of course, you need to have a tree or something taller than the wall
nearby, but if you do, it works great. Get the wall up until it is
almost (but not quite) vertical, and then put a brace on it. A little
push should get it resting on the brace, and you're off to the races.
For the trusses, hook the strap around the top of the wall on the far
end of the building, and you can pull all of them up at once, then
move them into place one at a time.

Building a 12x16 shed. Need to raise the walls but too heavy to safely
lift and set in place on my own. Other than begging the neighbours, do
you have any recommendations or equipment suggestions to do this on my
own?


Seems like whenever I have to lift something extremely heavy, I would
rather 'finess' the item than have the help of others. Even moving heavy
machinery, if your helpers are not experienced somebody will get hurt.
...
I'm getting to be an old fart now and avoid the foolish lifting I used to
do when younger. I can't recount how many times I was moving something
with levers, rollers, rails, planks, etc., when one of my buddies would
suggest "why don't we simply pick up each end" ?. Yeah, back then, we
could each pick up about 300 lbs., and I can still do half of that today,
but, I have time and would rather move things by myself inch, by inch.
Takes longer, but much safer.

Last night on Daily Planet I saw this guy lifting huge concrete blocks
(19,000lbs+) by himself. It took awhile, but he teetered it back and forth,
using sticks to lever it higher and higher. He could also spin them easily
just by tipping them into a small stone. He's building his own backyard
Stonehenge. Patience can be a very effective tool. Plus, think of the
bragging rights when it's all done!

- Owen -