Bearers consist of (in our case) two 45 × 190 H3.2 treated timber laminated together and because it is a contractual load bearing member we must use MSG8 (machine stress graded) timber.
Firstly we went along and checked our timber to see which way the canver faced than put an arrow pointing in the direction the canver faced on the side the canver was, this made it easier when putting the timber in place to have the (note:1)canver facing upwards.
Now that we had the canvers we had to start (note:2)laminating 2 lengths of 190×45 H3.2 MSG8 timber to make up bearers which were to be 190×90 H3.2 MSG8 timber. We started by laying out our lengths of 190×45 timber flat on our jack studs to making sure that the canvers were all pointing in one direction. Once we had our first lot of 190×45 timber laid out we could than go over and lay our second lot of 190×45 making sure that were the connections for the first lot were in the centre of the second lot we were putting down as once we laminate this gives sufficient length to put nails and maintain the timbers strength. Once we had all our timber laid out we could than laminate them, we done this using clamps making sure to keep the side the canver was on flush.
Once we had our laminated bearers we could than fix them to the jack studs, we done this by laying the bearers on the jack studs, on edge with the canver facing upwards. We Left about 300mm overhanging the BL which we will be cutting off at a further date.
NOTE 1: We have the canver facing upwards so as when a load is applied to that member it is than able to straighten itself out and if the canver was facing downwards when a load is added to that member the canver has a high possibility of increasing.
NOTE 2: When laminating use 100mm flathead galvanized nails. They should be skewed in horizontally at intervals off 6 × thinnest member in a scattered pattern.
Really good blog Damian, good descriptions, great to see you show the logical progression of the house build & the photos and your early sketches are really useful. Great work
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