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Days 14-17: Those blooming girder and joist ledgers!
This, ladies and gentleman, is the reason we are not blogging about joists and plywood flooring right now. The middle girder and a few joists bear on the safe room foundation at the center of the floor plan. This requires drilling holes for threaded rod into the concrete, epoxying in the threaded rod, securing a wooden ledger to the rods, then finishing out the platform with joist hangers for the girder and joists.
Turns out that boring 5/8” holes in our cured concrete takes a tick longer than we expected. It was all going smoothly with the big boss hammer drill, like a fairly dull knife through room temperature butter, until we broke a corner off. Thankfully, our safe room walls don’t sit at that corner, so we’re in the clear.
From then on out, we turned the ‘hammer’ function of the hammer drill off. Then it was more like cutting through a knife with chilled butter. But we did it! The threaded rods are all set. Joists soon to come. Perhaps our findings simply mean we need to find a way to set the rod before we pour next time.