Our living room/kitchen area roof, which is where the clerestory windows will be, is going to be supported by a long truss. It's going to have to be about 24 feet long because I want it to span the whole length without having to have supporting columns in the living room etc. There is just not room for that. So, this makes for a little bit of a dilemma. A great friend of ours has managed to obtain for us, if we want it, this leg off of a water tower to use for the truss. It is from the university where I went and it's just really cool looking also. We would like to use it but....... after doing some research I learned that we can't haul it ourselves. It is so large and heavy that we would have to rent a small crane to pick, haul and set it and you can't do that anymore yourself unless you have a CDL license. Of course, we could hire an operater but then that adds about $200 to the $350 just to rent the crane. Then there is the cost of the extra steel and concrete in the house just to support this thing. Possibly another $300-$400.
Now, we can just build a truss ourselves for a few hundrd dollars and make whatever designs we want to in it and maybe incorporate some found material in it too. This is probably a no-brainer to alot of people but we've been thinking it would be so neat to have something like this with the history and uniqueness factor, but is it worth the substaintial extra cost when we are so tight on funds? It also is going to put us almost a month out on progress to prepare for it etc. I'm thinking it probably is not worth it but I don't know about Allen. I would like to be using more reclaimed material than what we have but it's just not working out. I think that element will come more into play in the finishing stage of the house. It's hard to find reclaimed structural components sometimes. Oh, what to do, what to do??
Our living room/kitchen area roof, which is where the clerestory windows will be, is going to be supported by a long truss. It's going to have to be about 24 feet long because I want it to span the whole length without having to have supporting columns in the living room etc. There is just not room for that. So, this makes for a little bit of a dilemma. A great friend of ours has managed to obtain for us, if we want it, this leg off of a water tower to use for the truss. It is from the university where I went and it's just really cool looking also. We would like to use it but....... after doing some research I learned that we can't haul it ourselves. It is so large and heavy that we would have to rent a small crane to pick, haul and set it and you can't do that anymore yourself unless you have a CDL license. Of course, we could hire an operater but then that adds about $200 to the $350 just to rent the crane. Then there is the cost of the extra steel and concrete in the house just to support this thing. Possibly another $300-$400.
Now, we can just build a truss ourselves for a few hundrd dollars and make whatever designs we want to in it and maybe incorporate some found material in it too. This is probably a no-brainer to alot of people but we've been thinking it would be so neat to have something like this with the history and uniqueness factor, but is it worth the substaintial extra cost when we are so tight on funds? It also is going to put us almost a month out on progress to prepare for it etc. I'm thinking it probably is not worth it but I don't know about Allen. I would like to be using more reclaimed material than what we have but it's just not working out. I think that element will come more into play in the finishing stage of the house. It's hard to find reclaimed structural components sometimes. Oh, what to do, what to do??
2 comments:
You make good points on either side of the issue, but I think I'd skip the water tower truss and just make my own. It comes down to the cost savings in my judgment.
BTW: I love yer blog!
Hey, thanks, Pablo! I agree with you really but I think Allen will need some more convincing. He gets his mind made up on something and is stubborn..!! Not that I'm ever that way! ;)
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