This Old House

Kevin

Today, on "This Old House"... With this 40-foot beam in place, we're ready to start building our second floor.

Jeff

Right there!

Kevin

We're gonna be building a deck off the back of the house, and that's gonna cut all the sunlight off, so Jeff has got a noisy solution for us. What happened to all this plumbing here?

Richard

I've never seen anything like this before.

Roger

There's already rot going on in that trunk.

Kevin

So what have you found up here?

Tom

Well, a bit of a surprise.

Richard

It's really the classic plumber's lament.

Kevin

Nice! How excited are you guys to see that?

Extremely. KEVIN

Right? You're gonna have to choke down some dust first, though, before you get to that part.

Laughter

Extremely. KEVIN

A long way.

Tom

The money's in the detail.

Kevin

That is beautiful. Hi, there. I'm Kevin O'Connor, and welcome back to "This Old House" here in Westerly, Rhode Island. For the past 70 years, our little ranch here stood just one story tall, but over the next couple days, it is going to sprout a second level. Now, over the past couple weeks, there's been a lot of demolition. The exterior walls were taken down on this side of the house, a 20-foot-tall brick chimney came down with the help of Mark McCullough. And now, Jeff, we have framed up the perimeter walls for the first story. Time to start thinking about the second story, and, man, you promised us a big beam. Looks like you delivered. What am I looking at here?

Jeff

You're looking at one single piece 7'x18' PSL.

Kevin

And a PSL being?

Jeff

Parallel strand lumber. So, you can see here all these strands of lumber that are in parallel, all pressed together in a resin, and it adds a considerable amount of strength.

Kevin

And so, last week you said, what, 40-feet long, is that right? And it's because this is just a big, wide-open floor plan.

Jeff

Pretty much. There's one post in the middle here, it goes into that wall pocket there, we got posts on the other end, and it's an open floor plan back and forth here.

Kevin

So this is gonna help carry our new second story. Any sense of how much weight that is?

Jeff

We got about 35,000 pounds of floor system loading onto either side of this beam.

Kevin

So we need a big beam. If weren't using a PSL, I presume, what, steel is your option?

Jeff

Steel, yeah.

Kevin

What do you think about that?

Jeff

Well, we would have to have a steel column, steel column, and then crane. And then we'd have to pack out that steel web so that we could --

Kevin

With wood?

Jeff

With wood so that we'd get our floor system attached to it.

Kevin

Whereas with this, you're just gonna put, what, the hangers right to it?

Jeff

Yep,

nail right into it. Kevin

So, how much of this is gonna be buried in our floor system?

Jeff

So, floor system's 14 inch. So, we've got four inches of exposed there, and that's gonna get buried in transition. So we've got an archway into this living room and then we've got a coffered ceiling design into the kitchen/dining room, and that disguises that.

Kevin

So, you said one post in the middle. How do you hang the ends?

Jeff

So, this end is gonna go into a wall post there. There'll be another post supporting it. And then we're just framing this wall up. It's gonna stand up, and we're gonna post onto that one.

Kevin

So, we got to put that up before we put this up?

Jeff

We're gonna put that little section of wall up, and then we're ready to go. Ready? Ready?

Nail gun popping

Drill whirring

Jeff

All right, that post is set. So the beam on wheels here, we're gonna slide it over, we'll come right up against that column, and we'll jack it up, and then once we get up to a certain height, we'll go into that pocket and then we'll swing onto the top of this.

Man

Let me catch up. All right, now lift your end. You got to come up. Jeff, you're there.

Jeff

Yep, good.

Cranking

Metal squeaking

Kevin

Got it? That is beautiful, Jeff, right?

Jeff

How 'bout that? One piece.

Kevin

40-feet clear span, that's awesome.

Jeff

We got a column going right here, then we're ready to set floor joists.

Kevin

All right, beauty. That's progress. These windows are the only source of natural light down here in the basement, but we're gonna be building a deck off the back of the house, and that's gonna cut all the sunlight off, so Jeff has got a noisy solution for us. So, Jeff, what have you got for us for a solution?

Jeff

So, the other side, obviously, we've got that deck, so that's getting darkened. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna saw cut an opening in the foundation on the front side. There'll be a walkway that'll go by it, and we'll create a window well so that we retain the earth. But we've lined up a window to match these two windows that are in that front mudroom.

Kevin

So, the grade that I'm seeing right here is basically the finished grade, is that roughly the height?

Jeff

Yeah. Yep, that'll carry right across here.

Hence the window well. Jeff

Yep.

Kevin

Is it necessary? Is this for code or aesthetics or what?

Jeff

You're supposed to have two operable basement windows per code, and obviously the other windows will remain there, but they really aren't gonna allow for much daylight, so it's really more of a daylight convenience than it

is anything else. Kevin

All right. Well, I'm dying to find out what Bill's gonna be doing for us. Let me check. Hey, Bill. How you doing?

Bill

Good morning.

Kevin

I'm coming into your hole, okay? So, good morning. What is your process for cutting this hole here?

Bill

Okay, so essentially we're gonna cut out the concrete with a giant skill saw, with a big blade cutting through. So the first step is to determine where the window is gonna be. You mark your lines, and you set anchors.

Kevin

Beautiful.

Bill

These anchors hold this type of plate that'll rotate on a can that'll give you an adjustment to where the track has to go. I've already done that here, right? This is all set to the cut line, which is right here.

Okay. Bill

Okay?

Kevin

And the track is gonna be holding what?

Bill

The track will hold this part of the saw, which is called the carriage. All right, this carriage mounts on here. It runs on rollers that run it back and forth and a cog gear that lets it move back and forth. I'll run the saw back and forth with a drill with the gear.

Kevin

And obviously, the blades are right here. What do you got for a blade?

Bill

Okay, so this is a diamond blade. Right? There's diamonds inside each one of these segments, right? The exposed diamonds, the rotation cuts the concrete.

Kevin

How many cuts do you get out of a blade like this?

Bill

A blade like this, you'll probably get 40 or 50 cuts, and what determines how long it lasts is the aggregate in the concrete and the amount of rebar in the concrete.

Kevin

Right. Okay. And in terms of safety for you, what are you doing to keep the dust down, to stop the chips coming out? What's your process?

Bill

To keep the dust down, everything we use is with water. We pump water from the truck. It goes through the saw. It serves a dual purpose. It cools the motor, lubricates the blade, and keeps the dust down.

Kevin

Got it. Okay.

Saw whirring

Bill

It runs through a conversion box that takes it from 60 hertz, which is typical electric, converts it to 400 hertz.

Kevin

Whoa!

Bill

So it essentially boosts the power seven times.

Kevin

Got to get me one of those.

Bill

Yeah.

Kevin

I didn't know they even existed.

Bill

We've got eight and a half inches here with this blade, which is a 24-inch blade. We're gonna switch this one out and go to a 30. It should get us through to the 10 1/2 we need.

Kevin

Okay. So the second blade did a trick, right? Went all the way through?

Bill

Yep.

Kevin

Now you got to go to vertical?

Bill

Right.

Kevin

So close. Oh, look at that.

Jeff

Hey,

Bill. Kevin

Bill, you're the man. That's awesome. So, what do you got next, Jeff?

Jeff

So, we've got a double pressure-treated frame going all the way around, one down the middle to line up with that mullion, and we got two new windows going in.

Kevin

Love it. That's awesome. Jeff and his team are big fans of the laminated strand lumber they're using for the framing. They like it for its strength and consistency, so we decided to see how it's made. To find out, we traveled about 100 miles north of the U.S. border to Ontario, Canada. This is Canora, a small town that makes a lot of strand lumber. Bill,

nice to see you. Bill

Nice to see you.

Kevin

I can tell from what I'm looking at here this is already a very big operation. You're the plant manager?

Bill

That's correct.

Kevin

You got a big deal going on here.

Bill

Yeah. So, this is where it all starts, Kevin. This is poplar logs arriving, about eight-feet long. About 50 of these trucks a day arrive on site to keep us going.

Kevin

Unbelievable.

Bill

It gets down piled in the yard over there, and we've got about four or five weeks' supply, but this is where it all starts coming from the bush.

Kevin

And the whole purpose of everything going on here is to make some LSL -- laminated strand lumber, right?

Bill

That's correct. That's what we make here.

Kevin

All right. Well, are you ready to show me the whole process?

You bet I am. Kevin

All right, thank you.

Bill

So, Kevin, this is the start of our process here. So these are the eight-foot poplar logs that are being loaded into the process. We call those magazines. So we've got this high-lift loader that takes the logs either from a logging truck or actually from our yard and loads them into those magazines. So then it's really the weight of the logs in those magazines that push down into the conditioning ponds. So this is really the start of our whole LSL process. So, this is the conditioning ponds and jack ladders. So the logs spend about eight hours in the conditioning ponds. The ponds are heated up very hot, like 130 degrees during the winter, and it's really critical to thaw out the wood.

Kevin

So, primarily to thaw the wood and make it a little softer?

Bill

That's correct. During the winter, even during the summer, we'll have a little bit of heat on the pond just to soften it up a little bit.

Kevin

A big giant pond full of water, a machine brings them up here, and where's it dropping it?

Bill

It's dropping it into a jack ladder out feed conveyer, and that conveyer's gonna feed the logs into the debarker. It's a little bit down the stream. The logs also go through a metal-detect conveyor. It's a great thing right there. So we really want to prevent any metal getting into our debarker or into our strander. Kevin, we need to remove the bark from the log, so we have each of the logs go through the debarker singularly. We've got five knives that rotate around the log and cut the bark off. Then the barks are ready for the next part of the process, which is stranding. So we've created a pocket of wood here, and that's gonna get pushed forward into the strander ring. The strander ring is about eight feet in diameter or so. It's got 48 knives around the interior of the ring, and it'll travel through the wood and cut the strand.

Kevin

So, that big ring there, that's the actual strander, and it's going sideways across the wood?

Bill

That's correct. It's driven by 1,100 horsepower motor, and then it'll get indexed ahead for another cut. We're producing strands that drop off the bottom of that strander and go up the inclined conveyor tubes to some storage bins. This is one of four dryers that we have. The strands travel through here. They're being tumbled around like in a clothes dryer. And so they travel through to the end of the dryer. Takes about 15 minutes or so at about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit to get down to the 2% to 3% moisture content that we need.

Kevin

And what's the heat source for your dryer?

Bill

This is really the heart of the plant, Kevin. This is one of our two fluidized bed combustors. Contains about eight tons of sand, and we start it up with natural gas, get it all heated up, and then we add fuel made up of our bark that we pick off the logs and off of sander dust or sawdust that we generate in the plant. So all the residuals that we generate essentially get burnt in our combustor.

Kevin

Right.

Bill

We're producing flue gas off our combustor to dry our strands down to 2% to 3% moisture content, and then we're also using the flue gas to heat up thermal oil. When the plant was built, it was one of the largest thermal oil systems in North America with 80,000 gallons of thermal oil, and we use that thermal oil to really move heat around the plant. We use it to heat up the ponds, the conditioning ponds, we use it to keep the plant warm during the winter, and we use it to generate steam for our steam-injection press.

Kevin

Wow. So, very efficient.

No waste. Bill

No waste at all.

Kevin

And this is the control room?

Bill

This is where we manage and operate our energy system and our dryers in this area here. And over here, we operate our blending, where we're blending strands with resin and wax. We're forming a mat through orienters to line up the strands in the machine direction, and that's outside here. And then we have a mat. Today we're pressing 1 1/2" wall-framing products.

Kevin

So, essentially 2x4s that we use.

Bill

That's correct, yeah. The mat of strands is about a foot thick coming down the line. The forming process is a continuous one, so we have to cut that mat at some point. And we have a flying cutoff saw that starts to travel with the mat and cuts across, then we accelerate the mat into the single-opening steam-injection press, which is very unique.

Kevin

And how long is the mat, the one that you cut?

Bill

The mat's about 64-feet long, 8-feet wide, and, again, about 12-inches thick for this product.

Kevin

Mm-hmm.

Bill

It goes through the pressing process and a very unique steam-injection press, which softens the mat with steam and helps cure the resin. After the mat then becomes -- we call it a billet, and it'll actually go through a splitter saw that'll split the billet in half, 4'x4' for example. And goes down a roll case into a billet cooler. We need to cool it off for a couple hours so that it stops off-gassing.

Kevin

Can you cut 'em once they're cooled?

Bill

That's correct. Then we go to our products area, which is really just a saw mill that cuts the billet down to size. We make something like 500 different products out of TimberStrand, out of LSL. This represents the kind of range, from a 2x4 or wall-framing material...

Kevin

Yeah.

Bill

...all the way to this 3-1/2x11-7/8 header that's used above garage doors and above walls and windows.

Kevin

And everything in-between?

Bill

And everything in-between, yes.

Dan

Hi, Kevin. Welcome to our QA lab.

Kevin

Thank you. What are we testing?

Bill

So today, we're gonna be determining the strength-and-stiffness performance of this 155 3-1/2-inch beam. So, basically, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take this beam, and we're gonna put it on this test frame. We're gonna load it to a certain deflection. From that data we receive back from this test frame, we'll be able to determine its stiffness-and-strength performance and whether or not it met the required performance for this grade of product.

Kevin

All right. That was a full-on explosion.

Dan

Yeah. That was a good test.

Kevin

So it -- it broke. What'd you learn?

Dan

So what we learned was it took over 4,000 pounds of force to break it, and the data is also telling me that it met its stiffness requirements or its MOE requirements. So we got a good test. Typically, in the lab, we'll do four more of those samples on the flexure machine, and then over there, we're gonna actually rip some boards in half on our tension tester.

Let's do that. Dan

Okay.

Dan

Okay, Kevin. What we're gonna do here is we're gonna determine tensile strength of this product. We'll turn the machine on, and it will basically just rip it in half.

Kevin

So what am I looking at here? What are the different metrics?

Dan

So what this is telling us is basically the amount of load or pounds force it has on that tension.

Climbing fast. Dan

Climbing fast, and it should break approximately over 30,000 pounds to actually bring it to failure.

Kevin

30,000.

Dan

That's it!

Laughs

Kevin

That's unbelievable.

Dan

So that broke at over 35,000 pounds.

Kevin

Wow, and so, what would be a passing number? What's the threshold?

Dan

For this one, for this particular product, if you're above 20,000, you're in good shape.

So you're well above -- Dan

Oh, yeah. We're well above.

Kevin

Passed with flying colors.

Dan

Yep, we're well above. That was a good test.

Congrats. Dan

Okay.

Bill

So this is our automatic strapper where we're applying vinyl straps around the stack, you know, every four or five feet or so

to hold the stack together. Kevin

Right.

Bill

And then it gets transferred over to our bundle cut-saw over here, which is really a horizontal band saw. And that's what we use to finally cut the 64-foot stacks to lengths the customer needs.

Kevin

So you've actually banded it while it's still 64-feet long?

Bill

That's correct, and we automatically know where the cuts are going to take place, so we can position with that.

Machinery whirring

Bill

We now have bundles of LSL that are cut to length, and they're approaching our wrap station here. So, at our wrap station, we're applying an end seal, a waterproofing end seal. We're applying waterproof wrap to our bundles, stapling it on, and then we're applying SAP logos and product information onto the bundle. And this is where the bulk of the people in the plant work is actually at the wrap station.

Kevin

Everything else is automated?

Bill

That's correct. Haven't automated this yet. We're working on it. This is our rail-car loading bay here. We'll load out up to 25 rail car a week and about another 75 trucks, and that's going to locations all across North America. In fact, we also ship some off to Japan.

Kevin

Well, that is a lot of product. Bill, I really appreciate the tour, and I know we've got more of this coming to our house. So thank you in advance for that delivery, as well.

Thanks very much. Kevin

Appreciate it.

Tom

So, Jeff, you're making good progress here. You got the second gable being framed right here.

Yeah. Tom

Looking good. That one over there's already ensheathed and ready to go up.

You bet. Tom

I see these studs are gonna run right from the plate all the way up, so it's almost like a balloon-framed wall.

Jeff

Right. And the nice thing about the engineered studs, to your point, we can balloon frame. We got a 20-footer here right to the peak, so that thing's straight as an arrow.

It really works out well. Tom

It's good when you balloon frame because you don't have any of that hinge effect where the two plates meet.

Jeff

Exactly. Exactly.

Tom

So it's actually a pretty strong wall, but these suckers are heavy.

Jeff

They are heavy. They are.

Tom

All right. So let me give you a hand.

We'll sheathe this down. Jeff

All right. Okay.

Tom

That is perfectly flush.

Jeff

All right, so we have to blow off this deck to put our weather membrane down.

Tom

Right. Now, this is a self-sealing membrane that's gonna skim right over the deck and stick to it. So you're right. We want to make sure it's clear. And this is designed to keep water and air from penetrating the siding. This actually allows it to help to breathe. We're using a hard-rubber roller to push the product tight against the sheathing to make a good connection.

Jeff

All right. All ready to go. Now we're ready to stand it. We're gonna need some help.

Tom

Yeah, we definitely need some help.

Jeff

All right. I'll get the guys up here.

Tom

All right. Good.

Jeff

All right. So, uh, I need 24-inch rips of OST.

Tom

All right. So when you're building a wall that you're gonna stand up on the floor, the first thing you want to do is stand this plate up in the position that it belongs. So there's a line snapped on the deck right back here, and the edge of it is on that line. You then attach all your studs to make sure, when you stand this wall up, that the wall doesn't slide off. You apply this piece of metal strap right here, and there's about four of them on this wall. One here, nailed in the side, goes down underneath, and comes out the other side and nailed to the deck. What that is, it actually is a hinge, so when you stand the wall up, the plate won't move.

Jeff

Ready? One, two, three, up.

Man

Come on, baby. Come on.

Tom

All right. Keep on going. Keep on going. There we go. There you go. All right.

Jeff

Okay, good. That's good. Nail it. Coming in,

just a little bit. Man

All right.

Jeff

Right there, right there, right there. Love it. Up. Okay. Push. Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

Tom

You guys have it?

Jeff

Back a little, back a little, back a little. Right there! Nail it.

Tom

All right, Jeff. Those gable ends go up, and a lot of progress is made today.

Jeff

Next time, we'll be standing those dormer walls.

Tom

That's right. So until then, I'm Tom Silver.

Jeff

And I'm Jeff Sweenor.

Tom

For "This Old House." Yeah. It's really looking good.

Kevin

Next time on "This Old House"...

Jeff

Go!

Man

I would want to learn how to put up the right, proper siding. I want to learn how to put the plumbing in correctly -- everything from the beginning to the end.

Woman

This is what I know I want to do with my life.

Kevin

You ready to get to work?

Man

Most definitely. When do we get started?

Jeff

Well, that is some nice progress today.