Joist hangers

[Ben100]

So I’ve just started hanging my first floor joists with joist hangers. What a pain these are! 20 nails in each hanger and 12 of them are hard to get to! This is going to take me forever to do at this rate.

 

Does anyone have any tips to speeding this up?

 

Thanks!

[Russell griffiths]

Go and hire a positive placement nailer. 

I nailed in a couple of thousand nails in two days. 

Best £60 ever. 

[Mr Punter]

Why are they all concealed hangers?  They tend to only get used at the end of trimmers etc.

[Ben100]

10 minutes ago, Mr Punter said:

Why are they all concealed hangers?  They tend to only get used at the end of trimmers etc.

This is a good question. My structural engineer specified these ones and I knew no better. Now that I’ve done some research and have used them, I recon there are better options. I’ve bought them now though, so I’m stuck with them.

[Ben100]

25 minutes ago, Russell griffiths said:

Go and hire a positive placement nailer. 

I nailed in a couple of thousand nails in two days. 

Best £60 ever. 

Thanks, I’ll check it out.

[ToughButterCup]

34 minutes ago, Ben100 said:

[...]

Does anyone have any tips to speeding this up?

[...]

 

Yes. Just do it.

[JFDIY]

Hold the nails with some long nose pliers to save your fingers at the start then use a long punch or two hammers to drive them home.

[Mr Punter]

44 minutes ago, Ben100 said:

My structural engineer specified these ones

 

Perhaps invite him over to install a few...

[Construction Channel]

Use 40mm nails is my best advice. Or hire the gun but remember the gun won't get to all of them. 

[Mike]

Depending on the load, you may not need nail every hole; manufacturers often have load tables to enable that to be determined. Although unless you have a huge number, by the time your engineer has worked that out you could have nailed them all anyway. It's normal to use 3.75 x 30mm square twist nails, if you'd not already spotted that.

[Mr Punter]

2 hours ago, Mike said:

It's normal to use 3.75 x 30mm square twist nails, if you'd not already spotted that.

 

If you use the 40mm ones you may not hit your fingers quite so much!

[Ben100]

I think I'm going to buy a second hand positive placement nailer, then sell it when I'm done. This way I can take my time nailing the hangers in different parts of the build and hopefully not cost too much money.