Lessons learnt installing joists and first floor boarding.

[epsilonGreedy]

1. lift the floorboard sheets up on the scaffolding the day before otherwise you will start the job knackered. 60m2 of floor = about 1.2 tons of 22m Caberdek.
2. Once the first section of floor is laid, lift the next 10 boards up to floor height and rest them on two saw or hop-up stools because it is better to lift each board to be laid from a height of 2 feet.
3. One great tip from my carpenter was to stick some ducktape around the tapered neck of the glue bottle to catch glue dribbles running down the outside of the bottle.
4. Posi joists were relatively easy to lever up onto the scaffolding with two people, one lifts from the ground while the other pulls from staging until 50% of the joist weight is beyond the pivot point of the scaffolding handrail. The 5" wide, 5.6m long joists were tougher.

 

Finally, and the most subtle tip I learned, is how the align the first row of boards. These must be perfectly straight or even have a slight concave shape in the direction of lay because if there is any hint of a convex curve this be cause ever larger gaps as that convex curve grows as it radiates out with each additional row of boards.

[ToughButterCup]

+ 1 to all that.....

And if I may add this cautionary tale - think about how to fit the last joists.