I am thinking of building apole barn garage and thought it might be nice to immitate my roof line of my house since the building will be next to it. It is a 10/12 pitch.
The barn will be 32 feet. How can I come up with a ridgeboard that length? I know I will have to somehow tie several shorter lengths together but what is the best way to do this?
Butt the pieces together. The ridge is an alignment piece and doesn't do any real work. Some people butt them together between the opposed pair of rafters, others butt them in between pairs of rafters and use a piece of blocking to tie them together.
Just splice it with a short piece of the same width of lumber. If you're worried about the splice being in the way of a rafter, put it on with screws and then adjust it after your rafters reach that area of the ridgeboard.
Stryped, if you've done your collar beams and collar ties properly, the ridge board doesn't hold _anything_ up -- it's just a nailing surface for your rafters. The ridge board _is_held_up_ by the rafters.
Therefore, it's easy to get a ridge board that long... just splice shorter boards between the rafters, using a full-width lam. of 2x lumber on each side, and about one nail every four inches of span (in both directions) across the splice.
Don't forget to drop your lam plates down on the ridge far enough to give clearance for the roofing or purlins.
You're making those troll noises again, Stryped.
Put up the ridge board first, on temporary supports. Nail the rafters to it, and anchor them to the collar beams (using metal strap anchors). Add the collar ties. Add temporary diagonal bracing across the rafters. Remove the temporary ridge supports. The rafters will hold up the ridge. The collar ties will prevent the walls from spreading. The diagonals will prevent your whole roof structure from laying over flat in a wind.
You don't seem to get much from text-only descriptions. Instead, why don't you buy one of those nifty little books they sell at Home Depot and Lowes... there's one on building pole barns, and it's got lots of really pretty-colored pictures in it for the functionally illiterate.
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