KC Panels is going to deliver our SIP walls tomorrow. The roof panels will be delivered a day later.

We’ve spent the last week preparing for the walls.

• We finished up the staining and sealing of the slab.
• We drilled holes in the slab for anchor bolts to hold down the 2×6 sill.
• We put down sill-seal and the 2×6 sill.
• We put down plastic to protect the slab while we work on the house.
• We ordered miscellaneous materials from the lumber company.

Drilling the holes for the anchor bolts was a much bigger deal that I thought. Years ago when I was doing this kind of work we bought a hammer drill that was amazing. When I saw a hammer drill for sale (cheap) at Lowes, I bought it. It was a lot smaller than the one I remembered, but technology moves forward while you’re not looking… err maybe not. It’s a fair hammer drill, but it would never have done the job. It took many minutes to drill one hole; sixty holes would have taken ages. It also started coughing up grease chunks within a few minutes. We had to go clear to Sierra Vista to rent a serious hammer drill. We got a big old Hilti hammer drill (about 15 seconds per hole). It was as just as a remembered.

Here Jonathon drills through the sill plate before drilling into the concrete.

Here Harrison mans the big old Hilti while Jonathon helps keeps it aimed straight.

Karen and I cut the bolts down to make it easier to put up the walls

Karen really took to the grinder!

Here is the slab prepped, covered and ready for walls!

The first order of business tomorrow will be to unload the truck, then we should start putting the walls up! How far we’ll get, I don’t know.

Once the walls are up, we will put hangers for the IJoists followed by the IJpoists and a row of blocking between the Ijoists to firm it up. As soon as this is done, we will schedule a crane/boom to come out and lift the roof panels onto the IJoists. At this point, we’ll have walls and a roof. After this comes details like parapet walls, stucco, metal roofing, etc.

brad