The Exterior Walls are Up!!!!

On Wednesday, October 30th the classes installed the four exterior walls!.

Photo and Video to come.

Power Outage 10/29

Today, Tuesday, October 29 at approx. 10:30 am we experienced a power outage at HHS. The outage happened during both construction classes just after we made our first and only cut of the day. I am hoping that we can work a bit faster tomorrow to complete wall #4 and stand the walls before the scheduled Fall Fest Festival.

Week 10 October 28 - Nov 1

This will be a short week for the students. Friday, November 1 will be an in-service for teachers and staff.

The goal this week is to complete the construction of the exterior walls and stand them on the trailer prior to the Fall Fest festival being planned Wednesday, October 30th at 4:00 PM.

Wall 3 completed!!

We have the kitchen, bathroom, and back long wall framed. We made repairs to two walls. Mr. Connor did not frame the windows quite right and we used today to make the appropriate repairs. In the original builds, Mr. Connor left out the trimmer stud on each window.  A couple of students cut out the studs that were holding the windows and the repairs were then made.

                           
                            what's missing in the photo?

2nd Wall complete

The small wall for the exterior wall of the bathroom has now been framed.

We are stacking the framed walls as we complete them. We will erect all of the walls beginning on the same day.

Building first wall of tiny home!

As part of our build, we will have to tie one interior wall and provide some special corner connections that will allow us the best insulation.

Interior Wall Connection:

Interior wall connection and corner framing:

Week 9 October 17 -21

This week's plan is to place the exterior walls.

Friday

Finished the third exterior wall of the tiny hoe.

Thursday

Note on Thursday this week I met with district personnel Andrew Stager and took a visit to the Upland HS woodshop class. The classroom has basically sat empty this school year due to the former teacher moving on to another high school. The former teacher had just begun creating a construction class and had received equipment for the class. My main objective was to get some of if not all of, the equipment over to my school before it all disappeared.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the class being used after school by a robotics club. But as suspected many tools were missing according to the teacher running the club.  I also visited the welding class. I was very impressed with the new instructor running the class.

Monday - One wall almost complete!

Student Built Stations

For the past two days, the students have been building an electrical student station. The station will be used to work on electrical switch, outlets, and light installations.

Week 8 October 14-19

This week we will be building a model of a wall representing the typical 2x4 framed construction.

On Tuesday of this week, we will be taking a field trip to LA on the Metrolink.

We will continue on a floor plan for the tiny home to come to a consensus of where and size of windows for the tiny home.

Floor Complete!

Mr. Connor's 4th & 5th-period construction classes. 

Phase 1 of the portable tiny home complete!  The students finished the final installation of the 3/4" plywood deck onto the trailer on Thursday, Oct. 10th. 

Installation of plywood floor

On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, we laid down the 3/4 " plywood flooring on the trailer.
The plywood was fastened to 1" x 4" fir strips that were attached to the trailer  1/4" think metal studs that are placed 16" OC. The 1 x 4's were attached to the studs with 12-20 2" self-tapping metal screws 24" apart.

 

Installation of 1" x 4" wood floor furring strips

On Wednesday, Oct 9 the installation of the 1 x 4 wood strips to the existing 1/4 steel frame was complete. The wood strips were placed to the steel to allow for an easier installation of the 3/4" thick plywood.  During the installation of the plywood on Friday, we had trouble securing the plywood to the steel frame. It appears the first metal/wood screws we used were not long enough to hold into the metal. A second problem we had is that the drill we were using to make a hole in the metal was not large enough causing the screw to jamb when being drilled. The third problem we encountered was using battery-operated drill motors versus electric drill motors.  The solution we found was threefold to our problems. First, we used a larger drill bit, the second was larger screws and the third was using an electric drill versus the battery drills we had been using.  The electric drill seems to maintain a faster drill speed and more torque. On Tuesday before switching to the electric drill we broke 5 out 6 drill bits when either drilling a hole into the metal or drilling the screw into the metal. Once we began using the electric drill we did not break a bit.

Another reason for going with the 1 x 4 firring is to save on the cost of the screws to secure the plywood to the trailer. The metal to wood screws purchased from Lowe's cost $10.43 for 42 pieces to secure the 1x4's. We installed 14 1x4x8's securing to the 1/4 metal frame at 2'0" OC, 5 per board. Total 70 screws. We then installed the four 4' x 8' sheets of plywood to the 1 x 4's. Each piece of plywood contains 25 screws per sheet for a total of  200 fasteners plus since the trailer is 8'6" wide we added another two 6" x 8'0" plywood pieces, each received 20 screws.

Installation of Floor metal/wood separator.

Today the classes finished the installation of the temperature separation barrier. Our design is to place a rigid insulation board between each 16" OC metal joist. (R-value 7.7) We purchased the insulation boards from Lowe's.  We then placed a foam bubble wrap 4" wide on to the metal frame to prevent the cold or hot metal to transfer the temperature differential into the plywood above.