A stud of steel studs

Spent Saturday helping a close friend of Chief Grad Student finish out his basement: it was actually a lot of fun--once again tuning up my construction chops, and I got to take lots of my tools out for a spin. More importantly, I got to expand my circle of friends up here in Waterloo. Nothing like drinking beer while using power tools with a bunch of guys... although nobody actually used the phrase (famous last words) of "Hey, hold my beer and watch this."

WARNING: SERIOUS CONSTRUCTION GEEKERY ALERT

The homeowner was finishing off the basement into a family room and an office; he needed to expand because he and his wife are having their second kid. We managed to convince him that putting carpeting directly on the concrete was a Very Bad Idea--i.e. a mold farm (for basics of renovating a basement, see my the large PDF file at BSC's website: http://www.buildingscience.com/resources/foundations/renovating_your_basement.pdf). One of the ideas that was kicked around was DRIcore, which is a 2'x2' panel used to finish basements floors--a dimpled piece of polyethylene (creating an air gap) laminated to a piece of OSB (oriented strand board). It seems like a not too bad solution, until you look at the price tag--something like $6 (Canadian) per 2x2 sheet. Yeah, that means a 32 square feet--4x8 area--is ~$50 in materials. Yikes. We figured out that we could create the same basic product by laying SuperSeal Dimpled Membrane, laying OSB on top of that, and fastening it down to the concrete with Tapcon masonry screws for about 1/4 of the price. Of course, this requires having the expertise to attach things to concrete (and admittedly, we did manage to melt three or four carbide tipped hammer drill bits in the course of laying down the floor). But man... the DRIcore guys must be seriously raking in the money.

Next, we started framing up the basement walls. For this, we used steel framing (as commonly seen in commercial construction). It goes together really fast--a random web primer on steel stud framing can be found here. Hence the title of this posting--we kicked some ass today.

WARNING: I do not recommend steel studs for exterior walls--non load-bearing interior partition walls (like we were building here) are fine though. The problem with steel studs on the outside is that they are incredibly thermally conductive--think about picking up a wooden vs. metal spoon sitting in a hot pot. So all that insulation you put into your stud bays is gets bypassed by your steel framing. An incredibly graphic demonstration was a problem house I heard about in Las Vegas--the homeowners were smokers, and the entire house was framed with steel studs (inside and out) as an experiment by the unnamed large production homebuilder. However, due to the reduced temperature at the steel stud on the inside of the wall (during the winter), the smoke particles would plate out preferentially there (for some basics on this phenomenon, see BSC's website). As a result, you could see the location of every single stud and rafter, due to the soot stripes on the walls and ceiling. Mmm. Yummy.

Anyway, one fun toy I got to use to attach the bottom track to the concrete floor was my powder actuated tool--basically it's a nailgun that uses .22 blanks to power nails through concrete or steel. Incidentally this tool was a gift from my dear and close friend Psycho Security Guard. It's incredibly useful--did you know that they were originally invented in the 1920's for shipyard repairs, to repair battleship plate--see The ABCs of PATs. Another random web finding: "Although studguns came on the market in the United States in the late 1940s as construction tools, they were originally developed and patented in England during World War I by Robert Temple, who was attempting to adopt firearms technology to constructing devices for attaching lines with lighted floats to the hulls of submerged enemy submarines, which could theoretically then be spotted on the surface."

It was a little scary to use sometimes--e.g., you're hammering away on the trigger, trying to figure out why it's not firing, and you open up the tool to see that the cartridge has not set properly, and you've crushed it in half without it detonating. (my solution: gingerly pick up misfire with pliers, place in trash).

Between the bunch of us (4-6 people, depending on time of day), we got the floor laid down and fastened, and all of the walls built (for the home office, family room, bathroom, storage area, and mechanical room). It was a very long day (worked until about 9 PM), but very satisfying to see it all put together--and the homeowners were incredibly grateful to have all of our help.