Today was the day to rebuild the wall that wasn’t built right. Boy was it a mess. It took us all day to do it, mostly because we had to build a bunch of standoffs to land the steel stud channels on top of the Z gurt. And we are not really framers, so we aren’t really fast at this.
Last night, Denise had all the old particle board removed, so it was a bit of a fresh start this morning.
Turns out a bunch of the studs weren’t even close to plumb, and there was a lot of goofy stud spacing, so Denise straightened the crooked ones and move a couple to get the spacing to work right.
Along about 8 in the morning, who should show up but this joker.
He swore he knew what he was doing, but instead of real tools, he took channel locks to everything.
You gotta watch this guy. LOL.
Just kidding, he got all our crap back in order without any fuss.
The Freightliner got a new alternator, new speed sensor, and Kevin managed to somehow find us a replacement water separator bowl in a wrecking yard! He also managed to get some minor issues with the skiddy and our Ranger addressed.
Here is what our previous bypass fix if the fuel filter from last week looked like before Kevin put it back to normal. Turns out if you put enough tape on the fittings an electrical GRC coupler can be a plumbing coupler. LOL.
While Kevin spent the day fixing our stuff, we were fixing the inverter wall. We started by scrounging some scrap materials to build risers to mount the steel stud channel to. This consisted of cutting up a bunch of stuff and drilling holes in to it to make custom little Z brackets.
At one point, both Denise and I were drilling holes in our makeshift brackets, and it was a good thing the Freightliner has a His and Her vice installed on the rear deck.
This diminutive little red vice has quite the story of it’s own. Perhaps someday I can tell its story here.
For now, here it is with a Milwaukee 12V battery next to it to give you an idea of how small it actually is. LOL.
Once the brackets were made, Denise installed them, and then we both built the framing to hold the upper section of the new ¾” plywood wall covering. We aren’t framers, so this probablt took longer than it should have.
It’s come to my attention before that red iron steel buildings are just plain miserable to frame out interior walls for, with all the odd shape beams and things in the way.
Anyway, once the framing was done, we measured the studs and carefully predrilled the screw holes in the plywood.
About that time, a good old fashioned mountain rain storm cut loose. The sound of all that rain on 6000 square feet of uninsulated steel roof was crazy loud. When the rain turned to hail, it was deafening.
We chased Kevin out of there and towards home for fear the storm would make the roads too muddy for him to get out.
About that time, an issue we had noticed with their building manifested itself in the form of a growing puddle in the inverter room.
If you are experienced with steel buildings, you may notice a couple issues that need addressed here.
Denise worked through the rain storm in the relative comfort of the inverter room to get the rest of the wall completed amidst the growing lake on the floor.
About the time we had the wall about 75% covered, a second storm rolled in and opened up.
I managed to get some rain pictures, but they don’t really do justice to the quantity of water falling from the sky.
The amount of water a roof this size collects and sheds is impressive.
By the end of the day, Denise and had the wall covered. Well, except for one section that we were short one sheet. The shortage occurred because what we didn’t notice is that the previous sheets were 49” wide instead of 48” and that meant we had to rip a section out of one of our new sheets to cover the gap on the lower level of the wall. I’ve never even heard of 49” wide sheets of particle board! Oops.
That was all she wrote for Tuesday.
With a little luck we would be back to actually installing our solar gear come morning time!