Rensselaer Adventures

This blog reports events and interesting tidbits from Rensselaer, Indiana and the surrounding area.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Building trades starts a roof

Earlier this week I just happened to catch the delivery of trusses, built right here in Renssealer by Stark Truss, to the Building Trades site on Warner Street. The driver was alone and I did not know how he would get the load of trusses off the truck, so I watched for five minutes to see what happened. First, he backed the truck up so the back end was on the lawn. While he was doing this, the wheels under the truck repositioned themselves from the back of the truck trailer to the middle.
When the truck was in position, the driver got out and worked some controls that raised the front of the bed of the trailer and lowered the back.
Then he went to the middle and seemed to be working a different set of controls. There was some mechanism that pushed the trusses backward and off the truck.
The driver was not quite satisfied with where the trusses were being deposited, so he got into the truck and backed up more, driving the trusses through the dirt.
Then he moved forward and the trusses slid off the truck. I had seen enough, so I got back into my blue tardis and traveled away. (Yes, I have watched Dr. Who a bit too much.)
The next day I was excited to see a crane on the site lifting the trusses into place.
As the crane held the trusses, several of the students positioned them and secured them in the proper place. They worked quite quickly, so that after a couple of hours they were almost finished. Below a student is connecting one of the final trusses to the crane.
This truss was then lifted into place near the end of the roof.

Thursday morning the students were on the roof attaching a layer of particle board to the trusses.
Meanwhile, slow progress is continuing on one of the two other houses that are under construction in Rensselaer. The house on Elm Street now has a metal roof and soon should be completed on the outside. Soon is relative--this building has been under construction for several months.

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