No one else has commented on Wolfman's home made trusses, so I will. Looking good! Overbuilt if anything, with that 2x6 bottom chord, not that there's anything wrong with that. I built a lot of trusses in my area (30 or 40 barns, shops, and additions) before our local building inspector (who had common sense) retired and a new guy started insisting on something called "engineering", whatever that is. Back in the day, it was widely accepted that a good carpenter knew how to build a roof truss. Overnight, it turned out they were clueless! Some of the buildings I put up are 40+ years old now, in mountain snow and wind, only half have collapsed. Just kidding, none have.
Nowadays I set trusses for a living, among other things, with a 30 ton boom truck with 110' of boom. But I like seeing these home brewed outfits, quite often I get called out on a job and wonder why, they have a tractor sitting right there with a FEL......
Thank you!
Yea building our house has been fun... yea it's a lot of work, but but fun too.
I put in bids to several truss manufacturers and they sent back engineered drawings and specs, one sent me back a set for 50lb 2x4 top and bottom cord trusses, I was really wondering where they thought I lived... we normally get a lot of wet heavy snow throughout the winter!
The bids came in at $11K+, that shocked me.
The trusses on there are "engineered" for 100+ snow load.
They have no interior wall support either, so 40 foot wide span on house and 35 foot wide span on the garage.
They are as you noticed 2x6 top and bottom cord and all the wood is #1 or better (Select Gold), 90% is Tamarack (Western Larch) very strong wood (nasty splinters) the rest is douglas fir, the wood was stacked and dry cured for 4 years so no wet wood was used and no future warping issues!
The tie plates are glued (Construction Adhesive) stapled (1" a 1.5") and nailed with ring shanks (10d 1 1/2").
The design of the trusses are not "normal" as they allow for 24" or greater of insulation on the top of the outside wall (normally called raised heel trusses) yet leave a 5 1/2" air gap to the roof deck for air over the insulation, this keeps the walls warm and the roof cold.
We are shooting for ~R67 for the ceiling and ~R40 for the walls.
I have about ~3K in material and 3 weeks of my time in the trusses, and they turned out perfect!