Getting the main beam under the center of the house took a little extra engineering on our part. As before our engineered prints said that we should be nailing 2x4's together to make these beams; but since we have a sawmill we have decided to make these beams out of solid log. The entire span of the center area is 46 feet, and the prints call for 2 different size beams. Each end of the main beam is 4 inches wide and 1 foot thick. The center section of the beam is 8 inches wide by 1 foot thick. If we were making this beam with 2x4's nailed together it would be easy enough to just add the extra boards where they were needed.
However, buy using solid beams we had to get creative with how we jointed them together. We finally decided that we were going to use the chainsaw to cut out a groove that would fit the smaller beam into the larger one. For extra reinforcement we drilled holes through in 2 places and put 3/4" all thread rod through and bolted it down. You will also note in the picture that we had our friends at Caddo Sheet Metal make us a cap for the concrete block piers so that our beams are not sitting directly on the concrete.
Once the beams were in place we started installing the remaining floor joists.
This brings us one step closer to putting down that first log.
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