Installation of steel beams

After taking a year off, I was chomping at the bit to get started on the house again. My plan this year was to put the floor in and to get rid of the piles of dirt I had.  My brother Ian and myself put on the sill plates and made sure that it was all level, some places needed to be shimmed. A trick that a framer friend of mine told me about, when they are finishing of ICF basements, they attach the electronic level while leveling off the top,saves a lot of time later. It would of saved some time. Lessons learned.
With that done I went ahead and ordered my steel beams and all the floor material (joists and 3/4 inch tongue and groove plywood).  The steel beams were delivered without any problems, right where I asked  to have them dropped.  It was a different story for my floor joists and rim joists. I asked to have them dropped  on my driveway, but where they dropped them was a different story. I was at work, checking  my emails and saw that I had received one from my neighbor Keith. He informed me that my flooring material had been delivered but was not dropped where I wanted it. I replied and asked him if it was close to my driveway. His response was that it was closer to my neighbor's driveway and down a 20 ft embankment.  I went up the next day to check it out and I could not believe where it had been dropped off!  There couldn't have been a worse spot.  I would be making a phone call to the supplier, I was reimbursed   for what it would take a crew to remove it from the embankment to my driveway.
When I got my plans drawn up I questioned the steel beams instead of wood beams. His answer was that steel beams are not as big and they won't be that heavy. His father and himself moved a steel beam into his basement without too much problem. Well, when the steel beams were sitting in the ditch at the top of the driveway, I tried moving them by hand, I emphasize tried,  I couldn't believe how heavy the
beams were, there was no way I was going to move them by hand.  I had to hire a Zoom Boom to move them closer to the house and hopefully use it to lift them into place. Zack, Chris ( my framer friend) and I went up for the day to start and hopefully put all the beams into place. That plan was short lived because the Zoom Boom didn't perform as I had hoped. (not the right piece of equipment!) While putting the first beam in position, Zack pinched his finger badly.  Lots of pain and blood, that day was finished.  I was willing to hire a crane to come and place the steel beams into place.  Chris was adamant that we didn't need a crane, he said we do this all the time, all we need is manpower. They didn't have cranes when they built the pyramids. I was very skeptical because of all the trouble we had with the first beam and that was one of the smallest, they would get bigger as we went along.  So the day of reckoning was here, a small army (11) would go up and throw the beams into place.There was a communication mishap as the plan was to start around 1030 am, when in actual fact everyone was meeting at 1030 a.m. and carpooling up to the  lot. So my car load of 5 headed up at 9am to be ready to start at 1030.  By the time everyone arrived we already had 2 beams in and were making plans for the last beam, which was the heaviest and was going to be the trickiest.

Working smart not hard

When they arrived, they had brought some scaffold which made the job a lot easier as we wouldn't be working off step ladders.                                            

The Calvary arrives

If they didn't arrive when they did we would have had to wait until they did because I couldn't see us moving it let alone lifting it into place.  I still had my doubts about getting this beam into place, not only was the beam heavy, it had a tongue at each end that had to fit into brackets so we could bolt them together.  Well with a lot strength, grunts and groans and of coarse a well defined plan we got the last beam into place and the 2  jack posts attached and tightened, finished. I couldn't believe the job was done, I really didn't think we would do it and it only took a few hours.

Many hands make light work

Fine tuning the beams

What a difference a few hands make- Armstrong power