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Many renovation and building projects demand the construction of stud frame walls. These have become standard in residential applications because they're strong, go up quickly and are easily insulated. In fact, Canada is a world leader in the export of pre-built homes constructed around the stud frame concept. Anyone who can swing a hammer can build a stud frame wall. The drawing illustrates all the details you need to build a simple stud frame wall. Here are a few tips.
Assembly
Stud frame walls are assembled horizontally while their parts lie on some large, flat surface, usually a floor. Studs are typically spaced with their centers either 16 inches or 24 inches apart, although not for structural reasons -- they could just as easily be 14 inches or 23 inches apart, as far as strength goes -- but so the ends of standard sheet goods will fall automatically onto the centers of the studs, making for convenient nailing.
Stud Selection
Stud frame walls are typically made out of 2 x 4 or 2 x 6 lumber. Two-by fours are fine for interior partition walls, but stick nailing of to 2 x 6s wherever you'll be adding insulation for soundproofing or heat retention. Every lumberyard sells wood precisely trimmed to stud length, and you'll find these measure 92 5/8 inches long. When perched on top of a bottom plate and under two top plates, the total overall height of this combination is about 1 inch greater than the standard 8-foot finished wall found in most homes. There's no reason you can't use longer studs for taller walls, or cut them down for shorter ones.
Nails
The rule of thumb when framing walls is to use nails at least twice as long as the thickness of wood they'll be fastening. This means 1 1/2-inch-thick framing lumber-which is standard-requires nails at least 3 inches long. In practice, 3 1/4-inch or 3 1/2-inch are standard wall frame nail lengths. Use two nails per joint with 2 x 4s, three with 2 x 6s. Stick to nails that have a spiral shank, since these have much greater holding power than smooth-shanked nails. Unless your wall will be permanently exposed to the weather, there's no need to use corrosion-resistant, plated nails. Aside from the extra expense, plated nails have brittle heads that regularly send fragments of metal flying after hammer blows. It's a good idea to wear safety glasses when pounding all kinds of large nails, but it's especially important with these.
Rigidity
When they're fully supported along the bottom, simple stud frame walls have a lot
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of strength to resist loads pushing straight down. But stud walls are very weak when it comes to resisting forces that push sideways and cause racking-the action that changes a rectangular wall into a rhombus. If you're building a partition wall that will be fully supported by neighboring walls, don't worry about adding braces to prevent racking. But if you're building a load-bearing wall for an addition or a self-contained garden shed, you've got to think about side-to-side strength. The easiest way to add this is with sheet material like plywood or waferboard nailed to the outside face of the wall to act as sheathing. It's easiest to do while the wall is still Iying flat, then heaving it up to its final vertical position.
Another method for adding strength is using diagonal wooden bracing set into pockets cut in the studs, or specially-made metal bracing set into a saw kerf. A word of caution: regardless of how you brace your walls, be sure they're square before you do it. Once you've nailed on a sheet of ply or fastened diagonal bracing, the wall can't be adjusted for squareness. It's locked and you're committed. The very best way to get a stud frame square before adding bracing is by measuring and equalizing diagonal lengths taken from one corner of the wall to the other.
Occasionally in renovation work you'll find it's necessary to install a load-bearing wall on top of a floor that may or may not be able to take the new load unless it is evenly distributed. Instead of guessing (and possibly guessing wrong), you can give the added wall incredible load-bearing capacity by adding a layer of 1/2-inch or 5/8-inch plywood to one or both sides of the wall's studs. What you effectively end up with is an 8-foot-high by 1/2-inch-thick beam: a very rigid creation.
Top and Bottom Plates
The wall plates are the horizontal top and bottom members that tie the vertical wall studs together. It may strike you as wasteful, but the top plates are doubled to allow them to be interwoven with neighboring walls during assembly. When the wall is spiked together Iying down, the second wall plate is left off until the wall is raised. Once it's up, the second plates are added. It's vital that neighboring walls be woven together by adding overlapping top plates.
Door and Window Openings
Any door or window openings you make in a stud frame wall will require reinforcement across the top to make up for the lack of support from studs that have been omitted to make room for the opening. This reinforcement is created with a double thickness of wide lumber-called a lintel-set on edge and supported by short studs called trimmer studs. The width of lumber required for lintels depends on the width of opening they'll span and the species and grade of wood used. Your local building code will list what size of lintel is required for different applications.
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