To date I've been building my wall frames with the guidance of an old timber framing manual I've had lying around for years. This is a 1994 vintage Victorian Timber Promotional Council manual, and while I didn't expect very much to have changed fundamentally I thought it wise to check up on the most recent version of the AS.1684 standard just to be on the safe side.
Basically, I was right - very little of the fundamentals have changed in nearly two decades of timber framing, however the new manual (even the AS.1684.4 "simplified" standard) is quite a lot more detailed than the old and served to highlight one or two minor gaps in my knowledge.
Just as well I checked now, then ;)
The most serious error that I've made so far is that in choosing to use double top plates to my external load-bearing walls, I've failed to overlap their joints properly. This is a direct result of my building the frames in sections by myself - each wall frame section I've built separately, so I've ended up with a double butt joint in the top plates, which I had planned to join using gang-nail plates. This runs counter to the standard, which requires that they overlap by at least 1200mm.
Bugger. I've already strapped the top plates down, haven't I? So I'm going to have to remove the strapping, lift the top plates and stagger them so they overlap properly.
Not too big a deal really, and thankfully there's nothing else I've done counter to the code so I'll probably spend the morning on Friday sorting this out before I get stuck into the rest of the framing.
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