Roof Trusses: What's the Deal?

Raising the roof trusses was one of the big unknowns for me when I started this. I asked a number of people how to do this properly. This picture shows a little bit of the process.

You start by installing a temporary board at the end of the garage. The board is nailed onto the outside of the back wall and sticks up into the air. When you raise the first truss, this board serves as a brace, hopefully keeping that first truss upright and plumb. You can see we installed this board cocked at an angle to the right so it could be temporarily nailed across a couple of the wall studs.

Next, you lift the end truss onto the wall, upside down. Climb a ladder and flip the truss over so it's upright. Slide it into position. Then get it centered on the wall so you have equal overhang on both sides. At this point, we tack-nailed it to that 2x6 mentioned in the previous paragaraph, then toenailed. We also installed hurricane clips at each end of the truss.

Raise the next truss the same way. Trusses go 2 feet on center, and the top plate boards are all marked every 2 feet, so we know exactly where the truss needs to go.

In the picture, we're tacking the third truss into place. There's a temporary 2x4 stretched across the trusses and nailed with a single nail into each truss. This ties all the trusses together. If the end board is nailed securely enough, all of these trusses should stay upright, even if you get a little wind. When you run off the end of the current 2x4, just add another one, overlapping a couple of the current trusses.

Once all the trusses are up, the next important step is to install at least some of the roof sheathing. As I'm writing this, it's two days after we installed the trusses, and I haven't done this yet. It's only got me a little nervous....