I have a preliminary design for a house I'd like to build that includes a porch that wraps around three sides of the building. I'm trying to sort out best practices for tying the porch to the house frame through SIP walls. Any thoughts on options? (Any links to photos showing how it's achieved would be helpful, too.) Thanks!

Kevin:
I has been said to me, that no timber should go through the sip to the interior frame. As this opens up the sip to possible leakage of water, either liquid or vapor into the wall.

Also that even a through bolt would be bad, as the exterior part will get cold and the interior part may be warmer and where the moisture condenses is in the wall, again causing problems.

It has been suggested to me, that a block can be added inside the sip glued against the exterior sheet to receive the lag bolt from an exterior ledger. This block will not be the full thickness of the sip so there will be no thermal break. And due to the short length of the lag it won't be able to create any condensation and cause a problem.

So, with careful planning and working with your sip provider, you can plan the ledger height on the sip wall and have them provide an internal ledger for it to bolt to. And if necessary this internal ledger can have internal post to hold it up inside the sip. Sips with internal posts and ledgers are not uncommon.

Hope that helps.

Try to keep penetrations to a minimum - or work to have blocking installed as Jim describes. I'm a fan of half timbers @ the wall - you still need to lag these to the SIPs - but the loads are contained with the timbers themselves and the lag / bolts help with shear / etc.

Well, I'm not sure if this helps...because it goes against the "don't bolt through the sip to the frame-post" idea, but I built a porch addition to a barn where the porch frame tie-beams are bolted(hidden fasteners) to the corresponding internal posts. (See attached photo links below). Doubled-up 2x12 ledgers offset to the roof pitch, with 4x6 rafters 2ft O.C. Porch posts are sawn PT utility poles 7x7, Top-plate is 8x8 pine. (The last link is to an album of the entire project, 1886, 34x56ft TF barn dismantled and relocated to be used on a agri-tourism farm in Southern Wisconsin.)

Rooster

http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq254/crwtimberframe/Schuster%20Produce%20Barn/IMG019.jpg

http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq254/crwtimberframe/Schuster%20Produce%20Barn/IMG018.jpg

http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq254/crwtimberframe/Schuster%20Produce%20Barn/PB200556.jpg

http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq254/crwtimberframe/Schuster%20Produce%20Barn/PB200554.jpg

http://s453.photobucket.com/albums/qq254/crwtimberframe/Schuster%20Produce%20Barn/

http://i453.photobucket.com/albums/qq254/crwtimberframe/Schuster%20Produce%20Barn/PB200554.jpg

Nice job Craig, I was very impressed with the size of your crew and the use of the gin pole. This is something I'm quite eager to learn more about. Anyone have any written information on making a gin pole as well as the rigging and safety?

Craig,

Beyond the helpful ideas for attaching a porch, I really enjoyed seeing your photos of the entire project - particularly the gin pole setup. The barns that I'm building at the moment are in the middle of an apple orchard and I don't have the option of bringing in a crane, even if I wanted to. (I don't have the team of draft horses, either, so I'll be hitching up to a tractor.) I also learned a lot from the photos of getting the top plates in place. Lots of info upon close inspection of the images. Thanks again!

Maurice and Kevin,

Here is a link to a past thread that has some more photo and video links of a different and more recent barn raising with a gin pole.

http://www.tfguild.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=20719#Post20719

I'll start a new thread just for the gin-pole system.

Rooster