Hi guys!

long time since last time. I'm going to continue my timber frame project started last year in about one or two weeks now and I'm concerned about one thing especially.

I'm building on concrete piers and i centered the post on the piers (thinking about the loads coming down being centered). The thing is that I have 4" left of concrete on the outside of the piers all around and I would like to close-in the structure with Larsen trusses or a similar conception of wall insulated with 8"cellulose. My concern is regarding the sit of those walls, I wish i could have the all load of the walls being supported on the piers width but it's not the case..

Any suggestion to that issue?

For info the piers have 10feet in between them and they are 16x16" squares. I would also like to use first 2x3" horizontal pieces before connecteing the larsen trusses. which brings the wall width up to 10" (without the outside sheets)...

I can come up with some pictures and drwaings later.

Thanks, Neil

I haven't dealt with Larsen trusses before, but is it possible for them to be pretty much unloaded and hung on the frame as one would do with insulated panels? The frame would handle primary structural loads and the Larsens would just be an insulation vehicle and stiffener. I imagine someone will chime in that know more about Larsen trusses though.

You could cantilever the floor system over the piers.

As hyland said, the larsens really don't hold any weight. Raise the frame, get the roof on, add interior wall finish, and then screw through the interior larsen stud into the frame. With board or plywood gussets, then exterior stud isn't going anywhere. Be aware that the current building code requires occasional (I think 10') vertical fireblocking for things like Larsen trusses.

This is more or less what we did. Our foundations consisted of a standard foundation wall (with a poured ring beam at the top to replace the more normal slab) with a set of piers set inside it corresponding to the posts. For reasons that are beyond me as I look back on the project we didn't use a sill. The floor joists sit on this wall spanning the width of the house and the walls are simply sat on top of the joists. The walls are a sandwich of OSB panels separated by home-made I-joists. We found that here in France the cost of geotextile was actually higher than the cost of 9mm OSB (per square metre) so rather than making the normal larsen trusses (ladders) we made I-joists with a solid web to separate the boxes for insulation filling.

Were I starting again I would have used a sill which would itself have supported the floor joists and simply hung the walls from the frame. Without the sill, there's nothing to support the bottom of the walls meaning that installation gets more problematic. In a typical manner this tiny detail snowballed into several days of tedious corrective work when I came to install the subfloor!

Hei guys!

my frame has now been raised and I'll close it in with I-beams finally, no time to build any Larsen trusses myself..
I'll cantilever on the piers, holding a seat that i screw into the sill using appropriate solution and screws. I'll still use some 2 x 3 " around the frame first before I install the I-beams.

Thanks for your help guys!

PS: Jon Senior, je construis en Norvège mais je suis originairement ton voisin, un Breton