raising trusses

merlynr

Member
I'm thinking about putting a pipe on my skidsteer bale spike to raise some trusses onto the exterior walls I haven't determined the length of pipe but probably ten feet. I have 2"galvanized that will slip over the spike. Is this a good idea? The spike is of good quality. It may not need to be that long because it's ten feet to top of wall and add 4 feet to peak. The trusses aren't very heavy.
option 2 is use forks and attach a T to the pipe about three ft from end and place it across the forks on top and under the fork bracket and secure so it won't move.
 
Back when I built my hay barn I used a home made 3 point boom pole but what I did was mounted it to the loader bucket on my Ford 841S. That was the only way I could lift the beams I used for the roof up high enough. It worked just fine
 

I have been a part of projects doing this. Yes it will work, BUT I would not trust 2 inch pipe. However, if you support it with 3/8 inch chain from the bucket corners or the equivalent, to a point approx. two feet from the end you should be good.
 
Why not use the pipe?? He dose not give one big part of info we need to be sure the pipe would not work and that is the size of the trusses. And or weight of them
 
(quoted from post at 15:22:34 07/10/18) Why not use the pipe?? He dose not give one big part of info we need to be sure the pipe would not work and that is the size of the trusses. And or weight of them

Old if you are answering my post you may want to read it again.
 
Forget the lift. Take one truss at a time inside the square of the building and lift one end up on top of the wall, truss will be upside down at this point. Move it to one side enough to lift the other end up on the other wall, center truss. Get a 2x4 about 14' or so long and attach another short piece to end of it in a wye formation. Use that to rotate truss upright. Me and my son set the trusses on top of 12' walls using this method, building is 30' wide. We had no issues.
 
Like this.
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I built one many years ago and have used it on maybe 10 building so far. I used 2 inch pipe appox 8 foot beyond the bend. The bend comes down below the bucket and I welded a flat channel so it sits on top of the bucket. I chained this down and used a couple of binders to lock it in place. The first building I used it on was 40 foot wide 12 foot sidewalls. After the fist one I welded a loop on the end of the pipe so I could tip the bucket forward and it would hook the truss iin the peak. Tip the bucket back and the truss was lifted way up. I set in place and found that by moving the steering wheel just a little I could move the truss 4 inches of more sideways. To unhook from the truss back up slowly and tip bucket down. 3 of us set all the trusses on a 40X 60 foot building in about 3 hours. The last one here I set them by myself and it has 10 foot sidewalls. So yes it will work just be carefull
 
Some sort of triangle bracing with a couple chains to the top of the bucket would be better, depending on the weight of the trusses.

A person tends to pick them up and drive a bit, hit some bumps, and there is a lot of sway and bend that far out with no support.

Paul
 
Call a sign crane in. It's safe and
will cost less than your time to screw
around with something. He's good at
the crane and you are building
quicker. I set 25 storage trusses 40
from wide 11' tall 2-6 top and 2-8
bottom all yellow pine. Hired my
buddies (for food and beer) and the
crane on a Sunday no less and had them
set in 2 hours. The crane was 4-500$
and he was fast. Before it was over
all the storage trusses floor was in
the space and most of the roof
sheathing was set on top as well. My
65 year old uncle heckled " us young
punk kids" the whole time.
 
Merlynr,
As said below, you don't give us any info on
the size and weight of the trusses.
But generally, yes, your plan should work
fine. I would use a heavy wall pipe or
tubing though. Not your average schedule 40
stuff.

I will be putting up trusses in about a
month here. Will use a tractor with fel and
about a 10' pipe attached to the bucket.
Mine are only 30' tho.
I like Ivan's idea to put a large hook on
the end of the pipe so you can lower the
boom and it unhooks itself. Beats having to
make someone clamber out/up to the peak and
unhitch the truss each time.
 
When you say "the trusses aren't very heavy", it leads me to think they can be handled by two people. If so, the method described by JD Farmer will work just fine. Ideally you need five guys: two guys to carry the trusses and hand them up, a guy on the top of each wall, and another guy in the middle to secure the trusses from falling with temporary 2x4s. I used this method with my 30 foot wide trusses, but I'd want to use a crane on anything much bigger.
 
(quoted from post at 02:47:05 07/11/18) When you say "the trusses aren't very heavy", it leads me to think they can be handled by two people. If so, the method described by JD Farmer will work just fine. Ideally you need five guys: two guys to carry the trusses and hand them up, a guy on the top of each wall, and another guy in the middle to secure the trusses from falling with temporary 2x4s. I used this method with my 30 foot wide trusses, but I'd want to use a crane on anything much bigger.

I was involved once in a project where we used the manual method and we had at least five guys there. With the jib on the skid steer the OP could conceivably do it by himself.
 
My shop is trussed, 30' span, 3/12 pitch., 12' floor to bottom of trusses. I had a JD 157 loader as I recall on a JD 4010. I got a heavy duty pallet (skid)
and slid it over the two stabilizing forks and secured it to the spike's frame so it would stay put. There were 3 in the crew, one on each side of the
building straddling the wall "headers" and the third riding on the platform with the truss swinging off the main spike.

On another occasion I took a piece of 2 ⅞ drill pipe about 8' long and slid it over the same main spear. Took a piece of #3 rebar and made a loop at the
tip for hanging a chain. To ensure it stayed put on the hay spike I welded a piece of steel on the spike frame just above the end of the pipe to prevent
the tractor end of the pipe from being able to raise up....putting excessive pressure on the tip of the spike. This forced the load to be better distributed
along the entire spike. On the pipe at the tractor end I welded a flat plate with a hole that matched a hole drilled in the plate mentioned above whereby I
could drop a bolt through the holes and ensure that the pipe stayed put. Worked just fine.
 
Trusses are 24' wide, worst case scenario. Standard 4/12 pitch, OP says 4' high = 12' from center to edge in each direction. About 125lbs each from my research

A 2" pipe 10' long is going to put an awful lot of torque on the bale spear, but it doesn't need to be that long. You would be able to set the trusses with the loader at barely chest height. May as well use the lift capability of the loader. It has to be able to reach 10' high on its own with a bucket. You should only need 5'-6' of pipe slipped over the bale spear.
 

Thanks for all the great posts on this subject. We used a 10' pipe and braced it using smaller pipe and angle iron. The smaller pipe slips over the two small spears at the bottom.
It's not complete yet but it lifted 400 lbs as a test. my son-in-law said the trusses are not nearly that heavy.
 
30 years ago we used an telephone pole chained to the open side of the loader bucket. Put one of the old insulator bolts through the top end, wrapped a chain around the end both sides of the bolt. With the pole on the ground put the chain under the pole over the back of the bucket then back under the pole. Snapped a binder tight and went to work. We were lifting the center trusses about 30 feet to the peak. We worried more about the tractor tipping on that one.
 
Came to this show alittle late but.. I put the tooth bucket on my skidsteer and put a two inch 16 foot pipe on the
center tooth laid it on the ground and connected 2 - two inch ratchet straps to the outer end (truss end) of pipe and
back to the edges of bucket and tightened up.. worked great..oh just add a rope or chain with a hook on the far end
when you put the straps on they hold it in place and gives you something to wrap around truss..

I planned to do this myself lift up and onto building hold in place, jump out of loader and up ladder but buddy
happened to stop by and helped me set em so I didnt have to move from loader..
 
Last time I checked a good 5x6 bale of hay weighs in at 1600#.....and part of that weight has to consider feet of distance from the pivot point....aka ft-
lbs.

So a 5x6, at center is 2.5x800= a 2000# "Moment of Inertia", not counting the dyanmic load when you are transporting the load and the tractor is
bouncing the load up and down.

Don't worry about the integrity of the spike, especially if you do as I did.
 

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