Newsgroups: rec.woodworking

> How about a 4th way?  Put your wall frame into place, and if it's a little
> short (sometimes necessary to stand the frame up), shim it at the top to
> make the whole frame fit really snug to the floor.  Get yourself some
> 2-1/2" masonry screws (assuming you have single 2x4 for a sill plate,
> and nail them into place with a 4 or 8 lb. hammer.  The only thing is,
> the frame has to be a snug (tight) fit, otherwise the sill plate will
> tend to bounce up and pull the nails.  Just run some dry wall screws
> of the size into the floor joists overhead, and that wall ain't going
> anywhere.  It's tiring, but it really builds up your forarm ala Popeye.

And this might be a huge mistake!  I just finished our basement last
summer and the prefered way to build a basement wall in FortCollins is
by "hanging" the wall from the joists above.  We have expansive soil
here and basement floors tend to heave.  If your wall is snug from
floor to joist and the floor decides to move up, you have just jacked
your house up off the sill plate.  __Bummer__.  If you don't plan on the
heave, you are gonna have trouble. 

Basically the wall looks like:
                   _____________________________________________
 joist             |____________________________________________|
 top plate         |____________________________________________|
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||                 ||           ||          ||
                   ||______|__________||_____|_____||____|_____||
 bottomplate       |_______|_________________|___________|______|
 1" gap             _______|_________________|___________|______
 sill              |____________________________________________|
 concrete pad    /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

Sorry about the crummy graphics but here is how you do it.  Build the
wall (topplate - studs - bottom plate) so that it will leave a 1" or
so gap between the bottom plate and sill plate.  Power nail/glue the
sill plate (made from redwood) to the concrete floor.  Have a friend
help you hold the wall section up to the joists above.  Nail in place.
To keep the wall from moving around, drill about a 1/4" hole in the
bottom plate and use 30 (40?) nails thru the bottom plate and into the
sill plate.  Leave a bunch of the nail sticking out the top of the
bottom plate.  These nails are around 6" or so long.  This will keep
it from moving around but when the floor/sill-plate moves up and down
the nails will slide in the hole of the bottom plate.

When you drywall it don't put any nails into the sill plate.  When you
add the trim work don't nail into the sill.  This means you will need
to get really wide trim.

When the wall shifts (hopefully not more than 1") everything will move
and you have no cracked wall board or jacked up house.

Have fun!

From: hoff@hpcc01.corp.hp.com (Karl Hoff)
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 15:57:10 GMT
Subject: Re: Miscellaneous Questions...
Organization: the HP Corporate notes server