Solar Power: Day 4

The pergola crew returned today with two items on the agenda: cut the tops of the posts to receive the 4x12 beams, and start notching the beams for assembly. The posts each have the outer 2” removed on all four sides to create a center post that will be surrounded by four beams at each corner in a castle joint. I’ve worked with this type of joint in woodworking when I built a bed frame five years ago and I was very pleased with how resistive to racking and twisting the joint was, and that the only way to have the joint come apart is to lift up on all of the cross members. Considering each post is, by my estimate, going to have 600+ lbs of weight on it, these beams are going to be VERY hard to lift once in place.

The beams are notched with half laps so that they fit together flush on top and bottom and then the whole assembly fits around the center of the post protrusion

The crew used a circular saw to start as many cuts as possible so as to maintain straightness and accuracy, and then switched to a reciprocating saw to finish each cut beyond the circular saw blade’s cutting depth. While this detail is fairly small in the grand scheme of things, like Col. Hannibal Smith said in The A-Team, I love it when a plan comes together.

For the beams the crew opted to start on the ones that required the most notching, so after a little bit of planning time they got everything marked up and gave the circular saw a real workout. I was genuinely curious how they were going to cut the deep notches for each beam because while the 2x6 joist notches can be cut to full depth with a 7 1/4” circular saw, a 4x12 requires a 5 5/8” notch, which you’re only going to get with a giant beam saw, which they sadly didn’t have in their tool arsenal. To finish each notch they used, of all things, an oscillating multi-tool. Yep, that tool. The one that screams in Jim Carrey’s Most Annoying Sound in the World voice.

Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to snap a photo of the two beams they finished before they covered everything up at the end of the day, but I’ll be sure to include one for tomorrow’s post since they’ll be doing more of the same.

Fun fact: Douglas Fir sawdust smells as good as the wood looks, which is amazeballs.

Oh, one last thing: the city inspector came by to inspect the concrete footings and make sure the approved plans were being followed. Everything passed, which was good, nobody wanted any surprises. I also took away a pat on the back knowing that the city approved something I’d designed. That was pretty cool to me.