What is better nails or wood. Building a house

16.06.2019

He is faced with the question of how to fasten wood elements. The first thought that occurs to him is to use nails for this. But at the same time, many people worry that they will rust under the influence of dampness. This can lead to damage and destruction of wood at the joints of the beams. But still nails can be used to connect wooden elements baths. Moreover, experts offer two options for fastening the beams - with the help of dowels or nails.

The use of dowels in the construction of a bath

Nagels are fasteners made of wood. They have a rather large thickness, their diameter is usually at least 3 cm. In order to install the dowel, you need to cut a hole in the beam into which it will fit. In this case, the fastener itself should be slightly less in thickness than the diameter of the hole prepared for it. But at the same time, the dowel should not be too thin for its groove. He must enter into it tightly. Otherwise, the necessary strength of the connection of the wooden elements of the bath will not be ensured.

To create an even hole for the dowel in the bars, you will need a powerful drill and a long drill bit. The groove for the dowel must be done very carefully so that later it is not necessary to close the free distance between it and the fastener. You also need to pay attention to the choice of material for the dowel. It must be made of durable wood that can withstand significant loads. How strong the fastener will be depends on how strong and safe the connection of the bars will be.

Use of nails

If the future owner of the bathhouse still wants to fasten the timber with nails, he needs to know a few important points:

only long nails are suitable for connecting the beams - at least 25 cm. Smaller fasteners will not provide the required fastening reliability;
nails are not hammered directly into the beam; holes are prepared for them in advance. However, they should be longer than the nail itself. As in the case of dowels, the nails should fit tightly into the holes created for them;
holes are created vertically in the beam, and the nails in them must be recessed at least 3 cm deep from the top edge of the beam. This is necessary so that during the shrinkage of the wood material, the fastener does not abut against the beam located in the next row. If this happens, then under the influence of the force of the metal, the wood in the place where the nail is located may begin to crack. The result is the formation of cracks into which air will blow in, precipitation will begin to fall. In addition, as a result of moisture entering the beam, metal fasteners will begin to rust. And rust will destroy the wooden walls of the bath.

Which is better: dowels or nails

To use pins, you need to order their manufacture from durable wood. Fasteners made of inexpensive pine or birch will not work. In addition, it must be resistant to moisture. If the pins collapse under the influence of dampness, this will negatively affect the strength of the building.

Nails are the best option for fastening timber. It is only necessary to choose fasteners with anti-corrosion protection, which will not allow them to deteriorate under the influence of dampness. If you manage to correctly install the nails into the timber, then there will be no risk of rusting at all, since they will be located inside the wood, and they will not have contact with air and moisture. Another advantage of using nails is their low cost. In addition, their service life is longer than that of wooden dowels.

05.02.2016 08:24

When building a house from a bar, two main types of fasteners are used - these are nails and dowels. They work in tension and bending, which is why they are so popular.

Russian Houses uses both types of fasteners in its work. But it should be understood that when building a house from a bar, it is better to use dowels, but for building a bathhouse or country house Nails are fine too.

What is the difference between these types of fasteners? Both of them serve the same purpose - to prevent the timber fasteners from moving. But at the same time, the assembly on the dowel and on the nails have many differences. Let's take a look at them in this article.

Nails as an element of timber fastening

Nails are made of metal and therefore conflict with wood, but are also often used in building houses. And this is sometimes quite justified, since this type of fastening has its advantages:

Assembling a building from a bar with nails is very fast;
The cost of such work is much lower.

But, at the same time, nails have their drawbacks:

Nails are susceptible to corrosion;
When compared with dowels, the bending work of a nail is much worse.

In addition, when assembling a beam on nails, one must also take into account such a moment as the depth of their recession. It should not exceed five millimeters, otherwise, when the building sits down, gaps may form.

Assembling the beam on the dowel

If you translate the word "nagel" from German, then it means "nail". At its core, it looks like a pin made of wood. Nagels can be square or round. They allow you to prevent the displacement of the elements of the beam and keep them at a certain level.

The main requirement for such fastening elements is that they must be smooth, otherwise gaps in the wall may occur.

Benefits of assembling on dowels:
They are not subject to corrosion;
Excellent work on the bending of the timber;
They are not afraid of the influence of temperature differences;
The assembly on the dowel subsequently does not interfere with the shrinkage of the walls.

This type of fastening dries out simultaneously with the walls of the timber. The Russian Houses company recommends using dowels made of harder wood than the beam itself. For example, if pine timber is used, it is better to use birch dowels with a round section, with a thickness of at least 25 mm.

Wooden "nails" have absolutely no flaws. If you need to build a house from a bar, this is the ideal solution, because this type of fastening is a homogeneous material. The only negative is that such work will cost more, and building a house will take a little longer than using metal nails. It is also important to prepare wooden pins in advance.

The construction of walls using this technology should be carried out in compliance with all the rules and requirements, but then the building will please with strength and durability.

With the help of one dowel of the corresponding length, two laid crowns can be fixed at once. It is hammered into pre-made holes with a wooden mallet. The blows should not be strong - otherwise you can damage both the fastening element itself and the bars. It is necessary to hammer in a wooden pin so that it does not reach about two centimeters to the bottom of the hole.

That shrinkage was then carried out evenly, the holes must be made strictly vertically. The first pin should be hammered in about half a meter from the corner, and all the rest - in a checkerboard pattern, at a distance of about two meters from each other.

There is only one conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing - it is quite possible to use nails when assembling a beam, but only if a cottage or a bathhouse is being built, which are subject to exterior finish. If the owners will live in the house permanently, it is better to build it with the help of wooden pins.

If you are planning to build a timber or log house, ask how the workers will connect the crowns to each other. If with nails or even with rebar, consider whether you need to invite this team.

When the neighbors summer cottage decided to build a house from a bar, they found a company that is ready to realize their desire. There, they made an estimate for them, but explained that this total cost of work is valid if the box at home is assembled on nails. And if the customer wants the crowns of the house to be assembled on wooden pins, then you need to pay more than 50,000 rubles. For advice on what to do, they came to me.

Let's estimate the price

Even if the builder, ignoring common sense, decides to build a timber or log house on nails, it will cost him more! I'll explain in more detail.

Under construction wooden house boards with a thickness of 25 mm are widely used - the so-called inch. It is used for the manufacture of formwork, subfloor, lathing and other purposes. From the boards inevitably remain short trimmings, suitable only for firewood. Of these, it is possible to prepare pins, as they say, for nothing.

When I was building a log house, I cut the inch boards from the accumulated scraps into miter saw blanks 120 mm long. Then he disbanded them band saw along the bars of square section 25 * 25 mm. Then with a hatchet he sharpened these bars on both sides. In a few hours, I prepared more than 600 pins - for the whole house! The purchase of the same number of nails 6x 200 mm will require more than 6,000 rubles.

Log house assembly

Collecting crowns on such dowels is a pleasure! First, two adjacent beams are placed in a given position and the place of each dowel is marked. The upper bar is turned over and, using a square and a simple template, the markings are transferred to the central axis of the upper and lower bars. It remains to drill holes in both bars and hammer the dowels into the lower crown. Then the interventional insulation is laid and the upper timber is installed with holes on the pointed dowels. For upsetting, you can walk along the beam and knock with a sledgehammer.

I use a cheap spade drill with a depth mark. Of course, the total depth of the holes in both bars must be greater than the length of the pin, otherwise, during shrinkage, the bars will hang on the pins with the formation of cracks. Short pins do not interfere with the normal shrinkage of the beam box: they work on a cut, fixing the position of the beams.

Hammering a square dowel into a round hole is a little unusual, but practical! If the wall is deaf, then I place the dowels every 1.0-1.5 m in a checkerboard pattern. For a wall, regardless of its width, at least two dowels are needed.

Once I saw a picture of how workers were assembling a house from a bar on long wooden dowels, similar to rake handles. They lifted another heavy damp beam and drilled into the wall with a long drill - not cheap, I must say. Subsequently, the house hung on these sticks during shrinkage, huge gaps formed between the crowns. Even when assembling furniture, it is impossible to drill strictly vertically shallow holes for dowels and self-tapping screws, just holding a drill in your hand. In the case of a house, deviations from the vertical are inevitable and very large!

Now about nails

As with the assembly on long wooden dowels, the house can hang on the nails during shrinkage (Fig. 1). It is difficult to hammer long nails into a beam without drilling. This means that labor intensity will increase and the estimate will increase, since nails of this size are not cheap. On the market, one nail 6x 200 mm costs on average more than 10 rubles apiece (I have already said about the manufacture of short dowels).

But you don't have to give up nails completely. For example, the uppermost crown connected to the veranda, or spacer inserts between the rafter beams, can be easily fixed with nails.

Often there is a layout when a large span cannot be blocked wooden beams without intermediate support. A wall or column usually acts as such a support. But when you need to do without them, use a reinforced beam (Fig. 2). It is assembled from two bars fastened with nails. Moreover, if you hammer nails at an angle, then the strength of the connection will be even higher. I usually do this - I put a support under the not yet connected beams of the composite beam so that there is no sagging. Then I fasten the bars with nails, after which I remove the support.

In conclusion, I will say: each material has its place! Applying dowels and nails in those places where it is needed, we get a warm and durable house without extra costs!

How to connect the crowns of the log house: methods in the photo

Drilling the crown under the dowels.
Installation of dowels in the crown
To drive a large nail into a dry board or timber, it is advisable to drill a hole using a long bit.
Nagels, sawn from scraps of the board.
Rice. 1. Assembly of the wall: a - on nails; 6 - on pins. When assembling on nails, normal shrinkage of the log house is impossible, gaps will form between the crowns. The length of the dowel must be less than the total depth of the holes in the upper and lower bars of the crowns.
Fixing the top crown with a nail.
Rice. 2. The run, knocked down with nails from two beams, serves as an intermediate support for floor beams.
Spacers from a bar between the rafter beams can be fastened with nails.
If the span to be covered is large, then a composite beam assembled from two beams fastened with long nails is used as a run.

This deeply specific question - why can't nails be used instead of wooden dowels? - is answered by someone who has seen a lot of things in wooden construction Grigoriev S.P.

In my opinion, when I see that some young builders use metal nails when assembling wooden log structures, this is not just a violation of all building codes, but a gross deviation and violation of the main rule for the construction of wooden structures, especially walls. Why is it still impossible to use nails instead of wooden dowels? Yes, the thing is that iron nails will not later allow the wooden log walls of the log house to sit properly, which should happen as a result of the drying of the log walls wooden frame. Proper shrinkage - shrinkage of wooden walls in a log house is possible only when wooden birch or oak dowels are installed in a log wall in a checkerboard pattern. Metal iron nails “tightly” fasten the logs together, which later leads, when the log house shrinks, to the warping of the walls and the formation of huge gaps between the logs. Thus, when using metal nails - a metal dowel, in the walls of the log house in a year - one and a half, giant gaps form between the logs, through which the log house is blown through like a sieve. In this case, no interventional insulation can help save precious heat in the log house and the building will always be cold and blown by all the winds.

All photos from the article

Construction technology timber houses, as well as houses made of round timber, has a number of features related to the specifics building material. For example, in the project it is necessary to take into account a decent shrinkage of the house, and a lot also depends on whether the house was assembled correctly from the beams. Given the many nuances, this issue should be considered in more detail.

General stages of log construction

Assembly wooden houses from a bar - only one of the stages of building a house, in addition, the construction technology includes such stages as:

foundation arrangement - it makes no sense to consider this stage in detail, it is only worth noting that a strip reinforced foundation is suitable for a 2-story house, and a columnar or grillage option may be enough for one-story buildings;

then there is the direct assembly of the beam from the log house, the laying is carried out along the crowns, and here the execution of the work may already differ in details. Some prefer to use dowels for greater strength and rigidity of the walls, others use profiled timber without dowels. This stage is discussed in more detail below;

Note! Profiled solid lumber usually undergoes chamber drying, so it is ideal for building a house. Its cost can be considered a small minus, but the increased price is justified - after all, the buyer receives a bar with minimal moisture, which reduces the shrinkage period and the likelihood of cracking the tree.

then a roof is built and the house is allowed to stand. The time during which the house "sits down" varies greatly depending on the conditions of construction, the type of wood, the type of lumber, and even the time of their harvest;

final interior decoration at home, the installation of windows and doors can be performed after the house has completely shrunk. In order to at least roughly navigate the timing, you can use a moisture meter, the average moisture content of the timber should not be higher than 20-25%.

Note! If the deadlines are running out, then glued laminated timber can save the situation. Assembling a house from glued beams does not provide for a long standing of the house, this is not necessary, since the beam itself is glued from several pre-dried boards.

More about building a house

Assembling a house from logs or timber is a rather painstaking work, so it’s better not to rush. The negligence made at this stage can turn into serious troubles in the future, which cannot be 100% eliminated.

Walling

For additional protection of the log house, the bars of the lower trim are first laid on the foundation, their cross section is slightly larger than the thickness of the future wall. And if the foundation is columnar, then the assembly of a log house from a bar involves the use of a double lower trim. This is necessary due to the fact that the bars will bend, so you need to increase their height.

Note! Before laying the lower trim, a layer of a waterproofing agent must be applied to the surface of the foundation (coated waterproofing can be used).

After that, you can proceed to laying along the crowns, until one crown is laid, it is impossible to start laying the second. If an ordinary solid beam is used for construction, then it can be recommended to use dowels through 3-4 beams with a step between them of 2-3 m. Dowels can be both wooden and metal and significantly increase the rigidity of the wall, the risk that the wall will lead when it dries is significantly reduced.

Basically, assembly log house can be carried out without additional joining of the bars in the vertical plane. This is quite acceptable when using profiled dried timber, in this case, the selected grooves on the surface of the lumber are sufficient.

Note! When using a comb profile, observance of the geometry of the teeth and grooves is of great importance. It is not uncommon for the bars to crack during operation due to a mismatch in the size of the tooth and the groove.

the Finnish profile does not imply contact over the entire surface between the lower and upper beams, so insulation must be placed between the beams. Prefabricated houses from this type of timber are more reliable during construction, and even a slight deviation from the geometry of the spikes will not entail serious consequences.

Also, when erecting walls, attention is paid to the corners, just joining the logs / beams is not enough, so the connection is made according to the thorn-groove scheme with insulation laid in the gaps. Such a "warm corner" guarantees the absence of drafts and reliable connection logs.

Assembly on capercaillie

Another extreme is also possible - assembling a beam on capercaillie. The term "capercaillie" is simply a large screw with a key head, which is used to tighten the logs, but a thin long metal threaded stud can also be used.

Using this method of combining bars is difficult to consider appropriate in our time:

the risk of timber decay from the inside increases (due to condensation on the metal);
the cost of such studs is high (it can reach up to 400 rubles / m), since screeds are installed in increments of 1.5-2.0 m to a depth of 30-40 cm, then in total such a purchase will cost a lot;
one of the advantages of this method, some call adjustment of shrinkage, but this is not true. The only thing that can be achieved is that the bars will not lead when dried.

There is an opinion among professionals that the trend of using screed studs has gone since the time when the assembly of glued laminated timber was still being mastered. It was necessary to minimize the warping of the timber in any way, and the screed solved this issue. In principle, the Finns also use something similar, but there metal ties are used only on outlets, this is justified.

In quite budget option it is also possible to assemble the beam on nails, but this is not the best way, its only advantage can be considered perhaps a small cost.

Floor device

After the walls have been erected, you can start building the floor of the first floor and interfloor ceilings.

The instruction for the installation of the floor of the first floor will look like this:

the beams will be attached to the beam of the lower trim. If a double beam is used, then in the upper one you can simply make cuttings up to 5 cm deep and thus rigidly fix the ends of the floor beams. In the case of a single beam, steel brackets can be used to support the ends of the beams on them;

further, small bars are attached to the bottom of the beams to create a support for the subfloor. A draft floor is laid on them;
then follows a layer of insulation, on top of it - a vapor barrier membrane;
only after that it is possible to lay the finishing floor boards on the floor.

The design of interfloor ceilings can be simplified and dispense with a heat-insulating layer. At the same time, floor beams can be left as an element of the interior, this will only decorate the room.

Ready houses from a bar

If the cost does not matter, then you can order finished log house. That is, the question of how a house is assembled from a bar does not have to be solved, specialists will first assemble it at their production site, then disassemble it, deliver it to the construction site and assemble it again. After that, you can proceed to the finish.

At the same time, the process itself is a bit like a designer - all the details are already perfectly sized and marked with numbers. So it remains only to arrange them in accordance with the project.

According to the same scheme, the assembly of a bath from a bar can also be performed. Although, the bath is not such a large-scale structure, so you can try to build it yourself. To facilitate the work, you can use ordinary dried timber and nails instead of dowels to combine the timbers.