Speaker 1 00:00:04 Welcome to the Weekend, warriors Home Improvement Show built by Bar Lumber when it comes to big or small projects around the home. Tony and Cory, you've got the know-how and the answers to make your life just a bit easier. Here they are, your Weekend Warriors, Tony and Corey.
Speaker 2 00:00:24 Hey, welcome to the Weekend, warriors Home Improvement Show podcast. I'm Corey Valdez. And I'm Tony Cookson. And we are sitting here at Par Lumber in Prineville, Oregon for a special event today. We've got a barbecue going on. We just built some really cool sawhorses over there, out of some TJs, and we've got a special guest sitting with us right here. His name is Mike Bagley with Trust Joist by Warehouser. Mike, how you doing? I'm doing good. Thank you for the invite today. Yeah. So, uh, TJs are probably one of the, the biggest building materials, uh, uh, in the world. I mean, most widely used. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. In the structural frame for the, the floor. Our eye joist is, uh, that it's a very common product that goes into the house to give yourself a very nice floor. Absolutely. And, and the, you guys were the pioneers.
Speaker 2 00:01:13 Yes. In this world of tgis. Let's, let's talk a little bit about what T J I is, you know, what is it used for, what is it made out of? Let's try to talk a little bit about that and, uh, that's what we're talking about today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a lot of different products out there that can be used and we want to talk about, um, the different products and what makes, uh, essentially what makes Trus Choice, choice, choice. I joice the, you know, the choice, the right choice. Yeah. You've seen products evolve from solid sun lumber for the, the first floor to a post and beam floor. And what A A T G I is is an engineered floor truss, basically it's an I-beam made out of, uh, our micro lamb product for the top and bottom flange and A O S B web in the middle of the, the joist.
Speaker 2 00:02:00 And it has an eye shape to, it comes in very long lengths, up to 60 foot. It's lightweight, easy for a single person to install it. It's engineered, it's a very low moisture content, four to 6%, so you don't have it shrinking and twisting and bowing like lumber can. I, there is so many, um, really good reasons to use this product that are just better than what we've been doing for the last a hundred years. Yeah. Let's take a quick step back though, and for the listeners that are maybe listening to this that aren't builders mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, like if you talk to a contractor or a builder, they know what tgis are. Most of the time they call 'em Tgis <laugh>. I know you've heard that many times. I've heard that. Yes. <laugh>. But if, you know, for the standard homeowner or person that's going out to build a house maybe for the first time or they're just getting into construction, TJs, you know, there's conventional lumber, which, like you said, roughs on are two by 12, two by 10 net lumber.
Speaker 2 00:02:58 You know what I mean? It's saw on a solid saw wood, you know, you can get four by eight, four by 10. You see a lot of these sorts of systems built for your floor structure in your home. So you'll have a lower floor and if you have a second floor, you then you have second floor joists. And that historically, before TJs was solid, saw lumber, there was a lot of problems with it. You know, you can only get it up to 20 to 25 feet, 24 feet. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> 26 feet maybe, but then your spans are a lot lower. Um, so T j I came out, they, they invented this product that was I joists and the original one had steel webs, correct? Yeah. The original one was a top and bottom cord of lumber and then steel pieces in a zigzag zag pattern.
Speaker 2 00:03:49 That was an opening and that was the first choice of 1961. Truss choice began and it was, and they invented that, invented the choice. Everybody's seen those. Right. And then more into the residential, it came in 1969, an actual wood web and a wood top and bottom flange. And then that allowed you to do not just like dimensional lumber. You're looking at a two by eight, a two by 10, two by 12. You've got deeper depths in the eye. Joists you can get 16 inch, 18 inch, 20 inch deep. Yeah. I've sold 24 inch deep eye joists. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> that were, I mean, just absolutely massive. So the benefits to this is when you're building a house, you have a laser flat floor. If you've ever walked through a house that has conventional lumber for your main floor or for your second floor, you never know.
Speaker 2 00:04:37 It could be a little of this, a little of that little wavy ijo. Nothing. Nothing. And then you guys manufacture a product products like Micro Lamb, which is L v l Timber Strand. Yes. Which is L S L. Yep. And even a product called Para Lamb, p s l. And these things are built the exact same sizes. And when you order them an 11 and seven eights joist, it is 11 and seven eights. You know what I mean? Two by 12 could be 11 and a quarter <laugh> 11, depending on whether it was dry or green. 11 and three eights. Right. You know, 11 inches. I mean, there are so much differences. A lot of people don't know that. And even crowning, we talked about that. We shot a video a little bit earlier today and we were talking about crowning lumber. You know, when you have two by twelves, you actually have to make sure that you install them with the bow up.
Speaker 2 00:05:30 Otherwise you'll get that, you know, uneven elevation in your floor system. Right. Our products, there's no crown, it's no camber, so they're straight, there's no top or bottom. So they'll, they'll always be a straight member. And the tgis with those depths that you were saying will match up to the beam products. So the L ss l para, the t j i, they'll all match up in the depths. The consistency at which this product is manufactured and comes to the job site makes me think about the sustainability of using this product versus solid on lumber. The solid sun lumber is not as sustainable as it once was. The trees that we're growing, uh, we have to harvest them more often, which means they don't get to be as big. So we're cutting them down. Smaller, smaller, shorter pieces of wood are yielded instead of bigger, longer pieces of wood, which is what we needed when we were running, you know, 42 feet or whatever with a beam.
Speaker 2 00:06:28 You just, you just can't do it. Sustainably solid on lumber was not the way it was gonna be. Instead, you guys are able to use kind of like fall down, right. Like pieces and parts of things, other things made with wood. So we were talking about timber strand, L s L, it's made out of Poplar and Aspen. So pier in Oregon, you head out the gorge and you see those big stands of poplar trees that they make paper pulp out of. Yeah, that's, that's what timber strand, you're, you're using strands out of a weeded species tree that grows fast, can replant it. And it's not really used for anything else except for pulp. But we make one of our strongest beams in shear that allows you to put even large holes in a beam where most people get really leery about putting a hole, uh, through a structural beam.
Speaker 2 00:07:19 Oh, absolutely. 'cause that's so strong. Yeah. It's, uh, like Tony said, when you order up a six by 12 these days, there's gonna be weighing on it. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, there's gonna be cracking and checking. There's gonna be <laugh> crowns in it, there's gonna be bark on it. Probably <laugh>, to be honest, I've seen so many pieces of lumber come out of the lumber yard with bark on them because the trees are just getting so small. So to be able to take a tree that you can't make anything significant out of it in size Right. And make a beam that's, you know, five and a half inches by 16 inches tall, that'll span so long. It's pretty amazing. It is. You go out there to get those solid sun beams and it has these imperfections and you say, man, it needs to be nicer. And they say, well, industry standard.
Speaker 2 00:08:09 Yeah. That's what they say. Yeah. It's industry standard. When industry standard used to be, it had to be clear, it had to have four good sides. It had to be straight. Yeah. And true. It had to have no twists in it. Yeah. And the industry standard is going like this, which is why engineered wood that is, uh, that produces the exact same quality and structure ability in the product every single time is the only way we can move forward. You might hear this term, E w P, we use that term all the time, right. At Par Lumber Company. And some people are like, what is E W P? It stands for Engineered wood products. Tony just said it. Engineered, they have taken wood fiber is basically useless. Put resin and glue to it, put it in presses, and have made it stronger than any solid saw wood that you can buy stronger, straighter, stabler, longer, more stable.
Speaker 2 00:09:07 It's a, it's pretty awesome. No, no, no. Stabler. Stabler. Yes. Stabler. Did you make that up? <laugh> <laugh>. Tony makes words up. I do. I dunno if, you know, uh, it made sense to you though, even though it's stabler, it didn't come from the dictionary. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It still made sense to you. More stable. Uh, we were talking earlier about, uh, things that you can do when you have a product like this that's intended for use, you know, in the building of a home mm-hmm. <affirmative>. That's, that's why you make it. And yet here it is capable of doing so many other things that you would build out of something that's solid. You guys built sawhorses earlier before we started to shoot this, this video podcast. And you made it out of what would otherwise just be scraps on a job site. A couple of, uh, links of iJoy and, and some of this timber strand.
Speaker 2 00:10:01 And that's actually timber strand, wall framing, wall framing, timber, regular dimensional lumber, inch and a half by three and a half. And yeah, it worked great for our, uh, sawhorse lifts. We made these sawhorses and we literally threw a 3000 pound unit of edge gold floor decking, which you guys also make on top of these sawhorses. And we were a little like <laugh> leery. Oh man. But not Mike gonna hold Mike's like, it's fine, it's fine. Corey and I are like, I'm gonna back up a little bit. Mike's like, it's fine. It's gonna be fine. So, I mean, it's not like we had engineered sets of plans for this. This was a rudimentary build that just exemplifies the strength of the product. I mean, 3000 pounds of sheet goods that were just, you know, slapped up on top of these two sawhorses and, and it turned out really, really good.
Speaker 2 00:10:48 This is what I was thinking about Mike, when you mentioned that this is wall framing material. Yes. Timber, strand wall framing material. And then you said it doesn't shrink, it doesn't crack, it doesn't, uh, it doesn't bow twist cup, you know, it doesn't do all those things. All those things that solid sa studs do. And we're still sell a lot of solid sa studs, right? Yes. Probably. I mean, it's absolutely the number one product used, right? Yeah. And, and we have learned to, just to deal with the fact that when you frame a wall out of solid sa studs, <laugh>, uh, you get warps and waves and w you called them wows. Wowies. My first, uh, framer lesson was, uh, it's every wall has a hui <laugh>. Every wall has a hui. You know what's a hui is this wind. Holy moly. You go to you, you've just built your house and you've got this long wall and you go to push a table up against it and it hits in the middle and not at either side.
Speaker 2 00:11:45 It just rocked because you've got a big wowie in the wall. Well, we're talking about in the, the, I had my, did my bathroom mm-hmm. <affirmative> and we tiled all the walls and it was a nightmare because we had to sit and shim the walls. 'cause we did top floor to ceiling tile on a couple of the walls. And it was crazy the amount of work that we had to put in to get those walls to be flat mm-hmm. <affirmative> versus if we would've just used timber strand, we had a perfect wall. We like to call it zone framing. So let's say you're doing a remodel in your kitchen. It's the perfect spot. You have a 10 foot wall, you're gonna put cabinets up against the wall. It helps you so you don't have to shim the cabinets. And when you're, when you're talking about when a homeowner's thinking price wise, what do I need to think about if I want to use these studs in my house?
Speaker 2 00:12:27 You don't need to frame the whole stud pick, pick a zone. If you're doing, you know, bookcases beautiful cabinets, kitchen cabinets, slate on the wall, uh, a 10 foot wall. It's typically about a hundred dollars more for that 10 foot wall if you wanted to go. All engineered framing. Yeah. So it's a pretty small investment if you want to have perfect, uh, cabinets and help your cabinet installer be pretty happy when he doesn't have to shim everything up. Oh yeah. Absolutely. I think it's, it's a no-brainer for me, you know, to be able to buy lumber that is square flat. True. For as long as you, as you want it. You know, you see a lot of, uh, what we call tall walls. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> or balloon framing. Right. In modern construction, like in a stairway, you walk into a house, they've got a stairway that, that studs go from floor to ceiling.
Speaker 2 00:13:14 Some two story 20 foot, 22 foot tall wall. Well, if you don't use <laugh> timber strand mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that thing could be all over the place. Wavy gravy. Yeah. Yeah. Or on your tall wall, you said when it goes together, you have a hinging point where now you can use a solid piece. We have it up to 48 feet in length and, uh, it can be cut to whatever size you need. Absolutely incredible. When I think about the eye joists, you, I remember back to commercials that I saw on TV a long time ago. Uh, they called it the new silent floor system, and they had an elephant walking across the, the eye joys floor. You remember those? Yeah. I remember this commercial, I don't know how long ago that was, but I'm, I'm sure I'm dating myself. Started in the nineties doing the, uh, silent floor when went to micro lamb flanges.
Speaker 2 00:14:02 So we went away from the wood flanges and wood web and moved to a, uh, micro lamb or an L V L flange in our performance plus O S B for the web material. And that was all part of the silent floor construction where the, the gluing and the screwing the material that the joce was made of the edge goal that goes on top and putting glue in the hangers. Right. So just the whole assembly process, making a silent floor. That was great. Seeing the elephant walk, remember? Right. That elephant's name was Laura. Laura, Laura, the elephant <laugh>. That's awesome. Just a dollop though, right? Just a dollop. The glue. Yeah. Just Joyce hanger in the joy hanger. Yeah. When, uh, when my house was framed, I have, I, I had live in an a dare home and, uh, I got to be, um, actively involved in the framing of the house, you know, there, and see, I took pictures and stuff, but I remember when he was, uh, when he was putting the way we were putting the joists in, they were, were dropping a little dollop of construction adhesive in the bottom of each of those hangers.
Speaker 2 00:14:54 And I ask him about that and he goes, mm-hmm. <affirmative> reduces the squeaks or removes the squeaks, or it's part of the system the way that it's installed to make sure that your floor doesn't squeak. Right. And, um, I thought that was, uh, I thought that was a very cool thing. Um, since I-joist, uh, trust joist is so popular, I, I think we determined that maybe a small percentage of builders are still using post and beam. Corey, what would you say that might be? What percentage maybe of builders are still using Post and Beam? Yeah, before the show, Mike actually said 10%. I probably agree with that. I still see occasional post and beam mm-hmm. <affirmative> traditional post and beams where they'll use four by eight or four by 10 beams on posts in piers. And I still see, and, and it's funny because I don't even know why, because when you cost average it out, it's almost no difference between using T J I and using solid, solid lumber.
Speaker 2 00:15:55 But the funny thing is, is these guys will use solid sod lumber and then use Edge Gold on top of it. Warehouse or Edge Gold on top of it, which is a really stiff structural floor decking made from the same sort of material. It looks like O S B, but it is stronger. It, the glue in it is, I mean, you don't have to sand it if it gets wet. It's pretty amazing stuff. So tell me this then, uh, what is, what product out there if it's not mm-hmm. <affirmative> solid sun joist and it's not post and Beam, what is, uh, what does t j I compete with? Sure. Uh, there are other manufacturers that manufacture I joist, like we do some of 'em right here in Oregon. There's quite a few. Um, right now, there, there was a change in the energy code for Oregon in 2018.
Speaker 2 00:16:45 So if you have a two story house, your hvac, you probably remember seeing soffits that hang down Yes. Off of the ceiling so the pipe can go through Yeah. And try to hide it so it's, you don't see a big ugly ducting running through the house. So the energy code change where that needs to be in that second floor. So that's where you've seen now more open web joists out there that, uh, are assembled two by fours or a plated truss, you know, they're called that too. Uh, metal plates looks like your, your roof trusses, but just, uh, for a floor, uh, interesting. The floor depth mm-hmm. <affirmative> and they're typically 14, 16, 20 inches deep. So they can do long spans also, but gives you somewhere to run the, the ducting in your wiring through. There's one difference though about open webs. I sell a lot of open webs.
Speaker 2 00:17:35 I sell a lot of tgis. And the one thing I will say is that open webs are great for certain applications, but once you order them, you order them the length that they are and that's what you get. There's no changing in the field. Oh, I see. If you move a beam over six inches this way, or six inches that way, which sometimes happens, you have to order new joists because they no longer work for that space. You cannot modify them in any way. Oh, interesting. Okay. The other thing about open Webs is they don't come with a warranty, t j i, the whole system lifetime warranty of the house lifetime warranty on those products. Wow. So it's kind of up to you as a builder or a homeowner how you want to move forward. You know, if you have an issue down the road with open webs, you're kind of dealing with that yourself.
Speaker 2 00:18:27 Wow. So, yeah, I guess it makes sense because the webbing in open webs is metal. Right. It's not like you can just trim part of it off. Yours can be cut anywhere. Right. Right. And the great thing, I, I understand why people like OpenWeb. You got spaces to put your, your plumbing in your ducting. But in our, our tgis, you can put holes throughout the joists and there's, uh, pretty simple rules to follow. You can remove the whole web material in between the flanges and some of our joists series. We have different series that will handle different depths and spans and lengths. And some of our higher series are 360 and five 60 series. You can put a 24 inch hole in the center span of the joists. Wow. You can cut the whole web out 24 inches and run a nice big HVAC trunk line right through the joists.
Speaker 2 00:19:15 And it's just as strong as it was before. It's just as strong. It's pretty amazing. That is amazing. I was gonna talk about that earlier with the day. Very versatile. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the deeper, the joist that you get, you can make these big holes in there that Yeah. Like you said, you could just cut 'em, cut big holes out, and then run the ducting through electrical, whatever you want. One of the other benefits too is that with the eye joist, they come with these pre hole, pre kind of pre-punched holes. Yeah. Knock. And you just, they're like knockouts, you knock with your hammer knockouts. Yeah. And so electricians, they don't have to get a hole saw to cut through any sort of saw. They don't have to get a bit or anything. Whole hog you've seen, they just hit 'em with a hammer, knock 'em out, run their wire.
Speaker 2 00:19:52 Yeah. Or plumbing for that fact. Yeah. That's a lot less work than having to drill, especially if you've got those things on, uh, 16 or 24 inch centers and they gotta run wire from one side all the way to the other side. That's a lot of holes to drill. Oh yeah. If they had to drill holes. Oh yeah. But they, they just don't have to. They make the apprentice do it. <laugh> <laugh>. Cory, you brought up a good point about if you needed to make a change, you can get a, a new joist the very next day. Right. Or if something's damaged on the joists, we have a great tech team that can help create a, a solution and a repair and uh, do that quickly. Yeah. So that way we get that back to the field and the, the homeowner or the builder can get right back to work.
Speaker 2 00:20:29 One of the other things we talked about earlier, one of the features you said is the length you can buy. I joists TJ's up to 60 feet. Wow. I've actually, you can't even haul 60 feet. That's the thing. How you gonna haul of You can, but we've got, you gotta get an over link permit for you get over 40 feet. Right. You get a permit. I've sold them that long. Um, just we've taken 'em direct to jobs for you that long. Yeah. It just happens. Sometimes you get a situation where you want a 50 footer or a 55 footer because when you're, you know, designing an underfloor in a house and the house is big and you wanna span one joist, I mean, it won't span that far, but there's supports in between there. But when you want one joist to run from one of the house to the other, it just, it makes it so much cleaner is you don't have any seams, you don't have any breaks, none of that.
Speaker 2 00:21:17 So you can get all, you know, 42 foot joists all the way down the whole house. I feel like you'd have to hire like Burt Reynolds and the, the, the Burt Reynolds from Cannonball Run and have him like go out and draw all the police to one part of town while you leave the yard with 60 footers, you know, so that you don't Nah. So that you don't get, you know, they just put a, you know, it seems like a big deal. They just put a spotter out there. It's fine. <laugh>, it's red, red flag. Yeah. Nice. Just put a red flag on it. That's 40 feet outta the back of your truck. It's cool. Yeah. Wow. 60 foot. That's big. And then the last thing you mentioned was about the weight. You think about a nine and a half or a, you know, 11 and seven eights inch eye joist, a 40 footer.
Speaker 2 00:22:03 Two guys can easily pick that up. Oh yeah. Easily. Yep. Absolutely. If you had a two by 12, even a two by 12, the longest one I've ever seen was probably 30 feet. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> a two by 1230 footer would be like max. And those weigh a ton. Absolutely A ton. Yeah. A joist is about half the weight of an open web. Yeah. Trust. So, wow. Pretty amazing. I mean the, the, the trust joist product, it was invented, took the world by storm. Lot of imitators out there. But you guys are the og we're the beginning. We're we, you created the I joist. There is a lot of topics of conversation that we could be having here. We could be talking for, um, you know, hours. We really do need to set up a follow up to this show so that we can get in depth with Trust Joyce's product line and talk about each of the different products, you know, in depth, what, what it brings to the table, what makes it so good.
Speaker 2 00:23:00 Um, all of the versatility of that product. Yeah. You had mentioned earlier too about using Trus choice products, e w P in unconventional ways. You know, we made some sawhorses today, right? You brought with you a level. Yeah, I have a made from timber strand, a timber strand level. I like to call it the smallest beam. We manufacture <laugh>, so it's a, a masonry level, but made out of our Timber Strand product. Oh yeah, there you go. Brian just handed it to us. If you're, uh, if you want to go check out the YouTube channel <laugh> here, but yeah. Trust joist level made out of Timber Strand. This is super cool. Very cool. Brought that you can put that in your shop. Yeah. Thank you. Well, if you've ever been to R e i R E I mm-hmm. <affirmative> uses para lamb. Yep. Pretty extensively in a lot of their buildings for stair treads.
Speaker 2 00:23:51 I've seen, I've sold it to a lot of builders to use as stair treads. Uh, you take para lamb, which has a very unique look to it. It is, has these long strands of wood, you know, different colors. And they press it in with a, with a press. And then what guys will do is they'll fill it with like clear epoxy and then polyurethane or whatever, or sand it flat. And they look absolutely stunning. It is beautiful. It's our, our largest, strongest beam for very long spans. But the, the dug fur veneer strips that it's made out of, and like you were saying, pressed microwaved together, made into big billets, makes a great exposed beam in a house where maybe people are just used to a reson glue lamb beam, a para lamb makes a beautiful exposed beam inside a home. Yeah. You can sand them nice and flat, clean them up.
Speaker 2 00:24:39 A local brewery like to go to that has a para lamb bar top that they did the, uh, filler. They did a blue filler in it and then clear epoxy over the top. And it just makes a beautiful piece of furniture. Not only a structural member in a home, but it, there's lots of other uses for it. That's very cool. Yeah, we, I have, my wife has got some, some open shelving where we put the, you know, the shelf brackets on the wall and then mm-hmm. <affirmative> use para lamb for the, you know, like a five and a quarter by five and a quarter or five and a quarter by seven and a quarter para lamb right up there for shelving. Just open shelving right on the wall. She loves it. Very cool. Loves it. I wanna know who came up with the names. Micro lamb, para lamb, timber strand, strand, <laugh>, somebody sat creative names.
Speaker 2 00:25:24 He had some cool names. Some good names. They're iconic. Yeah. Yeah. No question. They definitely are. It's very cool. Well, Tony Woody, what else you got? I mean, I think you got any other questions for my Mike? I think Mike has answered most of my questions. I know that there are, uh, there's a lot of directions that we could go with this conversation, but, you know, we're limited on time today. Um, but I definitely can tell you that we will be having, uh, trust Joyce by Weyerhaeuser on the show again, and we will talk more in depth about all of the, their expansive line of products that they sell, how they're used, and all the tips and tricks, um, about those, how to install 'em and that sort of thing. Yeah. That'll be a really good conversation. I wanna get maybe some little more technical too.
Speaker 2 00:26:05 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, find a little bit more about how the engineering works. So yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much, Mike Bagley. It was my pleasure with, uh, trust Joyce by Auer for being on the show. It was really great. And, uh, thanks for showing us how to build those amazing, uh, sawhorses. That was super, it was a lot of fun. Thank you for the invite. Alright. Yeah. Thanks for checking us out today. If you wanna learn more, you can go to trust joyce.com. That's T R U S J O I S t.com. Trust joyce.com. Or you can go to Tony and I's website, it's WW Home
[email protected]. W that was, that's our email, email address. Weekend
[email protected]. Sorry. Uh, but we're also on YouTube Instagram, we're at WW Home Show. So go check out our video if you wanna check this one out. We're on, uh, we're gonna be uploading this to YouTube anytime. So anyway, thanks a lot for checking this out. I hope you enjoyed the show. Have a great week.
