Strengthening a Floor (and a Design)

On our forth session first we finished attaching all the support beams to our floor's frame and began reinforcing the four corners from where we plan to suspend the room from the schools ceiling's structural supports. 

The reinforcing involved building out the corners about 3 inches in all directions. This called for a LOT of heavy duty drilling and driving of 3" screws (not such an easy task for a young kid). Lot's of hands were needed to work in pairs to measure, cut and clamp supports while other teams worked on attaching them. 

It can be difficult to stay focused when doing such repetitive work so we all took a break to explain the importance of safety and the structural soundness that is required to lift an 8'x8' room into the air. Since our room is going to be lifted from the floor it needs to be strong enough to not only hold the weight of the room but all of us as well! 

We circled up at the end of the day to review and update our updated master plan with the supports we had added. Although the floor didn't look much different by the end of our working session the group was pretty excited to know that we were in a place begin sheathing it the following week!