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Where should the bottom end of a trimmer stud for a doorway rough opening end? I’ve seen some where the king stud rests on the sole plate, but the sole plate ends there, and the trimmer extends down to the sub floor. Others have the sole plate go all the way, and both the king and trimmer rest on it. Any pros or cons, or does it really matter much?
The one place I can see that it might matter is if the sole plate is pressure treated and resting on concrete or masonry. In that case, the long plate/short trimmer way would be better.
— J.S.
Replies
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John, It really doesnt matter. Interior partitions are usually framed in one shot,then picked up and nailed to its line and the sole plate that is between the trimmers gets cut out later..However,in garages the king studs go in first,on the plate,then after the wall is stood up, the trimmers are run down along side of the piers to fill in the rough opening
Jason
*I think I would rather have the jack sit on the plate, the plate being better able to support the header than the subfloor. Or in the case of concrete, to prevent kd from coming into contact with concrete.As Jason stated, walls are usually framed and stood, so I am lost for a good reason to play with what little I know, but I am sure someone will come up with one.
*John,We always run the bottom plate all the way through the opening. After the king stud and trimmer have been nailed to it, we then cut out the plate in the doorway with a sawzall. It helps it keep both legs of the rough opening in line with each other. If the plate is nailed or bolted to a slab, then CCA will last longer. However, all the slab houses I was involved in before the advent of CCA are still there. Sole plates and all.Also, if you cut the plate opening before you put on the king and trimmer, you take a chance of splitting the plate with the nails because you're nailing so close to the end of the plate. This doesn't seem to happen when you leave it full through the doorway.That's what we have done for years. So far, so good.Ed. Williams
*John, Assuming that you are talking about ordinary loads, it doesn't matter. It's the proverbial six of one, or half'a dozen.If there is extraordinary/significant loading however, then it might be stronger to eliminate the sole plate. If you put the two components to a crush test, I'm sure you would find that the sole plate would begin to compress before the vertically grained stud did.Don't lose any sleep over it. blue
*Ed, you hit dead center with the continuous sole plate. I've seen way too many interior door jambs twisted crazy because the short side jack and king were scabbed in after the fact with a little piece of sole plate to guide them.
*Here's what I was taught. Stand up the walls with the kings in place. One of the last things to do is go around with your trusty skil 77 and cut out the plates in the doorways. This leaves 1-1/2" of plate in the doorway for trim studs. Scribe the trimmers in the opening and cut to fit. Seems much easier and quicker than trying to cut out plate stock with a sawzall, and you get a nice tight fit with your trim studs. Don't know if its the right of wrong way, but it works for me.
*That technique would drive me nutty Wedge. It seems to take soooooo mucccccchhhhhh tiiiiimmmmmeeeee.Blue
*All the guys I have worked with run the sole allthe way through. We also set the jacks and kings aswe frame the wall. When I am laying every thing outI cut about halfway through the sole plate from the bottom side. I started doing this before I owned a sawzall to save my handsaw from contacting anyconcrete. Now it is done more out of habit than anything else, but it is still easier on sawzallblades.
*Nah, it's really pretty quick. Since your slilsaw is already set up to leave the right amount of plate stock in the opening, you just make your cut, stand a trimmer up and mark it, take the line when you cut it to make up for the little bit you hafta angle it to mark, and bang: it fits juuuuust right. every time. Probably takes no more than 2 min. per opening, even for a hack like me.
*I tried it this way on a door yesterday; guick and easy.
*Tim, we install the trimmers too. But we never use a sawzall.We just whack the plate out with our powersaws after it's stood up. We then use the cut out plate for the cripples for the next header. blue
*I saw a house the other day with a twist I'd never seen before. On the window openings, the cripples simply ran down and sat on top of the bottom sill in the window opening. They didn't bother putting anything else under them.
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Where should the bottom end of a trimmer stud for a doorway rough opening end? I've seen some where the king stud rests on the sole plate, but the sole plate ends there, and the trimmer extends down to the sub floor. Others have the sole plate go all the way, and both the king and trimmer rest on it. Any pros or cons, or does it really matter much?
The one place I can see that it might matter is if the sole plate is pressure treated and resting on concrete or masonry. In that case, the long plate/short trimmer way would be better.
-- J.S.