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Clever Construction System: Build the Roof on the Ground, Then Lift It

Faster, cheaper, safer, easier

By Rain Noe - January 28

A New Zealand company called Structured Build & Lift Systems has invented a faster, cheaper, safer and easier way of building roofs. Using their set-up, there's no need to hump materials up a ladder, or go up and down one yourself, and no need to set up scaffolding:

An additional benefit of starting with the roof, rather than the structure, is that once raised, workers can immediately start on the interior, protected from the elements. And while it obviously depends on the footprint, the company says that their clients typically lift the roof and fit the framing in in a single day.

The system can also be scaled up:

Enter a caption (optional)

Company founder Neil Joseph Koot, a licensed carpenter who's worked construction "most of his working life," first thought of the idea "whilst on a 'smoko break' on a job site in Raumati," the company writes. "Neil saw the need to reduce the temptation to take a risk whilst working at height, and thought there had to be a safer way to build." He subsequently invented and patented the system.

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Clever Construction System: Build the Roof on the Ground, Then Lift It

Phillip Priolo

a month ago

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This is awesome. I worked construction for a few years and I remember a few times walking along rafters and ceiling joists 12' off a concrete slab. Just a tad sketchy, but not as sketchy as standing on a box on a 2x12 stretched between scaffolding while hanging HVAC.

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Peter Mitchell

a month ago

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30 years ago I worked for a small job carpenter building car-ports & pergolas etc. He always used to build the roof first - often a fairly flat structure. Given the size of the jobs - and often without roof cladding, we could lift them by hand and hold up using wooden beams as props. The legs would then be attached and hang into holes (that I dug) which could be filled with concrete.
I haven't seen any other builders use the technique but it was very effective for a small team and for small jobs.

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Wubbo Jong

a month ago

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I'm not sure, but I thought this is similar to how traditional Japanese houses were build..
And if so, when the technic is the same, how can you patent it?

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Rain Noe

I’m a lapsed industrial designer. I was born in NYC and figured I’d die there, but a few years ago I abandoned New York to live on a farm in the countryside with my wife. We have six dogs.