The work tonight began on a piece of paper and then it moved ot he footings. As hard as I tried to keep everything level, straight, and square, I knew that the possibility everything was perfect was probably not so. So I decided that the best way to make sure the joist were lying parallel and perfectly square with the front of the building was to lay out a perfect right angle using the CAD system. So I laid out the joist on paper and used the dimension tool to find the diagonal. I then laid this out on the footings. As it turned out the building is within 3/8" of being square, and this tolerence is well within the limits that could normally be expected.
So as soon as I established the square lines I spent an hour marking out all the joist locations for the entire building. Then Sandy joined me and we started installing the I-joist and rim joist. I have included a close-up of the I-joist in the event that you have not seen these before. This is my first experience using them and I can tell you that I am totally sold on them. These are nearly 28 foot long, support like a 2 X 10 and don't weigh enough to cause a strain when carrying them. They are straight, no twists, warps, cracks, and offer 1-3/4" nailing for the sub floor.
Sandy and I installed a total of 8 joist in a little over an hour and a half, using standard framing it would have taken twice this long and would not have produced nearly as neat an installation.
