SHED BUILDING VIDEO 6 OF 15
How to Install and Brace Roof Trusses on a Shed
Finish your shed or project roof with a proper truss installation. This guide covers gable-end setup, spacing, and hurricane ties for a professional install.
Taught by Henry Reinders, a professional builder, renovator and woodworker with more than 45 years of hands-on experience.
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0:35 Prepare the walls and trusses for installation
Check that the walls are connected, plumb and ready before moving the roof trusses into position.
2:17 Brace the shed walls before lifting trusses
Learn how temporary diagonal bracing prevents the shed walls from shifting while the trusses are lifted.
4:44 Mark 24-inch truss centres on the plates
Henry shows how to mark the top plates for the 24-inch truss spacing used in this shed design.
6:43 Set and secure the gable-end trusses
Set the two gable-end trusses first, align them with the wall faces and fasten them securely.
9:03 Use a string line to straighten the ridge
Stretch a string line between the gable peaks to establish a straight, consistent roof ridge.
11:18 Install and brace the intermediate trusses
Install the intermediate trusses on their layout marks and brace them as the roof structure develops.
13:25 Choose and install hurricane ties
Review hurricane-tie options and follow the connector manufacturer’s fastener requirements for your location.
16:59 Install sub-fascia and gable-end studs
Henry explains how to fit the sub-fascia and add gable-end studs that support the exterior panels.
BUILDING THIS SHED?
Free Shed Building Video Tutorials
Complete Plans When You’re Ready
Use the video tutorials to help build the shed. Use the plans for exact dimensions, drawings, material lists, construction sequence and the included Excel costing sheet.
Roof-Truss Installation Quick Reference
Getting trusses up straight depends on prep work done before they touch the walls. Here’s what to check first.
Key specs at a glance
- Truss spacing: 24 inches on centre is used in this shed design; snow loads and local requirements may require different spacing, additional trusses or increased lumber sizes
- Ridge alignment: string line stretched between gable-end peaks for perfect alignment
- Wall status: plumb, connected and braced before trusses go up
- Wind bracing: hurricane ties recommended in high-wind areas
- Gable studs: added inside gable-end trusses to provide backing the exterior panels and joints
Common mistakes to avoid
- Setting trusses on walls that aren’t yet plumb and properly braced – zero movement
- Skipping the string line and eyeballing the ridge
- Ignoring the truss spacing without checking the plans
- Leaving out hurricane ties in a high-wind location or where required by code (if a permit is required)
- Forgetting backing studs inside the gable ends before panels go on
PROJECT RESOURCES
Need a Budget? Price the Project Before You Build
Download the free Excel costing sheet to enter current local prices, provided for both shed plan sizes and both old and recent Excel formats (just in case you need the older file format).
Frequently Asked Questions
Questions are based on the topics covered in this video and common questions Henry receives from customers via email.
What spacing is used for the shed trusses?
Most commonly, trusses are set 24 inches on centre along both wall top plates. However, in areas with heavy snow loads, 16″ centers might be required as well as 2×6 rafters – but this is location-specific and you are best to check with your local building department or experienced builders if you are not sure. Watch at 4:44
Why use a string line during installation?
A tight string between the two gable-end peaks provides a reference for aligning every internal truss along a straight ridge. Watch at 9:03
Should the walls be braced before raising trusses?
Yes. The walls should be plumb, connected and securely braced before roof trusses are placed on them. Watch at 2:17
When are hurricane ties recommended?
They are recommended in locations subject to high winds because they strengthen the connection between the roof framing and walls. If in doubt, use them! Watch at 13:25
Why add studs inside the gable-end trusses?
The vertical studs provide framing support for the exterior gable panels (LP Smart Panels). Watch at 16:59
Complete Video Transcript
Use the expandable transcript to read Henry’s instructions found in this video – with timestamps linked to each section in the video.
Open the complete video transcript
Welcome to CountryLifeProjects.com. I’m Henry Reinders. This is video six of 15 videos in our shed project. In this video, now that our wall framing is done, I’m going to be showing you how to install the trusses that we made earlier. However, we have one small segment of video that got ruined in this video. When you get to the back gable truss installation, it’s going to cut off prematurely. Just keep watching. We’re going to do the front gable installation and you can do exactly the same thing on the back. They’re identical, so just watch that section. If you need a layout and plans for installation of the trusses, those can be found in our shed plans. So that said, let’s get rolling.
With the truss installation, we’re going to be installing our trusses that we had previously built. There is a couple things that we need to do before we put them up. One of ’em is when you put the gussets on the two by fours or the rafters, you will more than likely have glue squeezing it out of the material here. You want to shave this off before we put them up. This can actually interfere with your plywood lane flat on your rafters later on. So make sure you do that. You’re also going to need three, two by fours, 12 foot long and one 12 foot one by four. Two of those will be for your sub fascia.
The other ones are going to be used for spacing and securing your trusses. Okay, the next thing we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be putting some bracing on our walls. These are flat two by fours. You want to make sure they’re flat if they’re curved. When we put our trusses up, they’re going to push our trusses out a level. We don’t want that. So try and find the flattest two by fours. You have make sure they are high enough that when your rafters are up that this part of your rafter will rest against the two by four up top. You’re going to need one on either side here.
You don’t want to have it in the center. You’ll do the same thing on the back of your shed. Once you have those in place, then they’re nice securely mounted on here. Then you’re ready to put the rafters, the first two rafters in place, which are our gable rafters, and we’re going to put those in place and we’ll shoot that shot next. Okay, we got our braces in for our gable and trusses. The next thing that we did is we marked off our centers for our trusses. We’re doing 24 inch centers. That has already been done. So the next thing we’re going to do is the back gable truss and we’ll shoot that
next and then we’ll be doing the front gable truss and then we’re going to do a chalk line across and we’ll show you that once we have the front one done. Okay, now that we have our truss in place, we’ve let it rest on top of our ladder. Simply bring it up. Now keep in mind our bottom cord here, we made that a quarter inch, longer or wider than the width of our shed. So when this is properly placed, our truss is properly placed. You should be an eighth inch over on either end. So what you want to do is just try and approximate to start with just for safety, just want to take a clamp,
just clamp it in place. It’ll stay there. I’m going to go down. I’m going to check our spacing. Okay, we’re going to do the front gable truss. Now I’ve already got it in position. Just lift it up as we come up. Fortunately, these are nice and light. We’re going to center it roughly because I’m going to have to check because I can’t see the ends from here. So we’ll just clamp it, just make sure it doesn’t move or fall down. Looks like we can go that way a little bit. We should have about an eighth inch over each end wall Right now we’re good. So we’re going to secure it. Now, just like the back wall,
we have a block we’re going to put in. I wanted to note with this block on our trusses, we have our plywood gusted over here, which if we made this the full width of our shed, it wouldn’t be able to come tight to the bottom cord on our truss. So this will actually fit in between and we want do what we want to do. Screw it down first. Remember, we want to push everything tight to this brace because that’s flush. I’m going to do those two points first. Once we have those secured, we can secure through the front. It’s very important that this is all flush. When we do our SmartSide panel,
this is all going to carry through. So right now this is perfectly flush. I’ll just finish screwing it off on the front. And one more in the middle. I am going to finish putting some more screws in our backing and also one up here, which will be coming out later, and we can take our clamp off. So as soon as I’m finished screwing that off, that truss is in place. And the next thing we’re going to do is we’re going to run a line across from Trus to truss, and that is what we’re going to use to line up all our trusses in between and we’re going to be doing that next. I’ll show you how to do that.
There’s a little trick. We do want our line actually a little bit higher then our trusses so that when our trusses touch the line or they won’t touch the line, we can make sure that they’re not interfering with anything. So that’ll be in the next segment. The next thing we’re going to do is put a small board on the end of our gable trusses. This end on the other end, we want this to be a quarter inch higher than our peak reason being. We’re going to run our string across the top of here by being a quarter inch higher. We’re going to be above our trusses. So when our trusses are coming up or we’re moving them,
they don’t touch the string, but they’re close enough for us to see that we are centered. So we’re going to go ahead and screw that on. Make sure it’s about a quarter inch, doesn’t have to be exact. And I am going to mark the center, bring it down, and then we’re going to put a screw there to tie our chalk line onto and we’ll do the same thing on the other end. We’ll run a line across and then we’re going to be ready to start installing the remainder of our trusses. Okay, we’ve got our chalk line in place. It doesn’t have to be a chalk line. As long as you’ve got the proper string for this, that’ll be fine.
But it’s in place. It is centered on both of our gable trusses on the very peak. And now in addition to that, we have a two by four, which we’re going to use to lock the remainder trusses in place. These are marked off at the same centers as the top of our walls, and they’re going to be lined up at the end here. We do have about 13, 14 inches overhanging on the ends. That’s okay. This will stay in place until we get to that point where we’re doing our overhangs. So I’m going to go ahead, get this screwed into place and then we’re going to bring the other remaining
trusses up and we’ll start putting ’em in place and I’ll show you how to do that. Okay, we’re ready to start putting our trusses in place. This piece here, I had mentioned before that we have our 24 inch sensor marked off to match the top of our walls. We also have markings for the very end of the shed, which is nine feet, nine inches, and it’s secured at that end and it’s secured at that end. So we’re going to start securing our trusses. We have two laid up over here, two laid up over here. Now if you look down the string line, you can see that’s perfectly straight. Once we set this up on our marks
on the top of our walls, then we’re going to line this part up and we’re going to line up to our 24 inch center over here. And once that’s in line, this is also why you want the string line a little higher than the trusses so it doesn’t touch them. So it’s always accurate. So we’re exactly where we’re going to be. You’ll notice I started with the second truss in, not the first one. That’s so that we can do that one from there and we’re able to grab the trusses as we go. So I’m going to secure that in place. This is not a permanent thing, so it’s just one screw
double check to make sure center hasn’t moved. Once this is secured, we’re in place. I’m going to go down and secure it to the wall. So I’ll be back up here in a minute and we’ll do the next truss. Okay, this one’s secure in place. We’re going to do this truss here. Same principle, line up the peak to your jo line and just make sure the rafter is on your 24 inch center mark. We’ll get that secured. Double check the peak, which is still good. Now I’m going to finish off the other two trusses after I get this one secured in place on top of the wall. And then we’re going to take a look at doing our sub facia a little trick there
as well. So yeah, I’ll get that done. We’ll be right back. Okay. Our trusses are in place. Everything’s spaced properly. They’re secured to the top of our walls. Last thing we want to do is we’re going to put a brace inside on the ceiling from the bottom corner over there up to here. Make sure that this end gable and the other end gable stay level this way right now they are level. I’ve already checked it, so we’re just going to go ahead and put our brace in place and start at this end here. You’re working on your own. You’re obviously going to have to do the high end first. You also want to screw in from an angle this way,
so if you decide you want to take this out later, you don’t have to take it out. Should note that. And just one screw per trus will be good. I’m going to go to the other end first. Secure it there. You also do not want these sticking out past the gable trus, in other words past here because that’ll interfere with your SmartSide panels. I’ve got a hard angle here. I’m just throwing two in there. The rest of our trusses are in place, so I just have to screw it in. Nothing to check. And like I say, just make sure they’re not sticking past the rafter on the end here. And that’s it for bracing your trusses. That’s all there is to do.
We’re going to take our line down and we’re going to get ready to do our soffit sub facia on our soffits. Okay, just to confirm, when you’re finishing up your trusses, you have your top brace here, which keeps our trusses centered. We have our other brace here, which goes down to the back corner with this brace in place. And this one here in place, your trusses won’t move any longer, so they’re fine. You can take off your end braces and that’s it for your trusses other than our vertical studs that we’ll be putting in later. Okay, one last thing just before we start our sub facia boards on the end of our
rafters, just want to mention about putting up hurricane ties. It’s probably a good idea regardless of whether you get high winds or not. This is the type we’re using here. The nails are special nails for these kind of anchors. You can get those at any lumberyard, but if you take a look in this picture here, you can see this type here. We can’t use these because they won’t fit around our trusses with the plywood gusset on there. So you have to use this type here, and they’re pretty reasonable, usually less than a bucket piece. So if there’s only eight on this, shed highly recommend you use them. Okay, we’re ready to do our sub facia. Now, before you get started doing that,
what you should do, just run your eye down the board’s here, make sure they’re all nice and straight. Nothing’s out of whack here. You want a nice straight line. Once you put your two by four on here, if you have any that are a little bit farther out, they shouldn’t be. But if you do, now would be the time to trim them off. The other thing, if you’re working on your own, it’s pretty much impossible. Try and put this up on your own. So we’ve got a little jig here, makes it very easy to do. We’re just going to put it on one end here. You put this like this,
just two by four, screw it to a two by four. Leave enough room in there to drop your sub facia board in. Screw it on there. You can just drop this end in hereafter and start screwing on the other end. Now with our sub facia that we’re using a 12 foot, and what we’re going to have is we’re going to have about 13, 14 inches sticking past our end gables here. That’s intentional. When we put our ladders on the end, our overhangs for our soffit, we’re going to trim those off after. But for now, we need about 13, 14 inches. So we’re going to go ahead, I’m going to mark that off and then we’re going to put it up and we’ll be done
with that. Okay? I’m going to show you now how easy it is to use. It’s a little jig. We’ve already got it marked off here, so I’ll be able to just put that up there and glue it in. As you can see, this isn’t difficult at all. So we find our line, we want to be flush here. You want two screws per two by four or per end, and then you just work your way along, screw ’em all off, and we’ll do the other side. Okay? That’s our sub facia done for now until we got our soffits done. On the ends, one thing you might notice, we’re going with a 90 degree cut on the bottom of our raptors here. Some of you,
if you want to put gutters in for rainwater collection, if you decide to go that way, all you would do is cut the ends of your raptors at a 30 degree angle. That will give you a nice level playing this way, and you put your facia board, your sub facia on like that, and your end fascia would extend past. But most sheds that I’ve seen don’t have gutters. This actually allows you to put a nice tract fascia board on here. So we’re going to go that route with this shed. But that’s it for that. We’re going to do our last little bit of framing on our gable ends, and we’ll be done with our framing.
Okay? The next thing we’re going to do on our gable ends here is we’re going to be putting a stud down here center. We’re going to go 16 inches over. Either way, put another stud that’s going to be for our SmartSide panels. And you get to here, we have about 16 inches here. We have here. We do not have to put any more studs. The distance from here to here is small enough that we don’t have to worry about that. Now, what we’re going to be doing after we get that done is we’re going to be putting our smart panels straight up to here, and then we’re going to put our soffit ladder or rake on top of
that. And that’s why on the ends here, we have the sub facia bending out once have we have the SmartSide panels on, and our ladder here on, we’ll trim this, whatever this is here off, and then we’ll be completely done with our framing at that time. But of course, we can’t do that until our smart panels are in place.
Continue the Shed-Building Series
Follow the lessons in sequence so each completed stage is ready for the work that follows.