Blog Bites – hot tips on measuring framing and DPC

The carpentry trade is the largest of all the trades within the NZ Standard, and rightly so!

So I’m going to just give you a little nibble at a time of the highlights.

DPC, (Damp Proof Course) is a bit of a no brainer, it needs to be measured in metres. However, because us kiwis love the weird and wonderful, you need to state the width of the DPM in the descriptions. Any DPM that is going on top of piles, however, should just be numbered.

Framing is based upon actually putting framing together onsite rather than prenail. Prenail is a different beast! Knowing how to measure stick framing is super useful, especially when you are pricing up renovations, or are looking to claim a variation if a job scope changes.

We generally measure the largest timbers first and work our way down to the smallest

– simply because having a process makes it harder to miss anything.

Each timber needs to be listed by size, treatment, and function. From there, each description should be measured separately. Why? Because the same piece of timber being used as a different timber member is going to require a different labour constant….. eg 100×50 timber to bottom plate versus jack studs takes a different amount of time.

This is why a detailed carpentry measure is SUPER important, it makes up the largest part of your labour component so you want to have all the measurements to ensure it is as accurate as possible.