the conventional purpose of bolting the sill to the foundation as well as serving as part of a means of tying the top plate 18 to the foundation 12 in an embodiment described in application 09 166 336 the vertical rod has a threaded region 43 on its lower end the length of the threaded region is selected to be a bit less than half the length of a connecting nut 40 in one embodiment the connecting nut 40 is one and three quarters inches long and has an internal stop 51 formed by punching a portion of the connecting nut 39 s wall inward so as to limit the penetration depth of a screw thread to be no more than three quarters of an inch in this case a threaded region 43 having a length of three quarters of an inch is provided on the rod a worker assembling this tie down apparatus 13 is instructed to initially fully thread the connecting nut 40 to the rod 42 the rod 42 is then placed vertically above the anchor 30 and the connecting nut 40 is threaded onto the upper end 38 of the anchor 30 by turning the rod 42 this assures that the same number of threads on each.