The start of the week was a bit damp with a very light rain falling almost all day Monday. We resumed work on our roof by nailing and gluing the layers of plywood strips to make up the flashing structure for the Hips and Ridge that goes up the Side Porch and up to the Skylight on the E-H corner. We had to saw several lengths of plywood strips from our left-over pile (to make the 175mm wide pieces) and cut three more 100mm 15mm thick strips. But that is all done now and that also see the completion of this job of putting up these flashing strips as there is no more to do!!
Hips-and-ridges-for-EFG-H-1
Hips-and-ridges-for-EFG-H-2
So for the following day, Tuesday, we were able to get on with the job of installing the gutters, using our pile of Oak timber pieces, ready in their two styles. But we discovered that we are running out of pieces! We had only five and half lengths (2metres each) of our base boards and seven lengths of the front vertical pieces. This only allowed us to complete the remainder of the ‘E’ section and around the corner onto the ‘F’ (the Side Porch). We did have enough to continue around again to the ‘G’ section which is very short and has a downpipe channel located at the end but no more than that to enable us to complete the last section ‘H’ which needed three more base boards. So we decided to stop short on the ‘F’ section and make more Oak pieces in our workshop when it rains next time.
So we glued the base boards in and then got the front vertical pieces push on, glued and clamped, all the way to just short of completing the ‘F’ section, which now enables us to get the valley in the D-E corner to be prepared and get the Front Porch covered in slates.
E-Gutter-wood-glued-in
Half-of-F-gutter-done
Wednesday started a bit damp so we couldn’t get on doing the fibre-glass and resin process to seal the E-F outside corner so instead we got on with putting up the breathable membrane and half the tile battens on the ‘C’ roof section. It was very interesting as this roof is very steep at 60°!! We had more showers at noon so we came in for a discussion on slate tiling patterns and then had lunch.
Thursday was a lovely day and we got on with the task of putting up more battens on the ‘C’ and ‘B’ roof sections and they are now both complete and ready for slates.
B-battens-finished
C-battens-installed
During the day, after lunch, after waiting for the wood surfaces to be dry enough (after the rain we had yesterday), we proceeded to fibre-glass and resin the outer corner of the guttering, where the E-F sections intersects. With this done, we can now insert the rubber liner.
Finally, on Saturday (Friday?s work was lost due to other commitments), we indeed got our rubber liner inserted into the gutter running along the ‘E’ section of the roof. That was the morning’s task and after lunch, we then ran up a strip of membrane up the valley and nailed six lines of 38mm wide counter battens that supports the valley trough. And finally, we started putting up the breathable membrane bands across horizontally the ‘D’ and ‘E’ sections of the roof. We only managed to get one line up as our usual nail gun was playing up and misfiring the nails. We swopped over to our alternative gun that uses full headed nails held together in a strip by a plastic material moulded around the nails.
But then we tackled the first tile batten and the nail gun was doing funny things to the nail strips, this time they were the 50mm long nails. We had no problems with the 64mm ones! So we are having a jinx on our tools at the moment. Phew!
Finally, to finish off the day, we applied black mastic sealant to the ends of the rubber liner to make sure that water cannot creep in.
E-Gutter-done-and-start-of-battens
Next week, we will get on putting up the breathable and battens to get both ‘D’ and ‘E’ sections water tight and ready for the next load of slates to go on.