Author: Shaun

Yesterday and today we revealed our trap doors in the garden room. The laminated flooring covered everything up, all glued down, including the two trap doors!

These doors allow us access to the underground 15000 litre rain tank and the Earth Tubes (12 150mm (6inches) air pipes) coming up out of the floor concrete slab.

We carefully measured exactly the position of the edges of the two doors and drawing the marks on masking tape stuck down on the floor, got our cut line sorted out. We then got the straightest timber plank we could find and using double sided sticky carpet tape, stuck down the plank as a guide for the battery circular saw. The blade thickness is only 1.6mm so it would be a nice not so obvious groove.

One trick we did here, is to run the saw backwards! I mean pull the machine backwards along the guide so that the teeth were spinning towards and cutting downwards into the surface of the lamination thus avoiding chipping the nice finish. Normally the blade cuts from below and rips its way upwards and explodes out of the surface causing little jagged breaks in the cut edge. Well normally you would saw from the reverse side but we couldn’t do this as the floor was all stuck down!

GR Access hatches in Laminate floor

GR Access hatches in Laminate floor

GR Access hatches in Laminate floor

GR Access hatches in Laminate floor

It came off very well indeed! We then put into the trap doors little brass ring pulls to aid in lifting the doors. We did another trick where we drilled a hole in the bottom of the brass fitting to allow us to screw down the trap doors to stop them bouncing up or warping.

A good result!

We have finished laying the laminated flooring!

Day 3 – Monday 20th June

The last 30% of the room took as long as the previous day’s work of covering 70%!

This part of the room had three doorways, little boxes and a toilet connector sticking out of the floor! The WC area needed the tiles to go backwards to match up the pattern but could not be clipped together until the whole area is calculated and cut! Fortunately it was only a small 1m by 0.6m (3feet by 2feet) area!

GR Laminate laid

GR Laminate laid

GR Laminate laid

We are pleased in how it came out without any head scratching moments! We were lucky that the tiles kept quite straight and square to the whole building, with only a slight drift into the middle wall caused by the middle wall not being absolutely laser straight. It wobbled by 20mm in the worse spot around the doorway into the garage!

Now the step into the garage needs an Oak edging to protect the new tiles, and finally run a bead of sealant all around the edges.

We have started the job of laying down engineered laminated floor tiles in our Garden room.

Day 1 – Saturday 18th June

We prepared the tiles, slicing up 9 of them into halves as instructed. We laid out a test run to see how they fit into the room and how square it is. We measured all the various corners and edges to make sure we have the tiles form a solid pattern without leaving horrible thin strips on some edge!

Day 2 – Sunday 19th June

We got going with the gluing today for real! Starting at the far end of the Garden Room, we cut the first row of tiles narrow so that the 14th row would line up just next to the WC wall. We made sure that this 14th row would be slightly inside the WC wall to ensure we don’t end up with that horrible thin strip. We got the first five rows done before lunch, making sure they were square against the middle wall. And then the remaining 9 rows after lunch. We didn’t finished until well after 8pm! Phew!

But it is looking very nice! So far!

Where the pipes come through the floor we managed to get the joins almost invisible! (All that work for something hidden in a cupboard!).

GR Laminate laid

This represents 70% of the floor completed. It is just the WC, doorways and the little corridor to finish tomorrow! No sweat!

Today we hired an industrial floor sanding machine. The sanding system is a drum about 250mm (10inches) wide and the heavy weight of the sander really made quick work of rubbing the whole floor!

We returned the machine in less than 3 hours!

The final sanding around the edges was done using our little baby belt sander!

GR sanded floor

GR sanded floor

The floor now is clean of plaster dust, paint and dirt. It is ready for the laminated floor files and the glue!

We have already done a small test of the glue a couple of days ago and the piece of the laminated file is really stuck down! Very nice.

We have started sorting out the planks of Oak and selecting the best ones to do the frames in the windows.

The four back windows are very similar in size and style so we decided to start with them. We have selected sixteen pieces in two groups of sizes (one for the vertical and one for the horizontal). All these pieces are now planed.

We are using a thickener machine which is designed to plane planks with parallel surfaces but we have discovered that our machine is not absolutely flat! We will see how these pieces turn out in practice and see the finished results before doing something about the machine like get a new one!

But first we have to wait for the rain to stop and the glass (double glazing units) to arrive!

We have the hot water tank installed! It was a tight fit in the corner and in hindsight the design of the walls in that corner, should have allowed for a deeper cupboard by moving the windows along a bit.

All the pipes going up and down are in around the tank including the copper pipes for the solar panels (copper pipes is used as the pressure and temperature in a solar heating system can be higher and plastic pipes are not rated).

The tank is surrounded by another 50mm thick of PU foam to maximise the energy efficiency while the water is heated up by the Sun.

GR Hot water tank

GR Hot water tank

We continue to route and connect pipes together in and around the hot water tank corner. We made a drain valve connection with a piece of hose pipe and sealed it into the waste pipe. And also along side this hose pipe is a duplicate one which goes off to the heat exchanger to drain away any condensation collected inside the air conditioning system.

We discovered that the motorised 3-way valve is very simple and doesn?t do what we want. We need a proper diverter to change the flow of water from one output to the other output 100%. The one we bought (costing over £70!) only shut off one output on demand but never shuts off the second output therefore the water will flow out of both outputs. We got our money back!

The final little task today was to put a kink into two copper pipes to allow them to travel up the side of the hot tank and avoid each other! The high temperature insulation was wrapped on.

We started laying in the various water pipes in and around the hot water tank. It is quite a tight space to route all the pipes like for example the Mains Water pipe across into and up the corner to the roof ready to go outside to the header tank, as well as the rain tank pipe to the same place. Then other pipes have to come down from the roof to connect to the hot tank and beyond to sinks and cisterns. It is quite a jigsaw of pipes!

Yesterday we finished the last piece of work needed to be done on the floor in the Garden Room. The central section where the Earth Tubes comes up out of the ground, is channelled under the false floor and we decided to change, slightly, the arrangement of the panels. Instead of 4 square panels, we sliced them in half and joined one long strip together and permanently screw it down. The other strip is where the Earth Tubes are accessible so we replaced this strip with two 8feet long pieces and glue the two together. This will be our removable covers to allow maintenance of the Earth tubes.

The last job was to install the 50mm thick PU foam to insulate the Garden Room against any effect of the air being drawn from outside and down to the Earth tubes. The outside air temperature may be at a higher or lower level and could affect the comfort zone.

Today we smoothed the whole floor to remove any major differences in the levels of the boards. Not all the pieces we put down could be Tongue&Grooved so with the variability of the thickness of the OSB sheets, we had to plane and surf-form the edges to reduce the sharpness, in readiness for the installation of the laminate floor tiles. We will hire a large industrial belt sander to clean the surface of any remaining unwanted artefacts! Then we will wash it and start the laying process in a few days time.

Our Garden Room, over the last three days, have been painted with various layers of white emulsion. The bottom (first) coat was using a cheap B&Q matt emulsion as the primer. Then yesterday and today the ceiling had two coats of Absolute White from Dulux and the walls had one coat of Dulux Brilliant Matt White. Tomorrow these walls will have their final Dulux Vinyl Silk Brilliant White coat.

GR – Mostly painted

GR – Mostly painted

The WC had a slightly different treatment. First of all, we applied a fine surface paste supplied by Fermacell, designed to fill in the micro pits in the surface of the Fermacell boards. We then gently rubbed down the surfaces using 300grit sandpaper which gave us a smooth finish. Then we painted the same B&Q white emulsion but using a pad instead of a roller for a smoother finish. Again the surface was gently sanded to produce a nicely smooth finish. Yesterday and today we put on two coats of a special Dulux DiamondHard Moisture Resistance White emulsion which offers a much tougher surface, up to 10 times harder than standard emulsion. We will put on one more coat tomorrow.

GR – Mostly painted

The ceiling has come out very well indeed. Our second attempt at putting up the ceiling using Fermacell panels but this time, we tongue and grooved the edges to align the joints and it worked!

GR – Mostly painted