Roselea

Author: Shaun

  • Chimney Support Arm Is Done and Mounted

    This morning we put together the 3D printed plastic sweep bend and connected it to a length of 38mm diameter black pipe going up the middle of the chimney support arm.

    3D-Printed-Bend-on-bracket

    3D-Printed-Bend-on-bracket


    We spent yesterday designing and printing the 135 degrees bend in a tight 100mm radius curve, we had to make it in two pieces with two collars to lock it all together nice and tightly.. it took about 6 hours to print all the pieces. We also printed two little gap filler pieces to go up inside the square steel tube to block off the open ends where we could apply a squirt of silicone sealant and glue the black pipe into place and stop the rain water getting inside the pipe or steelwork.
    3D-Printed-parts-for-Chimney-conduit-bend

    3D-Printed-parts-for-Chimney-conduit-bend

    Bend-assembled-and-protected-in-foil-tape

    Bend-assembled-and-protected-in-foil-tape



    We then mounted the whole thing up on the steel I-Beam with 4 10mm bolts and then drilled a 12mm hole through the bottom flange upwards and into the support arm bracket as well and bolted that section down nice and tight too. The black pipe will eventually extend through the kerb to the inside to allow cables to be connected to the ‘chimney’.
    Chimney-bracket-installed

    Chimney-bracket-installed


    Finally, we put aluminium tape around the new 3D printed (which is made using red PLA plastic) to protect it from the harsh UV radiation from the Sun, while it is exposed to the weather. It will be eventually all covered up by the rafters and roof boards later on.
    And just before the rain arrived at 1pm, we mounted up the final plywood covering on the inner surface I-Beam to complete the covering of the full loop of the inner Skylight “hole”.

  • The Kerb Framework Gets First Collection of Timber Posts Installed

    Today, we went around with two tubs of short timber pieces, one full of simple 63mm CLS timber pieces and the other full of glued together T shaped timber pieces. We started at one end of the Skylight region up on the steel I-Beams and using our template to guide these short pieces so they end up against the plywood boards already up there. Each piece was glued, positioned where each rafter will be and also aligned vertically and then screwed onto the plywood.

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-1

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-1

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-2

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-2



    We couldn’t quite do all of them as we are still waiting for the Chimney Support Arm to be ready and installed before we can finish off that particular section of the I-Beams, and also we got to go around each corner to put some more in to help bridge and join the two edges together at each corner too, plus at the point where the steel I-Beams changes from 100mm width to 160mm width.

  • Chimney Support Arm Gets Second Coat of Black Paint

    First thing this morning, the steel Support Arm for the Chimney was painted with its second layer of the black metal weather proof paint again, outside on the step ladder.

    Chimney-Bracket-Painted

    Chimney-Bracket-Painted


    This afternoon, after we had finished our other job we had on today, we brought the metal arm, now dry, back to the workshop and looked into inserting a large bore plastic tubing (38mm diameter with 2.5mm thick walls) up the middle pole (the one that will appear above the roof surface) and put a curve in it so we can have a gentle bend to make it easier to thread wires and cables from inside the house to the chimney. But we discovered that just simply heating up the plastic pipe with a hot air gun wasn’t enough. It indeed softened the plastic but it was very difficult to make it bend in a gentle curve without buckling or distorting in funny ways. We knew we needed an interior support to hold the plastic in a round shape but we didn’t have anything to hand. We did wonder whether to use fine sand and pack the tube with it and then heat it up and bend the curve but we wondered that the hot plastic will absorb the sand particles and make it rough or more likely that the plastic being stretched to go around the bend (more than 140 degrees around) would make the plastic wall so thin that it may even break apart or be so weak to not be able to take any pushing of threading rods etc.
    So we decided that we would manufacture a specialised sweep bend on our 3D printer instead and have sockets and sealant to join all the pieces together to form the necessary path to guide our wires and cables!!

  • Alignment Template Created for Skylight

    And finally, we created a simple alignment tool to help us when we come to install the little pieces of timber for the Skylight framework module. We needed something to “transfer” the position of the slots in the rafter support timber on the outside of the steel I-Beams so we can get the position of the internal little posts correct. This is important as when we put up the rafters, we want to nail the ends to a good solid post inside the Kerb going up to the Skylight.

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-1

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-1

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-2

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-2



    The template sits on the lower flange in the slot, and projects upwards and over to the top to where the plywood is and ready to receive the post with the glue ready to be stuck against the plywood and timber platform. Anything to make our work easier, especially that we are on top of the scaffolding tower and also on a ladder as well!! Grin!
    So tomorrow, we may be starting the assembling of the Skylight framework at last!

  • Chimney Support Arm Receives First Coat of Black Metal Paint

    This morning, we ground, rubbed, and cleaned up the steelwork of our new Support Arm for holding up the Chimney on top of our Roof. We then took it outside and hung it up using our biggest step ladder and painted it the first coat of black metal weather proof paint.


    Tomorrow, we will give it another coat of paint, after the required 24 hours delay before repainting.Then on Monday, we will mount it up on the I-Beam and put the final plywood cover over the inside surface of the I-Beam to complete that particular job.

  • LVL Timber Arrives!

    At the crack of dawn this morning, well perhaps not that early but early enough at 7:40am, the delivery of our special LVL timber arrived. LVL is Laminated Veneer Lumber and it is made of layers of about 3mm thick veneers glued together and our particular size we wanted has thirteen layers in total giving 38mm thick.

    The-many-layers-of-a-LVL

    The-many-layers-of-a-LVL


    The original timber was 220mm wide but some of it was sliced down the middle as we wanted  so we have a heap of 110mm wide pieces as well as 220mm wide pieces (all of the wide lengths will need to be sliced in half eventually) and they came in a range of lengths from a maximum of just over 7 metres (24 feet) down to mostly just 3.5 metres (11 feet). We managed to load the whole lot onto our large trolley at the top of the Loke on the main road (the delivery driver offered to try and back down the Loke but as the lorry was a full length articulated one we decided to offload onto the trolley) and then hauled it back down the Loke.
    LVLs-on-the-trolley

    LVLs-on-the-trolley


    Now we will put the pieces under our Rain Shadow area to keep it dry while we finish off our current jobs and then start working on creating our diagonal rafters that these LVL timber pieces will help to form for each of the 14 roof intersections (the valleys, hips and ridges).
    LVLs-stored-under-cover

    LVLs-stored-under-cover

  • Steel Support Arm Created to Hold Up Chimney

    This afternoon, in the dry and warm workshop, we cut up various steel pieces, for example, 3 lengths of 50mm by 50mm square tubing, a small length of 50mm by 25mm rectangular tubing, some flat 3mm plates and a piece of 6mm thick U shaped channel piece too.

    Then slicing a series of angles on 2 of the square tubes (the angle being 32 degrees that matches the angle of the roof) and drilling 10mm bolt holes in the U channel piece, we then welded the whole lot together like a jigsaw into a support arm that will be bolted on both the top and bottom flange of the steel I-Beam, angled downwards to travel just below the roof surface and a vertical pole which will stick up through the roof surface and tiles that has the U shaped steel piece above this surface, ready for the rest of the chimney to be bolted onto.

    Chimney-bracket-welded-togther

    Chimney-bracket-welded-togther

    There is a 40mm hole down the middle for a plastic conduit to be threaded through the steel tubing which will allow for various wires and cables to be pushed through from inside the house to the chimney and the equipment that is mounted on it, like TV aerial, weather monitoring gadgets, lights, cameras and anything else we might think to put up on this chimney – grin!

    Tomorrow, we will clean and give the whole steelwork three good quality coats of metal and weather proof paint to keep it in tip top condition for years to come! Then we can mount it up on the steel I-Beam and finally put on the very last plywood panel because it would have hidden the heads of the bolts!

  • Finished Off Putting Up Plywood Panels on I-Beams Before Thunderstorms arrived!

    This morning, we went around and finished off mounting the plywood coverings on the Steel I-Beams before the thunderstorm arrives. We did dash in for 15 minutes at around 11:30am but that was only a small fringe effect of a thunderstorm heading elsewhere!!

    We concluded this morning with putting up the seven panels and we have only one more to do when we have created the steel support arm for the chimney.

    Nearly-all-the-plywood-attached-to-kerb

    Nearly-all-the-plywood-attached-to-kerb

    It all went up fairly well in the end and now we can look forward to doing the next stage of building up the Skylight by installing the timber framework on top of the steel I-Beams, and flush against the plywood boards. But first, we are making the chimney support arm this afternoon during the thunderstorms!

  • Inner Plywood Covering Up On I-Beams Starts

    It was a gloriously hot day today and the thunderstorm weather front we were originally planning around wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow so we dashed out there and started the task of putting up all the plywood coverings on the inner surface of the I-Beams, going up to where the Skylight glazing section will be mounted.

    There are a total of twenty-two plywood sections to be installed and we managed to do fourteen of them today.

    5-Boards-at-one-end

    5-Boards-at-one-end

    and-9-at-the-other-end

    and-9-at-the-other-end


    Most of the time, each piece went up quite nicely, applying the special modified silicone sealant/glue on the two lines of support timber already situated on the I-Beams, and screwing down hard the plywood to ensure the glue is firmly squashed flat to maximise strength of the joint.

    We changed our choice of glue for this operation as we knew that there were some locations along the I-Beams where there was a small gap between the steel edge and the support timber pieces and we wanted to make sure that the glue would not break apart inside the glue itself. We bought 4 different tubes of glues yesterday morning, when we stuck together a whole heap of timber and plywood pieces together with all the different glues including our original one .

    Glues-being-tested

    Glues-being-tested

    Glue-Test-pieces

    Glue-Test-pieces


    This morning, we found that the silane modified silicone (Stixall) one proved to be the strongest by far but it costs three times as much as the original one we were using! We just wanted to make sure that the Skylight stayed stuck together long term up on the top of our roof!!

    Tomorrow, because of the forecast of thunderstorm coming into our region for the whole day tomorrow, we are planning to work in the workshop and make the steel support arm for our (fake) chimney!

  • Sliced Up Polystyrene Foam and Inserted in the I-Beams

    Today, we got out our Hot-Wire Cutting Machine to slice up two sheets of our 120mm thick polystyrene foam and also a scrap sheet we had lying around for years, a 100mm thick piece. We first sliced using a single wire on the machine to slice the sheets in the vertical orientation to make 245mm wide strips, ending up with a pile of seven + two strips in total.

    Next, we then had the hot wire positioned much lower down at a distance of 45mm and then push through the machine the 120mm thick strips to produce two new pieces, one being 45mm thick (of course!) and the left over piece being 75mm thick which is just perfect to fill the inner flange of the heavy duty I-Beams. Finally, we added a second hot wire at the 90mm distance and ran through the two remaining 100mm thick strips to produce two equal pieces 45mm thick and a thin sliver of waste.

    Now, taking all the foam strips (a total of 7 thick ones and 11 thin ones) outside with an old bread knife and tubes of the MS special glue and loaded up the scaffolding tower. We then worked our way around the inner circuit of the I-Beams, placing the thin ones in the 100mm wide I-Beams and the thicker strips inside the 160mm wide I-Beams. We used the glue to smear some on the vertical webbing behind the foam strips to make sure they will stay put for the short while before the whole thing is covered up with sheets of plywood later on this week.

    Inside-of-Beams-Insulated

    Inside-of-Beams-Insulated

    It was a good day of work, before tomorrow which may find the day being washed out with thunderstorms, we will carry on in the workshop to make our steel chimney support arm! Good timing that! Grin!