The Garage
Finished cutting and drilling the pieces for all six ladder brackets. Shaun carefully washed and dried all the parts, then we assembled them. Finished them by Applying three coats of Hammerite silver paint, hopefully this will keep them rust free for a good few years!
The Firestone EPDM Rubber Roof has arrived! The membrane measures 9m by 9.5m or at least that is what is written on the label! It is all folded up and weighs tons! We haven’t unfolded it to find out if it is correct!
The other items delivered were two drums of rubber solution to stick the membrane down onto the roof boards. Each drum is labelled 5 gallons but it is also labelled 18.9 litres, which is strange until you realise that it is American Gallons and not English! So our two drums only adds up to 37.8litres and we had “ordered” 40 litres as the result of our calculations of the glue coverage rate! The web site stated that you can buy 2.5, 5 or 10litres containers of this glue so we ordered four 10litres containers. But we got two drums! Very odd and a little bit naughty by the retailer not to explain that the drums are American sizes.
Even more strange that the labels also states the coverage of 100 square feet per gallon so one drum would cover 500 square feet which is 46.5 square metres so the two drums adds to 93 square metres. Our roof area is 85.5 square metres (9m by 9.5m). The web site stated a coverage of 2square metres per litre so the 85.5 square metres would mean 42.75 litres hence why we ordered 40litres! Most Confusing and I think it is time for the Americans to go metric! Smile!
We got an adapter to allow us to make a hole in the corner of the roof to let the rain water through and down into our rain water collection and filtration system. It is a small piece of 110mm plastic pipe with a square piece of the rubber membrane stretched and glued on to the top and inside the pipe. It has a layer of very sticky substance with a peel off paper protection.
The next item is a set of aluminium bars for fixing the edges of the rubber membrane down. The bars are 2.5mm thick with a screw hole every 100mm. we decided to rely on these for holding down the rubber for long term peace of mind instead of wooden battens.
Finally we got contact adhesive for the edges of the roof to allow an instant stick (so the wind wont lift it off before we can fix with the strips), two pieces of flashing (for
sealing pipes through the roof) and the primer to allow these and the rain water adapter to stick permanently.
There will be a small (200mm/8inch) space between the back wall of the garage and the boundary fence. We want to use this for storing those awkward things like ladders! We went through a series of ideas before settling on having a set of tight steel ropes and hanging items from them on sliding loops. Now we needed brackets to hold the rope up and tensioned.
Typical us, we decided to make our own!
We bought steel angle from our local steel stockist and cleaned off the foundry crud with a grinder. Then we cut the parts using our universal chop saw. Joining holes were drilled and the bracket assembled. A matching bracket for the other end was made next.
The cement boards arrive a day early. The lorry was too high to come down the loke, so we took the trolley up tothe top of the loke.
When we started to pull the trolley we found two tyres were soft and this caused the steering arm to bend while trying to turn into the loke! The two front wheels pointed in different directions…
We then brought the dumper truck up and transfered the boards and drove them down to the site.
Shaun dragged the broken trolley down after the dumper!
We phoned today and were told that our cement boards will be delivered this Friday! Well we will see won’t we!?! Fingers crossed!
We are continuing to build up piles of timber and pieces of jigsaw pieces ready for the day (or days) after the cement boards comes! We have been working on the front wall of the garage, chopping timber for the posts and OSB sheets for the physical structural reinforcements. We will finish these pieces this afternoon.
So we have now everything ready for all four walls so it should only take a couple of days to construct and join them all together! And chuck the roof on top! Just like that!
The supplier for the cement boards are being very slow in delivering them. We found out today that they are waiting for other orders to come in, to make it worthwhile for them before delivering all the way from Birmingham!
It is very frustrating for us and it is very much the case of rare use of these cement panels and our relatively small order thus making the problem worse.
We tried phoning half a dozen local building suppliers to see if any had these types of cement panels in stock and none had! Oh well! In hindsight we should have ordered these panels a month ago!
We are not quite losing time just yet, we are preparing all the timber for the other parts of the walls and roof, the wire suspension system on the back wall for hanging our long ladders and other items that are too long for storing inside. We probably have about 2 or 3 days worth of jobs left to complete before we hit the point of twiddling our fingers!!
Fingers crossed!
We spend the afternoon cutting up most of the timber for the left side and the right side of the garage. We are still awaiting the cement boards to come and we got on with other jobs like cutting the CLS 89mm by 38mm timber into all the different lengths. It is nice to see the quality of the timber, they are fresh, clean and in good nick! Only one or two had “bad” spots like the point where the suppliers had crunched the edge with their straps holding the whole bundle together!
We have produced over 74 pieces! And more to come!
I waved the router around and cut the windows out in the back walls! Because the router bit has a ball bearing wheel exactly the same size as the diameter of the cutting blade then it is very easy to slice the extra material away without the worry of going too far and making holes!! I could do this and I did!
See picture below!
Our building control inspector came today to take a look at our back wall. We assured him that the cement boards is the final layer with the DPM plastic material sandwiched in as well!
I got the impression that he was expecting the wall to be upright! But he is happy. He will come again when we have got the roof on and tied down! He can then see the structure of the posts and windows etc.
We also talked about the electrics and what form of approval he wanted to see when the electrics are installed.