Category: Entertainment Room

The ground floor Entertainment Room, concrete sound reduced walls and ceiling.

Finishing Entertainment Room with Carpets, Lamps, Sockets, Television and Door!

We have been spending the month of January in getting the Entertainment Room all finished, including putting up our 43inch Television!! But, before that happened, we carried on from where we left things before Christmas, with the task of putting carpet up on the walls etc.One of the first task to do was to slice out the Utility Channel all the way around the room. We had previously marked where the horizontal zone is located in this room, as it is not at the normal height because we had deliberately lowered the flooring to accommodate the lowered ceiling. We used our trusty track saw to guide the circular saw and carefully slice through the 18mm OSB board, to produce a 100mm wide slot. We stopped 60mm short of each corner so that when the carpet gets fixed up onto the walls, the gap between the end of the Oak covers will be a nice distance from the corners.

Utility Chennels cut out

The next job is to trim a little thin recess, only 1mm deep and 12mm wide, on all the top and bottom edges of the Utility Channel and we then glued a thin narrow strip of steel. We had some old computer cases which were made of steel thin plates so we sliced that in our mechanical heavy duty guillotine machine and glued them so that we ended up with a general purpose magnetic surface so that we stick on our Oak covers into place, without having visible screws etc.

Metal strips glued in

Oh yes, we rounded the edges of the window, the two vertical edges, using our largest round cutter so that the carpet can bend smoothly around the corner when it goes into the window hole. The horizontal top edge of the window was turned with a smaller radius cutter, just enough to get the carpet to bend around.

Now we were ready to start the next big task of sticking our carpets to the walls!

We started on the TV end of the room, the narrow wall, opposite the window and we got our 2.4metres by 4metres piece and then painted both the wall surface and the back of the carpet with the latex rubber glue. We had already determined that this glue works very well and it just needed to dry while the surfaces were pressed together. Another advantage of this glue, is that it dries fairly slowly and keeps moist, which gives us time to paint the two surfaces, but also, time to man-handle the carpet up onto the wall and move it around until we got it pressing tightly up to the ceiling. To help with that process, we stapled a couple of pieces of narrow strips of OSB boards on to the front of the carpet so that we had a good grip to help lift the carpet, but also to keep the carpet stretched out in a straight line as well.
We then temporarily stapled five more strips of OSB, to help hold the carpet tight to the wall and the glue. Fortunately, we had loads of these narrow strips that we had accumulated over the years and so we could use them to press the carpet to the glue. The staples were 35mm long and fired using our compressed air gun. Another thing we did at this stage, is that we avoided gluing the last right in the corners because we needed to be able to trim the carpet carefully right into the corners later on, after the glue had dried.

TV Wall carpet

We then carried on with the next wall, the long wall opposite the door, which was a 2.4metres high by 5metres long piece this time. We proceeded like before but we discovered that this type of carpet, which has a woven backing, instead of the felt-like material the first piece had, we hadn’t put on enough glue to ensure a thorough contact area. This meant that we had to reapply extra glue around the edges, going along the top (near the ceiling) and also around the Utility Channel cutout as well, plus the bottom edge near the floor. We stapled on lots of OSB strips to clamp the carpet down so the glue had a chance to dry stuck together.

We then did the smaller portion of the wall to the left of the doorway, and remembered to put on more glue this time. It was easier to handle the carpet because it was in a smaller piece and we managed to get it up with little trouble. We repeated for the other side of the door and then did the section over the top of the doorway. We even put a piece of carpet on the ramp going down into the room! Now, we turned to the last wall to do, the Window wall. This time, it went up in one piece because we wanted the carpet to be continuous underneath the window sill. We carefully cut the carpet along the bottom edge of the window and then bent the carpet around the corner to do each vertical sides of the window. We took off the excess and glued these flapping side bits into place. Finally, we had a piece of left-over to go along the top edge of the window and that got glued down as well.

Carpet for the window wall glued

Windows wall covered

Trim out the window

Next, we installed ten round lighting units up in the ceiling, plus two odd square ones we had lying around, to populate twelve of the holes , four rows of three lamps. A light switch went into the Utility Channel near the door, and then put eight double sockets distributed around the room as well. We used pieces of 11mm OSB boards to make the covers and got them magnetically attached over the Channel. This is a temporary measure but we will replace with proper Oak covers later on.
We used two 3mm thick by 10mm diameter magnets, superglued together to form a 6mm single unit. Then we put four of these magnets in the four corners of a cover where there was only one mains socket in the cover, six of the magnets for a two set of socket, and eight for the last cover that had two double sockets plus the light switch. We discovered that just having four magnets was not quite strong enough to reliably hold the cover in place, especially after the electric cables were threaded and screwed into the back of each socket as well. Magnets are very good, visually speaking because we can avoid unsightly screws etc. but unfortunately, the initial experience is suggesting that we would have to add a dozen more magnets for those covers that have a mains double socket in them, especially if you tried pulling a plug out and accidentally ripping the whole cover off as well. We will have to explore this further, and maybe come up with a different method of attaching these covers without visible screws.

Temporary Lights

We then made a window seat, again a temporary one so that we had a neat cover over the empty void in the bottom of the window. A useful place to sit on now.

Because we had decided that this room, the Entertainment Room, is going to temporarily be the needlework room, to allows us to sort out things like curtains etc. So, towards this aim, we created a large work table, 8foot by 4foot and standard dining table height of 720mm high. We used one of our 12mm thick MDF boards and glued a circumference of 63mm CLS planks around the edge, with an inch gap. Then, put on four legs.

Table

Then, we created two sets of shelves, each one having six shelves, measuring 300mm deep and 1220mm wide. We managed to use two sheets of our 18mm thick OSB boards and sliced it up into twelves pieces and then slice eight 50mm wide longer strips to serve as legs. We ran the router over all the pieces, to chamfer the edges, to remove splinters and make it smoother. Both were assembled so that each shelf had a bit over 300mm gap between each self. Then, both the shelves and the work table, plus also, the window sill seat, got a coat of varnish, to make sure that all the tiny splinters are glued down and after rubbing with some sand paper, it is all nice and smooth.

Shelves

Next, we created our special sound deadening door. A very heavy door, made up with 30mm thick of cement boards as the core, covered up with 9mm hardwood plywood sheets. To maximise the strength of the whole thing, we found a piece of thick Oak plank, with minimal knots in it, measuring 2.7metres long and 150mm wide. It is 65mm thick. We established one straight edge by using our track saw and then planed it flat on both sides, ending up with a 48mm thick plank. We then, sliced it into two narrower pieces, with a 15degree angle down the middle. The last step in working these pieces of wood, is to trim off a recess on both side, to form a 30mm thick “tongue” which matches the thickness of the cement core so that the plywood covers can overlap both the cement core and the two Oak vertical edges. The cement core was built using three layers of small left-over pieces of 10mm thick boards, arranged so that every piece overlapped each other with plenty of surface. We used an epoxy resin glue to ensure a very strong joint between every piece. Because of the random nature of all the smaller pieces, the resultant “core” is rather misshapen but we knew that we wanted to slice the core down to a precise size later on, including putting a 15degree angle on the narrow top and bottom edges as well. Finally, we assembled the two Oak strips and one of the plywood fronts, used PU construction glue and a dozen screws to anchor the Oak and plywood together. At this point, we mounted the hinges and mounted the partial door into the wall for testing purposes and making sure everything is ok. Now, turning it over, we then used plenty of PU glue all over the back of the plywood and very very carefully lowered our concrete core into the middle. Then, the second plywood board came in on top, again, with lots of PU glue spread out evenly across the cement surface and screwed the plywood down tight on the Oak edges too. We loaded seven large concrete blocks on top to pressurised all the layers together and stop the glue pushing the layers apart.

Glueing Cement board core

Holding layers while they set

Door Outer part

You might be wondering to how heavy this door is??
Well, we got our bathroom scales and HAULED it up onto it .. ..
95kg!!
15stones!!
O boy!

This is why we are having four ball bearings hinges!
They are rated at 120kg for three of them so we thought we better put in that extra one, just to be on the safe side, plus also, the hinges comes as a pair so we didn’t want to have one left lying around.
It is recommended that one puts two hinges at the top of the door, one in the middle and one near the bottom. The double set at the top has to take a good portion of the weight as the door swings out. So, we mounted the hinges to the door frame first, cutting little rectangles of carpet away so that the hinge can go flat solid against the oak strips we have previously inserted into the wall structure. Each hinge has four screws in each half so there will be a total of 32 screws holding up this 100kg door!

Now the next trick was to move the door itself and walk it up several layers of pieces of board, and sit it on the top layer which has two air cushions underneath it. We could then squeeze the air bulbs to pump in air, which in turn slowly lifts up the door so that our hinge screw holes can line up with the holes already in the door, from our earlier quick test we did before we put in the heavy cement core. We got it all screwed in and let go! The door is swinging nicely and it goes home very nicely too.

Door installed

Next, is putting in the latch mechanism and the handles. We had to find a longer square metal bar because our door is 50mm thick, especially with the carpet on it as well. Talking about the carpet, we decided to cover the entire door in cloth and carpet materials, to hide the various construction joints and materials, to end up with a smooth single texture on one side, using two fleece blankets, and three left-over pieces of carpet on the room’s side of the door. The fleece material was wrapped right around the whole door and stapled into place on the carpet side, and then we put on the carpet, to cover that up. But, the carpet had a ragged edge as well, so we went off to find some more Oak and create some thin slightly curved strips which we mitred around the edge of the door, to hide all the ragged edges.

Door Wall Finished

That is one half of the doorway done, the main sound proofing door which opens into the room and is flush up again against the rest of the wall. There will be a second door on the Hall side of the doorway, to provide a second sound barrier to reduce audio leaks. We did some tests (once we had installed some speakers etc.) and the loud music could be heard quietly when one stood near the door but a lot quieter around the corner. Which is not surprising because the main room has 100mm thick concrete blocks and the door only has 50mm total thickness, with only a 30mm concrete core!! Hence why we probably will mount the second door on the hall side!

As mentioned just now, we also installed some loud speakers we had in our old living room, plus also taking the 43inch Television and mounting that up on a wall bracket. It looks rather small in the grand scene of things so hopefully, we will upgrade to an larger model when we can, along with much better quality surround sound speakers too. We installed a Raspberry PI to act as a media streaming device for the television, which will allow us to enjoy music and videos we have got stored in our library.

TV & Speakers

The last thing we did, was to find some old underlay, and some old carpet we inherited from the previous place we were living in. It only covered the first 1.9metres of our 5metres room and that will do for now. It makes that end of the room quite cosy and the sound quality is very pleasant indeed, very soft and warm!

Oh yes, nearly forgot about the little control screen and its buttons that sits just left of the door and about shoulder height. We 3D printed a black plastic surround, with four buttons vertically on the left and right side and a row of five buttons underneath, surrounding the touch sensitive 7inch screen in the middle. This will provide access to various information that is happening in that room, and beyond, but, it will have menus to allow you to configure how you want the temperature to be set at, how the lighting units should be set in various patterns, to suit your moods, and so on. It is the link to the rest of the house, including communication, security and other helpful services like shopping lists etc.

Door Wall Finished

That pretty much concludes the work on our Entertainment Room for the time being. We even put in a fan heater so it can be kept warm so we can go in and sit down at the table to do some needlework, or watch the TV!

1 February 2025
Entertainment room – Ceiling Completed and Wooden Walls Constructed

We decided to have a go at finishing the Entertainment Room after we had finished the ventilation system. So these last few weeks, saw us sort out the ceiling. We wanted to build the complete ceiling, which means putting in the conduits and channels to allow us to thread wiring and cables from each of the light placement to next light placement. The ceiling is a solid concrete blocks affair on concrete beams so there is very limited space up there. We had already mounted beams of 63mm CLS timber up underneath the concrete blocks (we screwed 6inch long screws down through the entire concrete block and glued the wooden beams up as well) and these beams are just large enough to clear the concrete beams too. We decided that we can have seven lighting units per controller, and that we will have four lamps in one row, with its three siblings in the next row over, staggered. But, in order to feed the power cable from the controller board, we needed to mount aluminium channels up across the wooden and concrete beams. We tried to cut away a bit of the wooden beam, a diagonal slot but we discovered that quite a bit of the concrete beam needed to be grinded away to make room for the aluminium channel as well. That was far too much effort, and also running a risk of disturbing, and weakening, the strength of the concrete beams. So, the solution was to cut up a load of old left-over pieces of our 11mm OSB boards, into narrow 40mm wide strips and staple and glue them up on the underside of the CLS beams, deliberately leaving a gap for the aluminium channels to be glued up, going diagonally from the first three lamps, to their siblings.

We did four sets of seven lighting units, plus half a set of just four units in the last odd row, finishing off the ceiling. There are a total of thirty-two concealed lighting units, each one with a fully controllable white brightness level plus some splash of colour too.The next job was to install our fire suppression system up into the ceiling space as well. We already had a 15mm plastic pipe threaded up through the wall into the ceiling space so we simply just took some 10mm plastic water pipe and threaded that down inside the 15mm pipe (the other end appears under the floorboards out in the hallway) and then put on a couple of T-junctions to split the water supply off into three different directions. One hovering near the window, two feet in. One in the middle and the third one nearer the back of the room. They all have 90degrees bends on them, going into a short piece of copper pipe, this goes through a small chunk of CLS timber and connects to the end cap which will have the spray nozzle fitted later on. We got these wooden blocks done now so we can reach up later on to screw them into place when we are lifting up the ceiling boards up into place. We tested all the joints by pressurising this section with compressed air and squirted washing up liquid around each joint to make sure that there weren’t any bubbles coming out.

Entertainment room fire supression pipe work

Talking about ceiling boards, that is our next step. We took six sheets of our 18mm OSB boards and laid them out in our Great Room, lifted up off the floor with several full lengths of CLS timber. But, before we did that, we had all six of them stacked them up in a pile, on our work table. We proceeded to cut tongues and grooves in the appropriate edges so that the six sheets will fit together into a single combined ceiling, three boards wide and two boards long in the 8feet direction. The room is basically 12feet wide and just under 16feet long. We assembled them into that pattern on the floor and then tied them together using ratchets and straps to draw the tongue and groove together nice and tight, as if they were fully engaged up on the ceiling.

Now we can mark out where we want all the lighting units, plus also the air ventilation port as well onto the boards. We knew that the distance between each of the concrete plus wooden beams is 520mm, and each one occupies approximately 200mm, which means that there is a space of about 300mm that we can lay out and position our lamps. We decided that we would randomly shift each lamp position around a bit so that we do not create a ?boring? grid like pattern. We used our Tungsten carbide tipped core cutter measuring 95mm in diameter, and we made short work on drilling out 33 holes, especially using our mains powered Black & Decker electric drill!!

Entertainment room ceiling have light holes cut

We are nearly to mount these six boards up to the wooden beams, but first, we had to unscrew the top horizontal rail off the concrete walls because it is in the way of the OSB boards going up, plus also the carpet we are going to stick up later on. But, we realised that the top rail that is going across the window is completely glued in, and the wooden ceiling beam is hidden behind it, where we needed to screw up the ceiling boards. This meant that we had to chisel away a fair chunk of this top rail, to increase the gap above so that we can slide in our 18mm thick OSB boards plus the 11mm padding layer we have put up on all our wooden beams. What a fuss!! This is what you get when an original idea didn?t quite work out completely correctly. But, We made it.

Oh yes, one of the last thing to do while the ceiling is open, is to glue up some pieces of concrete blocks up around the metal air vent pipe that is sticking downwards, ready to be attached to the pretty vent cover. There is a gap between two neighbouring concrete blocks so we needed to fill in that gap with more heavy mass material, to reduce the amount of audio sound waves escaping out of this room. We found some left-over pieces outside in our swimming lane, sliced down to the required dimensions and then glued it up into place using PU Construction glue, and a tall prop to hold the block up while the glue set.

The next job, the big one, of putting up each OSB board up to the wooden beams, screw and glue them into place. We got out our massive board lifter mechanism we bought ten years ago and it effortlessly lifted these 27kg heavy boards up with ease. We carefully aligned the long edge against a set of marks that represented the wall surface and shoved the short end into the gap above the window. It got all glued and screwed in at that point.

Entertainment room ceiling showing conduits and first board test fitting

We then put up the second board along that line, after slicing off about 120mm off the end. We engaged the tongue and groove joint, made sure that it was very straight and then also glued and screwed that one up too. We repeated this twice more to put up the remaining four sheets. It was jolly hard work but we made it !!

We remembered to drill a small hole to let the fire suppression spray nozzle through and glued liberally the nozzle into place with PU construction so that we could undo the nozzle cap later on. We screwed the wooden blocks to help lock them in tight.

Then other thing we did up on the new ceiling, was to enlarges the ventilation hole. We did only a 95mm hole because we knew that we could be slightly off position and we wanted to see where we managed to get the original position. We were pretty close actually! It just needed a slight shift by 5mm away from the window and we cut out a new 220mm hole, ready to take the ventilation cover.

Entertainment room ceiling boarded

Now the next job is to put up the carpet!!

We ordered five pieces of carpets, the cheapest ones we could find and ended up paying well over £350!! We were going for a darker shade of colouring, but our head of the household put her foot down and selected a paler set of colours!! We ordered a 4.8metre by 4metre width for our ceiling, in a steel blue speckled colouring. It has a felt backing. We knew that it will glue just fine because we had previously got free samples and we tried various types of glues, to see which one is practical to use, to see how each one dried and see how strong the bond was afterwards. We tried wallpaper paste, a latex rubber glue and a contact glue. The wallpaper paste completely failed to stick at all, the latex rubber glue took absolutely ages to dry and wasn’t sticky enough to do the job of holding up the carpet while it finished drying. In another test, we did successfully use this latex rubber glue to stick a piece of carpet to the wooden board very well indeed which will be good for the walls. Anyway, we settled on the third type of glue, the contact glue (Evostick), because it dried very quickly within 10 to 15 minutes and we could press the two halves together and proved very strong. We tried ripping the sample carpet off and it started tearing the carpet itself instead of the glue. So we knew what type of glue to use.

Just a quick note about the cost of the carpet mentioned above. Yes, it is an extra cost to our overall build, but actually, it is not that high an extra, because we saved money by not having to put up our high precision plasterboards, which would have cost about £250 (13 sheets worth) so the extra on top is only £100 .. We Can Live With That!

The next trick we had to perform, is to get this twenty square metre carpet up onto the ceiling, upside down! We built a tall mobile wall with a shelf to hold the excess carpet in a fanfold arrangement. We needed a flat vertical surface so that the carpet’s backside is laid out flat, ready for the contact glue to be painted on. This flat surface is almost the entire width of the room (3.6metres – 12feet) and we decided not to paint to the very edge because the carpet is still at its original 4metres width and it needed extra room to ‘flop’ down.

Ready to hang ceiling carpet folded up waiting

In order to make sure that the very first attempt of pushing up the first edge of carpet goes on flat and without any wrinkles or ruts, we stapled on a 3.6metre length of 63mm CLS timber to the very edge of it, with equal amount of excess carpet left and right. We pulled the carpet up and draped it over our mobile wall so we had about 1metre dangling down. The mobile wall was then shifted so that it was about a 1metre from the end wall (furthest from the window). Once we have painted a strip about 900mm wide on the back side of the carpet, and a similar width up on the wooden ceiling with the contact glue, allowing it to become tact-free, we could lift up the CLS timber above our head while we stood on a ladder and a foot stool. We deliberately positioned the CLS plank against the surface of the concrete wall, sliding it up against it. We had previously marked the concrete wall near the ceiling so we knew where to position the plank so we arrived at the ceiling with the carpet and press hard upwards to get the two glue surfaces to bond together. Now, using a second similar plank but a bit shorter so we didn’t jam up too badly on the side walls, we used this piece of timber to press the carpet upwards continuously, bit by bit, moving further and further away from the completed section.

Ready to hang ceiling carpet first strip

One aspect of this task of putting up all this contact glue, is the very strong chemical solvent smell coming off all the painted surfaces. So, we had to bring in a giant fan to stuck out as much of the fumes as possible. Also, we connected up our 6inch fan to the purple 100mm pipe out in the hallway, underneath the floorboards, and blow in fresh air via the ventilation outlets (four of them) we got in the room. Plus also, we opened the front door and the side door to allow clean fresh air into the house too. We even turned on our main ventilation fan we had previously installed and got it to stir the air around the entire house.

Now, we could duck under our mobile wall, and paint the next section, another 900mm strip, on the carpet and again the ceiling as well, wait for it to tack-free and then move our mobile wall along that 900mm. It was a wiggle, keeping the carpet straight and flat but we got there. then, we then ducked back under to the other side and picked up our rolling CLS timber, to continue pressing the carpet along bit by bit until all the glued strip is done.

We repeated this process another three times and arrived at the window. We discovered that the supplier had given us another 500mm of carpet because it turned out to be the end of their roll so they just gave us the excess for free? very nice of them!!
We had to prop up the last bit of carpet with three extending legs because the weight of that excess carpet was heavy enough to make it not stick up on the glue properly.

We then dismantled our mobile wall, and then went around trimming all the excess carpet off the edges. After that, it was the case of finding all the round holes, all 33 of them, and cut out the carpets, one by one. Oh yes, we also located the three water spray nozzle points and carefully cut around the little metal plate.
And then, finally, we went around the edges of the ceiling, to apply glue to the dangling bit of the carpets and stick that up to get it all finished.

Ceiling carpet glued up

We then remounted the top horizontal rail back up on the wall, making sure that the rail was levelled with the lower rails, by using our six foot long spirit level. We had to drill new holes into the concrete and adjusting the piles of wooden shims, to secure the rail dead flat.

The next job, before we put up the wall boards, is to insert the little plastic hanging hooks up inside the Utility Channel, every 12inches or so, right around the whole room. These hooks will hold up the high voltage mains cabling so that we can supply the old AC electricity to a socket if we need some equipment to be powered by AC power instead of our 50V electricity from our solar or batteries. Plus also, we inserted a length of 20mm white plastic conduit pipe going from the Utility Channel in the far corner furthest away from the window, and threaded the pipe up behind the other horizontal rails, and with a 90degree bend, poked the top end up inside the ceiling space towards the first lighting unit hole. We now can reach in with a hand and grab the cables that will come up from the Utility Channel, to supply power and network connections to our lamps.

Now it is time to insert the sound deadening material in between the wooden rails, plus also to spray PU foam behind each rail plus also the Utility Channel too. We pulled out rolls of our 100mm thick glass wool and cut lengths off, folded them over and stapled them in each gap, hanging down. The space we needed to fill is about 50mm thick, sometimes as much as 100mm in some areas so we realised that putting up double layered of the wool, will bulge out a great deal. This is what we were looking for, in order to increase the density of the glass wool, to help absorb the sound vibrations.

Overfilled with insulation (1)

Overfilled with insulation (2)

Overfilled with insulation (3)

Now it is the turn of the 18mm OSB boards, to be glued and screwed up onto the rails. We decided that we would not employ our normal step of cutting tongue and groove in the vertical edges, to lock the boards together, to make a smooth surface. This made it very much easier to put up each board, especially considering the swollen glass wool all over the wall! We did glue each joint with our PU construction glue so it was locked together after all. But, we did notice that the joint isn’t as smooth as we normally get. We will solve that problem by sanding the joints with our belt sander and then the carpet will go over it, which will hide all these tiny bits of imperfections!! We went around our walls, putting up three sheets on the side wall, then almost four sheets along the long wall, went around the window and finally, two whole sheets on either sides of the doorway, plus a couple of shorter ones to go up and over the door hole. We wanted extra bits around the door because we needed to sliced into the edge with a 15degree angle, in order to remove a chunk of the OSB edges, to replace it with a strip of solid Oak timber instead. We knew that we are going to be hanging a very heavy dense door and we needed to make sure that the hinges will stay put when screwed into the wooden material. We found a plank of Oak in our garden shed (measuring 95mm wide by 30mm thick and a good 2.4metres long), sliced it in half and sanded all the old weathered surfaces. We glued two strips on both vertical edges of the doorway because we haven’t quite decided on which way around the door will be hung. These Oak strips were glued and screwed into place, including lots of large clamps to ensure the glue joint is squashed as tight as possible.

Oak strip clamped on

Entertainment wall OSB installed (1)

Entertainment wall OSB installed (2)

Entertainment wall OSB installed (3)

We finished off the week of work, well actually, finished off a whole year of work, by enclosing the window’s alcove with 11mm OSB boards, to hide the last parts of the concrete blocks. The two vertical sides got covered up from front to back, touching the window frame itself. And we put half a piece up on the top surface including several pieces of 1mm thick steel plates, glued to the backside of the 11mm OSB material. These will serve as magnetic attachment points, to hold up the ?lid? that is covering up the mechanisms for the automated blinds.
And finally, we glued on a narrow strip of 18mm thick OSB board, 45mm wide, to go over the top of the window hole, to bring it up to the same level as the rest of the wall surface.

This concludes the work for this year. But, we haven’t finish by a long shot !

21 December 2024
Walls Are Constructed

We started working on constructing the Walls inside the Entertainment Room, now that we have done the floor. The concrete block walls are a bit (well actually up to 15mm) wavy so we had to mount our horizontal rails with various thicknesses of wooden shims, to pad out the gap between the CLS rail and the concrete wall, when the rail is made aligned using our green laser line generator. We started on the shorter wall opposite the window so we could learn how things went together before we tackled the long stretch of the wall. We screwed the laser down into the left corner to the floorboards and got the green laser 55mm from the surface in both corners, left and right both. We worked from top down, putting the first rail up near the ceiling, but with enough space to allow a 11mm OSB sheet to fit into the small gap so the ceiling is supported around the edges of the walls.
But before all that, we had to make dozens of different sized wooden shims, using various left-over sheet material we had lying around. We made 18mm OSB ones, 13mm Plywood ones, 6mm MDF ones, 3.6mm hardboard pieces and we found some odd 6.5mm thick MDF ones so they got included too. Plus also, we sliced up some very thin plywood that are 1.5mm thick to help with the final slight adjustments. We bought the other day a new kit of plastic spacers (also known as shims or packers), they come in 1mm, 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 5mm and 6mm so they will be there if we run out of our wooden spacers.
So, we cut a piece of CLS timber to 3.76metres long and drilled 7mm clearance holes every 600mm along the rail, with them all offset by 300mm from one end. To make sure that we maintained a constant gap at the top there, we screwed some 12mm plywood pieces up on the ceiling so it would automatically produce the correct spacing when we pushed the rail up there and drilled the holes into the concrete. We drilled 7mm holes using our trusty SDS battery drill which made short work in drilling 70mm deep holes!
Then, we tightened the wooden rail into place using 100mm 6mm thick screws, putting a variety of different combinations of the wooden shims behind the rail until the green laser line just shimmed across the surface. We repeated this process for the mid rail and then we constructed the Utility Channel completely on the floor before mounting it up on the wall. We made 300mm long pieces of MDF strips which bridged across the two CLS rails that makes up the Utility Channel, gluing and stapling each strip over where the screws will go. Then, we glued and stapled the fermacell board strips in between, and glued to the bridging pieces.
Constructing the Utility Channel like this meant that we didn’t have to mount each rail separately and the whole length could go up on the wall in one go. The final rail to put up is the Air Channel, which was constructed completely separately like we had just done, but this time, using our 150mm MDF strips to form the channel for the air to flow sideways and into our room. The Air Channel just sits on the floor surface so that was relatively easy to mount it to the wall. The final step was to spray lots of PU foam behind the Air Channel and also behind the plastic pipes that comes around from below the floorboards via a deep slot in the concrete wall.

Assorted-spacers-aligning-rails-on-the-wall

We repeated this process for each of the other walls, including tackling the window wall and putting up enough wooden rail to form a very narrow strip above the window. With the lowered ceiling level, the height of our standard windows, being seven foot high, meant that the resultant ceiling is almost level with the top of the window, the narrow strips will be something in the order of 60 to 70mm wide. Just enough to allow for traditional curtains to be mounted across the window if we wanted too. We had to put up a 50mm square piece of timber, instead of our regular 63mm CLS timber but it worked out very well, especially that we had put up two extra layers of 89mm CLS planks behind this rail, to help reinforce and support it. We glued it using our top quality PU construction glue, and clamping the pieces all together including pushing upwards to stick to the concrete beam that is going over the window like a lintel.

We finished putting up the rails on either side of the doorway, just like the other walls, with a small extra bit sticking into the entrance way. This allows us to set the laser green line to be vertical and aligned to the hall side of the doorway and find out whether the concrete blocks are straight or not. And, of course, they are not quite vertical! They are leaning askew by 5mm or so at the opposite end, depending on whether it is the left or right hand side of the door. In fact, we had already made the hall side of the entrance square and vertical so that gives us something to measure against and make any adjustments. We took one of our very old wooden planks that we had stored on our wood rack, a “2 by 6” rough sawn conifer timber plank, a 4.8metres long. We think we had originally bought these pieces of timber back in the mid 2000’s and we knew that we would reuse them again .. one day!
We are using these 150mm wide planks to help reinforce the door frames, so that we can mount a heavy weight door to help block the sounds from escaping the Entertainment Room. So, after slicing off the excess bits off each of the horizontal rails, we then discovered that the gap between the ramp and the concrete blocks wasn’t quite big enough to fit the 50mm thick plank so we had to trim slivers of wood off the timber until we could insert the plank down pass the ramp and with a notch to avoid the floorboards, to rest on the concrete blocks that is running underneath the doorway. After making careful adjustments, using the laser level and our digital spirit level as well, we then drill five holes in each vertical planks and then drilled nice deep 80mm holes into the concrete blocks too, just like what we have been doing to fix up all our wall rails too. We put in various shims behind each screw and ensured that they were nice and vertical, on both sides of the doorway. Once we were happy, we unscrewed everything and applied loads of PU construction glue all over behind the plank and all over the concrete blocks and redid the screws and got the planks fixed down nice and tight, all smooth and level to the front of the wall rails.

We had also done something quite similar to our window, putting in a CLS piece of timber so it was square to the glass, anchoring it with screws from the front through our wall rails and then trimming off the additional extra bits of the rails that were sticking into the window space. Next, we took a length of 20mm plastic conduit pipe and bent it at four measured locations which enabled us to feed some wires from the Utility Channels and down into the space underneath the window sill, to power and control the window blinds.

Entertainment-Room-Window conduit

We finally, finishing off this period of work, we encapsulated the doorway in with OSB 18mm pieces of boards, on all three sides, the left and right and also above. We put in the above one in first and glued that piece in up against the concrete lintel and the wooden frame out in the hall, and then measured the two vertical sides. We had to mirror the shape of the floor and ramp so we took a piece of 6mm MDF board and drew a line on it by using a block of wood and a pen to duplicate the slope and flat regions. We did one for each side but it turned out to be identical which was nice to know! We sliced up some OSB sheets into a piece that measures 320mm wide by 2140mm tall and then trimmed the bottom using our template. With some minor slicing a bit off the height, we got them fitted. Next, we put in six pieces of CLS timber pieces into the gap between the wall boards out in the hall and the door frame. This is to make sure that the wall is solid enough to hang our doors on the walls without causing any distortions or warping. The three CLS fillers were glued and screwed into place at the same time when we glued and screwed each of the vertical OSB side pieces.

Entertainment-Room-Rails-finished-1

Entertainment-Room-Rails-finished-2

Entertainment-Room-Rails-finished-3

That concludes this period of work on our Entertainment Room, we are not finish of course, but we are moving on to another project next week, something completely different, we are installing our Solar Panels on our roof! All the metal framework and brackets has arrived so we can get that done.

20 August 2022
Starting on the Entertainment Room
While we still wait for our cheap insulation foam rejects to arrive, we got on with doing the Entertainment Room, which is our last ground floor room that we haven’t done yet. The Entertainment Room already has an internal walls and a ceiling, made using concrete blocks and suspended beams respectively. So, after emptying all our use full stuff ( i.e. “junk”) out (and putting it all in our Great Room and Kitchen), we proceeded to survey the state of the concrete walls, to see how flat and straight they are. They do wiggle in and out a little bit, according to our green laser line generator. We set the laser on the floor, right at one end of the wall and positioned it 50mm away from the surface. Then, adjusted the angle of the laser until we also have the beam just 50mm away from the surface at the other end of that wall. We did spot checks all over the surface to find how well, or badly, the individual blocks were set. We did this same procedure for all four walls and the results are as follows:
- Large wall opposite the doorway: minimum=36mm and maximum=52mm
- Left wall opposite the window: minimum=37mm and maximum 51mm
- Doorway wall: minimum=32mm and maximum=50mm
- Window wall: minimum=34mm and maximum=50mm
Some of the worse offending blocks were in the upper corner where we were finishing off a row and near the top as well, and we couldn’t keep it straight. But it is not that bad, so we can handle that by putting spacers behind all the horizontal rails as we screw them into the concrete blocks.

The room is 4.75metres long and 3.78metres wide (approximately 15½ feet by 12½ feet) and we took careful note of where the joints between concrete slabs were, and decided that we would run eight long rails to minimise wastage and offset the first rail 400mm from the doorway side of the room, and then the usual 600mm spacing after that, terminating with a 300mm gap to finish off. The Energy Module is located about 3100 to 3200mm from the window wall and we want to make sure that we can build a small liftable hatch so we can service the equipment and inspect the underground tank via its inspection port. We have gone for a regular 600mm spacing along the long direction which will avoid all the joints in the floor slab.

We cut two CLS planks to fit across the narrow sides of the room, marked off the rail positions (starting from that 400mm point and multiple 560mm after that one), drilled a set of 6mm holes in between those marks and making sure that we avoided the air disperser location which will be in the middle of the plank and we don’t want a screw going through our plastic module. We set up the laser in the middle of the room and set the height of our flooring framework to be at one block level, which is about 225mm, instead of the usual 378mm. We have decided to lower the floor level inside our Entertainment Room because it has already an lowered ceiling (the sound dampening concrete block and beam construction) so to make the room feel not so claustrophobic and maintaining the same 8feet clearance, we lowered the floor as well by six inches. There will be a slope built at the doorway so there won’t be any sudden steps etc. just a slope which will stretched out some two feet, starting from the Hall side of the doorway and stick into the room by about 400mm, to make is more friendly for anyone but especially for wheelchair users too.

The next job is to cut four cavities into the concrete blocks themselves, to allow for our air dispersers to be routed from underneath the flooring and bypassing the floor joist and let the air into the Air Channel. We used a diamond cutting disc to slice 50mm into the block and then chiselled out the chunks. We made it 120mm wide to make room for the twin plastic pipes to fit. We will also spray some PU foam to help stick it into the wall and insulate it a bit from the cold concrete blocks. The slot is about 250mm high and it was very very dusty, generating a huge cloud of grey concrete dust. We were wearing very good dust masks thank goodness!

Channel-hacked-the-the-Entertainment-wall

We also made the four dispersers as well, doing the usual method of trimming down the elbow corners and gluing it all together. So we could test the new slots to make sure that they had room to fit properly.

We went around drilling all the necessary holes in the concrete walls for all four sections of the floor joist support batten, putting in a 7mm plastic wall plug and screwing it down tight using 100mm long 6mm screws whilst putting the air distributers in. We also put on a large washer to help spread and grip the wooden pieces tight to the walls, especially that we had a larger clearance holes through the wood so we could tap the joist a bit up or down, to get it as accurate as possible against our green laser line level.

Air-distributer-in-the-channel

Next, we chopped up 62 legs that the whole floor will need, with 19 of them having one corner sliced off to allow for the mortar on the bottom of the walls. All of them were then dipped in our coloured timber preservative liquid, to make sure that the timber will last for decades, even if we had a water leak so it won’t affect the wood.

Then, we started by the doorway and put in the first rail at 360mm spacing and cut a piece 4665mm long and put in seven legs along its length and two specials for the ends. Using this rail, we then built the ramp for the doorway using three pieces of CLS timber, with angles cut on their ends to connect to the bottom rail and also joining up onto the hall framework too. We also put in trimmed filling in pieces in between these sloping rails, with the surface planed so it matches the slope in general, so that the top and bottom edges of the ramp will be fully supported. Finally, we stuck in two additional legs to help support the two outer sloping rails so the joints will not creak in the future. We topped the whole thing off by laying down a floorboard piece, measuring 880mm wide by 590mm long, with a shallow 18degree angled cuts for the top and bottom edges so that we don’t end up with gaps in our flooring.

Then, we continued with mounting the rest of the floor joists, six more rails, each having seven legs under each one and we got that all done, including the horizontal noggings every 1200mm.

Entetainment-Floor-grid-1

Entetainment-Floor-grid-2

Next, we built a box around the Energy Module collection of pipes and conduits coming out of the concrete floor slab so we put in four plywood pieces around the four sides, lined the bottom with 50mm of PU foam and put in additional rail around the top edge so our lid can sit on something solid.

Energy-module-equipment-box

The conduits for the temperature probes were threaded around the legs and framework so that all four of them were routed over to the plumbing box and poked through the plywood sides, ready for threading the actual temperature sensors down the conduits and measure the state of of the environment around and inside this Energy Module.

The filling pipes were fitted, being 15mm water pipes, and they were routed towards the hallway. This meant that we drilled a couple of 65mm diameter holes through the concrete blocks and pushed in some short length of pipe insulation to protect the energy in the water when it is transferred from inside the Energy Module and the Utility Room.

All-the-pipes-and-conduits-in-place

Then, we built another air distributor module to be connected to a 100mm feed off the main air duct back in the Hall, coming down the hall towards the front door and then turning into the Entertainment Room under the doorway itself. The distributor module is the usual affair of one 100mm input pipe, being squeezed and spread out to four 50mm connections, to be sent around the room.

Oh yes, we just remembered that we needed a data conduit to be fitted to our central plumbing box and routed the other end out in the hallway under the doorway. This will allow us to feed a couple of cables through to connect our house network and provide electrical power to the little computer that is monitoring the vital signs of our buried Energy Module.

This concludes all the bits and pieces going under the floor so we loaded in two layers of 200mm thick glass wool strips, laid flat. These strips would be 400mm high but when laid down, they only just came above the wooden rails which is 235mm off the floor, which is good to provide a much better sound absorbing layer.

Insulation-in-the-floor-1

Insulation-in-the-floor-2

Now, we went ahead and laid down the 22mm thick floorboards, starting left of the doorway and worked our way across the room towards the window. The floorboards were glued and screwed down nice and solidly. The width of the room meant that we had to throw away fairly large pieces especially when we came to the ramp where we decided to start over again with a full length board, to make sure that the floorboards in the doorway is well supported.

Enetertainment-room-floor-finished-1

Enetertainment-room-floor-finished-2

This concludes this stage of building the Entertainment Room, we will carry on with putting up the wall rails, getting them levelled and flat including putting in the Utility Channel and the OSB wall boards and may even get the ceiling done too.
6 August 2022
Concrete Beams and Blocks Forms the Lid for the Entertainment Room

This week it is the turn of the Concrete Beams and hundreds more of the concrete blocks to be hoisted up and laid out to form the roof of the Entertainment Room’s internal sound proofing shell.
The first job was to construct a lifting hoist location where each individual 120kg beam is lifted up and swung around, to get pass the skylight metal leg and lowered down to the top of the concrete wall.

We got three of our shorter metal scaffolding modules, plugged them together and then clamped the whole thing to the wooden wall. Then we got our metal hoisting arm up (only just fitted, avoiding the skylight) and then attached the electric winch.

EntRoom-Setting-up-hoist

EntRoom-Hoisting-a-beam-up

We first lifted two beams up and got them positioned over the far end of the room, near the window. This allowed us to then set and position the second of our heavy duty angle iron piece, with clearance holes drilled into it and then glued and screwed on to the wooden legs of the external wall.
Then we sliced up one of our paving slabs down the middle to give us two similar pieces, 900mm long by 300mm wide, plus a small bit left-over from the previous time of using the paving slabs at the bottom of the window, to make a filling in piece measuring 240mm wide by 300mm deep. Then, we glued on half bricks on the edge of all three pieces so that they can sit on the concrete beam and form the lid over the window, sitting on the metal angle iron and the beam. We wanted to raise this “lid” higher to maximise the space above the window to ensure that we had enough room for our mechanism for controlling the automatic window blinds. We glued these composite pieces using regular PU glue to stick them into place.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we proceeded to lift up the remaining eight beams and 162 blocks, plus 5 further blocks sliced down the middle to form the finishing piece in each row.
We used spray PU foam to act as a glue and space filling at the same time on each block as we inserted a block along the beam. Not forgetting the two driveway 50mm thick concrete bricks were placed at the start and end of each beam to fill in the gap between them sitting on the wall.

EntRoom-Gluing-blocks-in-with-foam

The last day, Thursday, we had to fill in the tenth row which was half the width so we sliced nine blocks in half to produce a filling in piece, measuring in a set between 190mm to 200mm wide and also cutting down two more bricks to fill in the final space on the wall.

EntRoom-All-blocks-installed

We had a half bag of cement powder left over so adding two buckets of soft sand, we mixed them together in a dry form, ready to vibrate in all the joints on the roof. But first, we nicked a quarter of it to make the normal mortar “muck” to stick down the last row of half blocks to the top of the wall and finishing off the whole roof.
Then we proceeded to pour the dry mix all over the roof, brushing it over all the joints, banging and vibrating the roof using a piece of wood and club hammer and filled up the cracks between the blocks and beams. Finally, we went over the roof surface and sprayed a small quantity of water to help activate the cement and harden it up.

EntRoom-Grouting-the-blocks

EntRoom-Blocks-grouted

The rest of Thursday and much of Friday was spent tidying up all the equipment, taking down the winch motor and its metal lifting arm, sweeping the floor and creating a “rubbish” bag down the bottom of the garden (using one of those large ton bags and four old metal re-bars to act as legs) and moved all the broken and sliced concrete block remainders, dismantle the various wooden templates and finally moved the cement mixer away from the Front door area.
One thought that came up, was to get the ceiling battens installed now, rather than later on because we might forget to do it before we put up the First Floor Joists, which may impede our attempts in screwing up the CLS 63mm battens up inside the Entertainment Room. So Saturday was spent in doing that to get it all done and dusted before we forget and before we dismantled the wooden platforms too. We drilled six holes through each row of the concrete blocks (they are 6mm holes), just alongside each concrete beams, a total of 60 holes for the 150mm long screws to go through and grip the CLS plank of timber.

EntRoom-Roof-sprouts-screws

We used 3.6 meter long 63mm sized pieces because they very nicely brought the surface of the ceiling just clear of the concrete beams, which makes it very easy to then screw and glue up the ceiling boards later on. We then screwed the wood up leaving a gap which we sprayed PU foam glue into, after which we tightened the wood up squashing the foam tight.

EntRoom-Ceiling-support-battens-

EntRoom-Ceiling-support-battens-glued

So in just over three weeks, we constructed a complete concrete shell from start to finish! Not Bad! And it took only a little bit longer to build the wooden framework that surrounds the whole room. Very nice to see that all complete.
The next job is to start bedding down the footplate (double layer of treated CLS planks) that makes up rest of the rooms onto the concrete floor.

21 November 2020
Concrete Shell Almost Finished

Monday, we did two and half layers in building up our wall inside the Entertainment Room, that is over seventy blocks! We completed layer 4, then number 5 and number 6 and a little bit of layer 7.

Entertainment-room-Blocks-Row-6-Finished

Entertainment-room-Blocks-Row-7-Started

Tuesday, it was a half day because we are reaching the limit of lifting up the 20kg concrete blocks high enough to get on to the progressing walls whilst being able to see if they were in the right place. We finished layer 7 and a section of layer 8, for which we had to use one of our mobile platforms so we could use up most of the mortar mix we had. The remaining of Tuesday and Wednesday was spent building a safe, spacious working platform for us to stand on and continue building up the wall and finally put on the roof without compromising our effort and muscles. The platforms were made from the same basic frame work as the external one used for the roof, we just adjusted the length of the legs to suit.
The last part of Wednesday was spent moving 121 concrete blocks and making four piles in the middle of the room, ready to be lifted up onto the platform. We couldn’t immediately start a new mortar mix because it was far too late in the afternoon as it generally takes three hours to apply that amount of mortar to the 50 blocks or so. So instead, we moved enough blocks to finish off the final three and half layers (number 8, 9, 10 and 11) before we reach the critical twelfth layer.

Thursday saw us put up over eighty blocks to finish off layer 8, get layer 9 and 10 done completely and on Friday morning, to did layer 11. We also put on the lintel over the doorway.
For the rest of Friday, we laser surveyed the height of the wall to find minimum and maximum variations so we can adjust the height of the final twelfth layer. As the result of this survey, we sliced up 27 blocks of 135mm high, 9 blocks of 185mm high and a couple of 70mm thin ones over the doorway (sitting on the lintel).

We test fitted all these blocks in “dry” mode, including cutting down those blocks in corners and around the windows so everything was ready for the final stage in completing this twelfth layer.
So finally on Saturday afternoon, we mixed our usual load of mortar and proceeded to stick down all these shortened blocks and again, using the laser level , we made sure that they all finished up nice and flat.

Entertainment-Block-Walls-Done-1

Entertainment-Block-Walls-Done-2

Entertainment-Block-Walls-Done-3

So this concludes the building of the concrete walls and on Monday, we can start the massive job of lifting the ten 120kg concrete beams up and plonk them on our new wall!! No Sweat!

14 November 2020
Concrete Wall Grows Taller

For this new week, we started the task of building the concrete shell that will sound proof our Entertainment Room. The first task was to make a template to help us align the rows of blocks so we put together a piece of plywood with a straight CLS timber to stiffen the board and stop it from curling. Then marked out two lines set apart by 225mm which is the height of a block plus a layer of mortar. Then we marked along the lower line with marks spaced at 450mm (the length of a block plus a mortar).

Block-alignment-and-spacing-Template

Then, in the mid-afternoon of Monday, our Concrete Blocks Arrives. We had ten pallets to unload!
So on Tuesday, we could start laying out the first layer of blocks around the room, making adjustments, and then tackle the job of slicing concrete blocks to the required size. For this we created another jig, see Jig to Slice Concrete Block to help us.
On Wednesday, our Ten Concrete Beams Arrive very early, but we had other tasks to do in the morning and the afternoon was spent dealing with the beams.
So we didn’t actually start putting our blocks into mortar until Thursday and it was a very long day. We got all the equipment out, the cement mixer, wheelbarrows, the plasticiser, water hose and measuring jug. We got our first load of mortar done and didn’t finish that load until well past 2pm. We had a quick lunch and resumed at 3pm. The second load got us all the way around the circuit of the room plus half the second layer, and we finished 7:15pm! We had put down sixty blocks, each weighing 19kg each!

First-days-block-laid-1

First-days-block-laid-2

The next day, we got the second row done, including stopping and starting either side of the door entrance (we created a quick wooden guide to ensure that we had a 50mm clearance to the door frame, so we can insert a vertical plank of timber to create the inner framework). We got all the third layer done too and got further around on the fourth layer, but this time deliberately avoiding the window area as that needed special attention.

The final day, Saturday, we tackled the job of putting an extension of our concrete shell out towards the window. We found a heavy duty angle iron in our supply, a left-over length from when we were building the steel framework up in the skylight. We sliced off two length of 2050mm each, de-rusted them thoroughly, and then drilled five clearance holes. Both were painted with a rust protective zinc paint and then the first one (with the holes) was placed onto the concrete outer wall underneath the window.

Wall-support-steel-angles

Five holes were duly drilled and five concrete screws were driven in. we also put in a good amount of PU glue to stick the metal bar to the concrete wall to provide extra security and load bearing capabilities.

Bottom-wall-support-attached

Then we got two more concrete blocks and sliced them with a sticking out bit at the back. These blocks are the start of the vertical sides of the window alcove and they rest on the metal support and have a little sticking out bit at the back to reach the wooden framework of the window. we left a small gap and that will be filled up with expanding foam later on. Then we sliced up two paving slabs to create a shelf across underneath the window. These paving slabs are very, very hard and the diamond cutting blade had to work very hard, even just to slice 10mm deep into the 50mm thick slabs! We eventually sliced both sides and hit the slab with a club hammer to break it apart. We needed pieces 345mm wide and width in total of 1845mm wide. We made three pieces from our 600mm by 900mm slabs.
Finally, we were ready to stick all the pieces into place, so mixed up a small portion of mortar and using some left-over Stixall glue (on the metal bar and between the paving slab pieces), we got it all assembled, including finishing off the fourth layer around the window.

Bottom-of-window-enclosed-in-concrete

We can on Monday to continue putting up the next eight rows in reasonable ease (apart from the growing height), until we reach the top when the next complicated bit needs special treatment, the ceiling!!

7 November 2020
Ten Concrete Beams Arrives

Suddenly at a bright early hour, our concrete beams, all ten of them, arrive! We had to parked them on our driveway in such a position so we could then transport each beam inside the house through the Side Door, without hitting problems like trying to turn a 4metre long object around a sharp 90degrees turn! We also had to keep the driveway clear to allow our car out too! Phew!

Conctete-Beams-Delivered

After doing other chores and tasks in the morning, we started the heavy duty of moving these beams into the house. We bolted two large castor wheels to a slab of timber, already predrilled with the holes because these 2inch by 6inch short planks were used several years ago when we were moving the huge steel RSJ beams!
But this time, we moved the 120kg concrete beams, once at a time, by clamping the wheels to the beginning of the beam and clamping a long wooden handle to the other end to allow us both to lift it up. Dragging the beam over to align with the Side Door, we proceeded to push each beam into the house, down the ramp and slipped past the various obstacles and parked them half way down in the middle of house, next to the metal roof legs.

Beams-carried-inside

It took us all afternoon to move the ten beams, being careful not to overtax ourselves and not to cause any damage to our house! The big challenge will be when we need to hoist them up and put them on our Entertainment Room concrete walls to form the roof! That’s another day’s Job!

4 November 2020
Concrete Blocks Arrives

The first load of new building material arrived today. 576 dense concrete blocks arrived with a ton bag of soft sand, eight bags of cement, two large paving slabs and one concrete lintel.

Concrete-Blocks-and-Sand

The remaining 74 blocks will be delivered soon, along with the 10 concrete beams. We are glad that we beat the lock-down deadline!

2 November 2020
Stud Wall Built and Covered in Fermacell Boards

This week, we started on building our timber Stud Wall that surrounds the concrete shell that encloses the Entertainment Room. But before that, we created another piece of equipment down in our Great Room area, to help us chop up the various timber planks into precise lengths required for each wall around the house (see Chop Saw Plank Slicing Station).
We marked out on the footplate the spacing for all the stud posts for each section of the wall, requiring a 400mm separation of the posts for the 89mm wide walls (the left and right sides of the room joining the Utility Room and hall leading from the front door) and a 600mm spacing for the end wall opposite the window. We duplicated these marks on another set of horizontal planks we made, ready for the top plate that goes on top of the stud posts.
We then chopped up twenty-one 89mm CLS and eleven 63mm CLS planks measuring 2638mm long, then two 2600mm long pieces, both being the 89mm CLS width and finally, an one off 2804 length of 63mm CLS.
We proceeded to nail each post into place using 90mm ring-shank nails and put on the top plate planks on too. We also glued two of the 63mm posts to the steel leg (holding up the Skylight and roof).

Entertainment-Studs-Finished

The last job of the week was to nail up sheets of the fermacell boards on the inside surface of the stud walls to improve the sound deadening potential of the whole Entertainment Room. We placed each sheet horizontally, over two and bit rows and applied to all the edges with PU construction glue to ensure a continuous uniform and solid barrier.

Entertainment-Fermacell-all-installed-1

Entertainment-Fermacell-all-installed-2

Entertainment-Fermacell-all-installed-3

We are now ready for the concrete blocks and beams which will hopefully will be delivered Monday and Tuesday, just before the lock down is enforced. That will keep us busy for a few weeks.

31 October 2020