Construction of External Skin of House: External Walls, Roof and Skylight. Slate tiles on roof and timber cladding on walls.
Today, drilling and cutting of steel pieces continues with the 9 pieces which tie the front and back beams together.. These are about 2.6m long 50mm square tubes with two holes drilled at each end and the tops of the boxes sliced off to exposed the drilled holes.
Beam Tie Drilled and sliced
To make it easier to make the 9 pieces a jig is made to allow the same actions to be repeated over and over again with consistent results.
Today, in the workshop, lots of pieces were drilled, like for example, the 10mm thick plates with 13mm holes in the 4 corners (7 of these, one for each leg).
Steel-plates-drilling
The work continued today in preparing all the pieces of steel work, cutting some to the correct sizes, some being drilled with bolt holes and screw holes.
There are hundreds of pieces, some 3mm thick, all the way up to 10mm thick plates, all needing some work on them.
It is a matter of being accurate and taking it slowly but surely to get all the pieces ready for assembly later on.
Today, now that the steel has all arrived, all cross checked against original order list, the major task of preparing the pieces and practicing the various welds and drilling tasks is being done.
We took one of spare pieces of hollow tube (the 160mm by 80mm size) and a piece of a 10mm plate and welded it on the bottom end of the leg, and then sliced away a small section through the weld to inspect how well (or badly) it went, as you can see in the picture below, it looks very good.
Test-weld-of-leg-plate-join-2
Test-weld-of-leg-plate-join-Weld-Detail-1
Also, the plasma cutter seems to cut the 10mm thick plate fairly easily so this means we can cut the stock size plates to the more desired sizes to fit more neatly on the framework. It is looking all good so far!
This afternoon, the steel arrived and was off loaded. The lorry came backwards down the Loke.
Steel-on-the-lorry
The big I-beam pieces were offloaded down inside the house itself, lying on concrete blocks with long length of 2inch by 6inch planks to support the 6 pieces.
Steel-I-Beams-unloaded
The rest of the pieces were offloaded on pallets in front of the house alongside the Loke, and then each piece was measured to verify that they were correct and present.
All-Steel-unloaded
Most of the pieces were carried over to the external rack to store them under cover while waiting to be processed. The only items left outside were the big fat box beams which are the legs for holding up the I-beams. These box beams are very heavy indeed, being 160mm by 80mm with thick 8mm metal walls and having a length of 5.4 metres long!! Steel is dense and it all adds up to high weight loads!!
The next job is to drill holes in the giant I-beams where we are probably will need to hire a magnetic drill press to clamp the drill into place and make 13mm holes in various places. Also there will need dozens of 5mm holes too! the hire cost will likely be about £80 for a week hire time.
It was a fairly easy and quick decision to place our order for the Steel pieces with the one company that was pretty good on the price (not the cheapest but also nowhere the most expensive either!) but won on the grounds of having a crane on-board their transport. It is a local small business called Standley Steel in Wymondham and we already have a good rapport with them! We expect that the delivery will be early next week.
So, to be ready for that event, we need to get the area beside the Loke levelled out and have blocks of wood and pallets ready .. and currently it is raining hard – Grin!
The Steel requirement for the skylight frame has been sorted out into a shopping list and sent off to half a dozen different local suppliers in Norfolk, and beyond. We are getting Quotes from most of the suppliers and they are all running in around the £2300 mark but for one major difference, only one (so far) has said that their transport has a built-in crane, which would make it so much easier to unload the 3 tons of steel pieces we need!
But, we discovered a situation regarding the Building Regulation and fabrication of steelwork, where in certain circumstances, one needs to show a certificate (or two) proving that the quality of workmanship and grade of steel meets the proper European Standard (as of November 2014). We made enquiries with our local building inspector and after leaving someone to look into this matter, and waiting a few hours, and a final telephone conversation answering last minute questions, they agreed that our design is neat and simple and well within our remit to fabricate and assemble the Steel framework ourselves. Phew thanks goodness for that!
We are now just waiting for one more final quote to come in and then we will probably order from the supplier that has the crane on their vehicle.
In the meantime, we are tidying up along the Loke side, levelling up the ground so we will have a landing area for the delivery of the steel bits and pieces, as well as other material we will need later on.
Also, while the tidying up task is being performed, we were also creating the shopping list for various steel parts to create the main structural central framework that defines the core of the building and the roof to support on.
The list is 173 individual pieces ranging from 75 x 50 x 3 mm, to a beam 305 x 100 x 8200 mm and the steel will weigh over 2.5 tons!
We will submit the list too a few suppliers in Norfolk too see how much it will cost (should be in the region of £2000)
This morning, a shopping list is being made up containing the Steel parts that forms the Central Structural Framework that holds up the whole roof complex. There are RSJ, box beams and lots of plate materials.
We will start the construction of this framework when the Floor Slab is poured and had time to cure a week or so. It will be a case of having our scaffolding out and with strong rope and winches, to lift up these steel parts into place on top of their steel legs etc. a real case of a jigsaw being put together!!