Category: Phase 4

Construction of External Skin of House: External Walls, Roof and Skylight. Slate tiles on roof and timber cladding on walls.

Roof Section A More or Less Complete and Three New Aluminium Posts Created for Front Porch

We had a bank holiday Monday to our week so we did a slow day of measuring the Front Porch various elements so we can adjust the level of the Porch with our new aluminium posts. The spreadsheet gave us the relationship between the three concrete pads we done ten days ago and they are now hard enough for supporting the load of the Porch and the roof with the slates, and the support beams and the gutters itself.
We used our laser level site to get the numbers and we now have three length to make our aluminium posts with top and bottom plates to help spread the load and fix the posts to the wooden beam and also keep it stable on the concrete.
The posts are in the order of 3200mm long, plus or minus 3mm.
It was very hot and we decided to avoid working on the roof until the next day Tuesday.
So Tuesday, half a day Wednesday (afternoon) and half a day of Thursday (morning), we got the rest of the largest ‘A’ section all covered in slates, an additional 1,200 of them, making a total of 2,500!
The temperature was still very hot and it climbed to 29°C on Tuesday but was cooler on the following days. We drank lots of water more or less every hour. Phew!

Roof-A-complete

The remaining part of Thursday was spent tidying up our platform walkways, moving the trolleys of slates back to ground level, moving equipment and materials around so we could start undoing the modules along ‘A’ and the ‘P’ sections. We need to do this because we need to gain access to the other half of the main front roof, the ‘E’ section on the other side of the front porch.
For Friday and Saturday, while one half of the work force was occupied elsewhere, the metalwork was done on the posts for the Front Porch. There are three aluminium square posts, measuring 50mm a side and 3200mm tall. Each end has a flat metal plate welded, to help spread the load across the interface; the concrete pad at the bottom and the wooden beam up inside the porch roof. The bottom pad is a solid 150mm square and 6mm thick and the top piece is 75mm wide and also 6mm thick. The top plates comes in two shapes; a straight one measuring 125mm long for the middle leg, and two L shaped one for the corners. The first thing Stephen need to do was learn how to weld aluminium, this need changes to the welding machine and learning a new technique for the welding. This took up most of Friday morning (doing many practice welds and checking quality)!

Aluminium-welding-Cross-section

Then the plates were cut and butt welded. The on Saturday the plates were welded to the posts.

Porch-legs-1

Porch-legs-2

Porch-legs-3

We started installing them Saturday afternoon and we got one up in the C-D corner but we were trying to lift up the other corner, the B-C corner, to slide the metal leg under the beam, only 10mm to lift but it is proving difficult to do. We are using a car hydraulic jack but can’t get a stable base to apply the force to lift up the beam and the roof that 10mm.

Porch-leg-base

Porch-leg-top

We will resume on Monday! Once the metal posts are in place, we can rearrange the working platform modules again so we can get access to the whole of the ‘E’ section and around along the Side Porch too. Then we can do more guttering and inserting the rubber liner.

31 August 2019
“P” Roof All Complete, Mesh on “A” Gutter, Half of “A” Roof Covered in Slates and Flashing Installed Along Skylight

Another week is complete, with lots of Slates being mounted plus some little bit of work on the window’s octagon pillars.
The hip flashing was first to be done, with the bull-nose shaped fibre-glass covered in the dark grey resin, going up the P-A intersection of the roof.
Then we went to work on the “P” section of the roof and finished it off, as now we have means and support to climb up (on the “A” roof) to gain access to “P”.

P-Finally-finished

We also put up the Skylight rubber flashing along the “A” section to the “C” ridge line and put up the aluminium cover strips too.

We then installed the other half of the slating battens on ‘A’ (another 24 rows and about 260m long)

Roof-A-all-battened-up

Next, the metal mesh (for the guttering) was cut into strips off the roll, but with an additional modification applied at the same time. we put on a steel rod on to the jig so we could push and squash the mesh around the rod to make a “bump”, sticking up into the air. We are hoping that this will solve the annoying and troublesome rainwater from running across the mesh without dripping off into the gutters and dribbling over the edge down to the ground. This bump will, fingers crossed, interrupt the flow of the water and force it to drop into the gutter as it should do in the first place!
We then proceeded to cover all the way along the “A” section and half of the “B” section including the valley corner. We had already, by then, installed two 3metre valley trough modules up the A-B valley.

Gutter-Mesh-on-A

For the last two days, we got on with slating the “A” roof and we have managed to do about a one thousand three hundred slates.

A-Slating-Day-1

A-Slating-Day-2

There were interruptions during the week, some due to bad weather where we worked in the workshop on our windows and continuing with the task of shaping our octagon pillar pieces, but we had other little interruptions too.
Next week, we will carry on with the “A” section and put up another 1500 slates, up the valley and to complete that. Then will do the three porch metal posts and get them done before we start putting on more weight on the roof and the porch.

24 August 2019
Membrane Installed on Section A and B with Half of Wooden Battens Plus Work on Oak Timber for Windows

This report is for the last two weeks of work, we had some of the days on other commitments, but we mostly worked on our roof with some in our workshop processing more oak during the wet days.
The first task was to put in our Rubber liner into the gutters, in section “A”, “B”, “C” and “D”,. It was a bit hit and miss in finding clear weather but we managed to complete this task over two afternoons.

The next task was to complete the Hips and Ridge lines, building up the layers to form the edge of the main slate surface and allow for our flashing slates to protect these edges.

Then we concentrated on putting up the breathable membrane on just the “A” and “B” sections, to allow us, later on, to get on with the job of putting up slates (which will, in turn, allow us to do another rearrangement of our working platforms so we can reach the remaining of the “E” section and go around the corner onto the “F” Side Door Porch).
The “A” roof is the largest section and it needs 55 rows of tile battens, each one being at least 10 metres long each. By the end of the 2 weeks, we have got that done with half the battens installed, but at least, we now have two sections rainwater proof.

Roof-A-half-battened

Roof-B-half-battened

When it was raining or strongly forecast to be (which amounted to about 4 days in total), we got on with the operation of planing our Oak timber to make the decorative Octagon shaped ‘pillar’ that stands on each side of each window. We had sliced wider planks in half with a 45degree cut and we had thought that we weren’t going to get very thick finished pieces because there seems to be lots of patches of “dips” and “bulges”. We did actually reject about ten planks anyway and got replacement ones from storage. We learnt a valuable lesson about Oak timber (well any timber!) and how random and natural they are!
We ended up with 54 finished, all 20mm thick after planing . Half are the slightly wider ones for the front facing piece and another 27 smaller ones for the angled piece going into the window frame.

Oak-window-octagon-parts-planed

After the gutter rubber was installed we noticed that water collected in the front porch gutter i.e. the ‘C’ gutter, It was over 20mm deep before starting to flow away. This shows that the temporary legs we installed when we built the porch are not supporting the roof properly. We need to install proper support before loading hundreds of kilos of slates on the roof! We need strong legs which will stand up to being bashed by materials moving around, so we decided to use metal posts. As the posts go into the ground we wanted rust proof ones, we started looking at stainless steel and even got as far as trying to order some but the supplier did not deliver to our location. Whilst searching for other suppliers we looked at aluminium (which is as strong as Stainless steel) and found it was half the price of stainless so we bought Aluminium instead. The post will be 50mm square hollow tubes with 4mm thick walls with 6mm thick plates at the top and bottom. The final task of this period of work, was to dig three holes at the spots where the metal posts will go. The holes were dug down 450mm to the standard frost level point and concrete was poured in to form solid pads about 450mm square and 150mm thick. The metal posts will then stand on these pads and stretch up to connect to the framework forming the porch, about 3.2metres high.

1st-Hole-for-prch-post

2nd-Hole-for-prch-post

3rd-Hole-for-prch-post

Aluminium-ready-for-porch-posts

Next week, we will carry on installing all the other half of the wooden battens for “A” and “B” roof sections while we wait for the concrete to cure and strengthen and start putting up Slates, firstly to finish off the last little bit of the “P” and around onto to “A”.

17 August 2019
Gutters Installed but also more Site Clearance done too

It was another week of a mixed bag of jobs and tasks, but we made progress on the guttering, oak planks for our windows and did some site clearance too.
The first job of the week was to correct a problem with our Downpipe channels where the bottom base board had warped. We basically clamped it back together again and then drilled pilot holes and screwed in five stainless screws on each edge. We did this minor operation on the A-B and D-E Downpipe Channels (these are either sides of the front door porch).

Then our skip arrived and we got on loading that instead. We started to cleared away a pile of rubble and rubbish that has been accumulating over the last few years, we found the skip we order was not big enough.

The-rubbish-heap

With a slight delay to the work on Tuesday, we got on with the job of installing the Guttering, putting eight oak pieces for the base of the gutters and another eight front pieces, including two angled blocks for each of the Downpipe Channels. This took us several days to complete, spread across the week (about 3 days in total), with some rainy weather interruptions too.

On Wednesday, saw the arrival of our second skip and we did a little bit of clearance before the rain arrived as forecasted. So we retired to our workshop to resume the task of slicing one good straight edge to all our 27mm thick oak planks. Next we entered all these planks and their minimum width measurement into our spreadsheet. It turned out to be eighty planks in total that we have been processing. After analysis, we put back all the planks that were 180mm and wider, back to our external storage racks. Also took back those ones that had bigger knots in the middle plus a half a dozen width from 100mm to 150mm, all to the storage racks too.

So Saturday, after we had finished gluing the gutters (Thursday afternoon and all day Friday), all along the “A”, “B”, “C”, “D” and a third of the “E” sections of the roof, we proceeded to fibre-glass and resin the two Downpipe Channels and the two outer corners (B-C and C-D) with our usual black coating, ready for the rubber membrane to come in. Also all the excess glue that had bubbled out, both inside and outside of the guttering, was removed and sanded smooth.

A-gutter

AB-and-BC-Corners-fibreglassed

C-Gutter

DE-Corner-fibreglassed

The last job of the day, and week, was to fill up our second skip with the remainder of the rubbish and clear away unwanted sacks of shredded plant material too.

The-Heap-is-gone

Next week, we can start on putting the rubber membrane into the guttering, which will lead us to start putting up the roofing breathable membrane and wooden battens, ready for the slates – Hurray!

3 August 2019
A Mixed Bag of Tasks and Jobs Done This Week

A week of a mixed bag of lots of little tasks, jobs and errands, with a mixed bag of super-hot days, thunderstorms and a cool damp day to finish the week!
For the first job on Monday was to finish as much as possible the of the ‘P’ section of the roof, putting on several hundred more Slates. We couldn’t finish it as the last few columns need to have access from the other roof surface (the ‘A’ section along the front of the house) so we had to stop there and started the process of tidying up everything off the platform modules, ready for them to be moved.

P2-Slated-as-far-as-we-can-go-now

But first, after almost forgetting to do it, we washed out the finished gutters using the pressure washer and sanded smooth the joints (removing the expanded glue) and surfaces along the guttering. Then we removed all the edging plywood strips off our working platforms, removed all the screws joining the modules (there were eight of them) together and released them from the walls of the house too.
But we couldn’t move them for two reasons number 1 was that we had two crate’s full of Slates were in the wrong position, or rather, they clashed with the need to locate the line of our working platform to go along the front of the house and secondly, the old little covered storage hut (containing sheet materials) was blocking the route when we needed to move the eight modules around to the front.
So the next job was to make a new storage rack inside the house, this time, a four layered construction with room for a large pallet on the concrete floor for the cement boards.
After the external storage hut was emptied, we took it apart and recycled some of the bits and screws but most of it was beyond use and carried away ready for burning or other items put into the rubbish bins.
Now the next job was to empty two crates of Slates and we moved about 3200 of them and piled them on top of our other four crates. We used our large flat bed trolley to help us with that massive heavy job!

Slates-moved

Now at last, we could move the eight modules, one at a time. We made it easier for us by clamping a wooden bar across the legs and carrying each one the long way around the house. The eight modules gave us the scope to work on all the ‘A’ section, all the ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ and the first bit of the ‘E’ sections of the roof, this is nearly all the sections along the front of the house. We will have to move two more modules to enable us the access to the rest of the ‘E’ section to the corner with ‘F’ but we will do that later on.
That was the end of Wednesday and we finished a little early too because it was very hot (our air temperature was 33°C and the ground was reading 40°C on the sandy soil but our slates on the roof was reading 50°C!!

Thursday, we avoided the hot sun by working in our workshop to process the next set of Oak timber planks, to make a series of narrow flat vertical pieces to form the octagon shaped pillars on each side of the windows. We brought in all the 27mm thick by 2metre oak planks, about 75 in total. We will only need some of them as we are making a set of 100mm wide parts and a set of 70mm wide parts, 26 of each (we should be able to get two parts from many of the wider planks). We would like to pull out the nicest quality ones so we try to avoid those ones with knots and twisted grains. We first chopped all the ends, removing any split ends and other defects and got started on slicing one straight edge using our track saw. We managed about 25 planks so far.

Lots-of-Oak-planks-for-window

We had Friday off because of other commitments but we resumed on Saturday and catching a break in the rainy weather, we went out to fix and join all the eight platform modules together and anchor them to the building, also putting on the edge plywood edging strips too.

Scaffold-platforms-along-ABC

Scaffold-platforms-along-CDE

That concludes the mixed bag of things we did this week, but at least, we now have everything ready so we can resume work on the roof, this time along the front of the building where we continue putting on the gutters, fibre-glassing the corners, inserting the rubber and then the membrane and everything else!

27 July 2019
26 Oak Vertical Pieces Produced for 13 Windows

For the last three days of this week’s work, we were in the workshop processing the pile of Oak timber that makes up the vertical elements of the window frames. It is ironic because the weather forecast said rain on all three days but actually the second day (Friday) didn’t have any rain what so ever! But we just got on with the job of planing and cutting the oak.
We went through the usual process of planing one side of the 26 timber pieces and one of the edges, working on the top configuration of the planer with its two long extensions, before transforming the equipment into the thicknessing mode and planing the second side and the other edge, all to a known width and thickness. While doing this process, we realised that some of the current oak pieces were not going to be good enough so we got three more rough timber pieces off the storage rack and included them in all this stage!
When we finished we rejected the worst three pieces (they went back outside to the rack) and so we had 26 finished pieces.

Sides-planed-to-size

The next day was building a template to guide the router with a ball race parallel cutter, to shape the end with a 6 degree slope and turning at a certain point to finish off flat. This shape matches the surface of the sills, and lines up at the back where the glass will sit.
The template was made of two pieces of hard cement boards, screwed onto a piece of wooden batten and then sliced in the chop saw with the 6 degree angle. This was then screwed together to a base board and that was screwed to a long double sided rail that holds the oak pieces. Then each piece was inserted into the template and the end routed to shape.

Start-with-square-end

run-router-along-jig

end-up-with-base-of-side-shaped

The last step in this day’s work was to cut all of them down to their required length of 1654mm long, carefully setting up more end blocks and supports, to make sure that all pieces were cut to exactly the same dimensions.
That was day two and we now have a pile of 26 proper length oak pieces, with the special shaped bottom ends.

The last day (Saturday), we had to do the other ends, which in some ways, were more complicated because it has four individual cuts to be made, two across the grain and the other two ripping down the grain. We took thirteen pieces and clamped them all together so we could run the track saw at the precise position, to cut across the grain. Then rip across the end to remove the resultant blocks. The “waste” blocks were quite large, 30mm thick by 34mm long and 46mm high.

Lastly, we put together another template jig, this time to guide the battery saws to cut off a thin slice and that finally made the “pillar” which will fit up into the header frame of the windows. This piece of removal was only 3mm thick by 66mm by 45mm.

Saw-Horizontally

and-vertically

Top-of-a-side-completed

All-sides-done

This concludes all the work on these vertical side pieces of the Window Framework. The next rainy day task is to plane more oak timber but this time, the two sides of the octagon “pillar” that sits in between the sill and the header, on each side of the window. It might be more than a week before we get back to the workshop as there is a hot weather front coming in from Europe next week so we will be getting on with the roof.

20 July 2019
Both Sides of Q and Three Quarters of P Covered in Slates

For the first three days of the this week of work, we were lucky with the weather but also unlucky as we suffered in the heat too! But we did manage to cover both sides of the “Q” Conservatory roof sections, but for only 200 slates for each side, it took us two days to get that done. Very short strips and awkward access getting up and over the gable end slowed thing down.

Q1-slated

For the third day, Wednesday, we doubled checked our earlier procedure of transferring the slate positions on the first half of the “P” roof and make sure it was still lined up with our markings. Yes it was! Amazingly enough! Grin!
We then proceeded with the second half of the “P” roof section, starting as usual at the guttering line and working up the valley, putting slates across the fibre-glass trough. We reached the top of the “Q” roof and .. the moment of truth .. the meeting of the two surfaces! and the slates met together with joyous congratulations of getting it “just right”!

That was the first hurdle pass and we continued up and headed towards the top of the “O” ridge line where it meets the corner of the Skylight. After careful analysis and fiddling with different shaped slates and flashing slates too, we managed to get that lots sorted out too! Hurray and a Big Phew!!

Q2-and-start-of-P2-slated

That was pretty much the end of the work on the roof for this week as the forecast for the next three days were wet, wet and wet!
But next week, apparently, is going to be a sizzling hot hot hot weather all week, with a hot air from Europe rushing in!! Double Phew!

17 July 2019
Nearly 2000 Slates Mounted + Some Work on Window Frames

We started this week with good dry weather in resuming the job of mounting Slates up on to the roof. We finished off the little bit left to do on the “N” roof section and then moved around to then complete the whole of the “O” section in the first couple of days.

N-O-Complete

One of the finishing task was to place and nail the flashing slates along both sides of the Hip and Ridge lines, remembering to do this job each time we got up a strip of slates as the opportunity had only a limited window to practically and safely do the nailing while leaning over across the slates.
We had one small moment of interruption with the forecast of the weather showing an afternoon of sharp summer thunderstorms so we diverted our efforts to the workshop and got on with the task of preparing the next batch of Oak Timber to make the vertical side framing pieces of our 13 windows. We pulled out 26 lengths of Oak timber and after careful analysis of the grain patterns, we swopped six of these planks for another set. The first job was to trim off one edge to make it straight using our track saw. Then after that, we set up our bench saw with the fence guide set at 105mm and proceeded to slice all 26 planks down to this width. Some of the cut-off pieces, the bigger ones, went back on the Oak rack storage for later use, and the smaller pieces went into the garden shed to be added to other left-over pieces, also to be use later on.

Window-sides-cut-to-size

But when the sun was out and the day was dry, we carried on working on the roof, mounting more Slates, now on the “P” section. This large area has one complex situation to be dealt with and that is the Conservatory roof (the “Q” section) poking out. The way slates (and for that matter, all other types of roofing tiles as well) are installed, one has to always start at the bottom of the cascading nature of these overlapping tiles. This means that we have to start at the bottom at the gutters, on both side of the conservatory and we must get the alignment of the slates the same so when the two sides come up and meet at the middle of the “Q” ridge line, they will marry together “Nice and Neat” and continue up to finish off at the skylight.
So we had to project a couple of vertical lines and then project out sideways over the ridge line and come back down again to the gutter on the other side. We hope this will work but we will double check when we get to work on the other side and compare the positioning of the slates etc.
By the end of the week, we got about half of the “P” roof covered, almost reaching the “Q” Ridge line, which is where we stopped.

P-Half-done

So for this week’s work, we put up about 1800 slates, about the content of one crate, and next week, we will then do the two sides of the “Q” roof and start on the second side of the “P” roof (after making sure we are aligned). We hope the weather will hold good again but if not, then we will work in the workshop on our windows again – No Rest for the Crew – smile!

13 July 2019
Whole of P and Q Roof Sections All Prepared, Flashing Layers Assembled and Ready to Slate!

With a lovely prospect of good weather ahead of us, we got on putting up the final rows, about 13 of them, of the tile battens to finish off preparing them for the slates. But before the slates could go on, there were plenty of other tasks to be performed. The next job was to nail up the flashing battens along the two hips and two ridges, using a string to guide us and keep us on the straight and narrow.
The other job we did was to put up the Skylight kerb flashing strip made of the aluminium metal sheets, with the rubber membrane to actually provide the diversion of the rain water.
After that, the metal mesh went on the gutters, fixed down as usual with the thin oak strips to clamp down the edge of the mesh and rubber membrane on the gutter.
Skipping over a 4 hour job in helping a friend out with a plumbing crisis, we continued in preparing the roof sections, this time in doing the special bull-nose upright flashing strips on the two hips and again the two ridges too. This was made up of the shaped wooden strips with the woven glass-fibre ribbon wrapped over the top of the bull nose, all sitting on the rubber membrane that will provide the protection against the rain water. We put on three coats of resin, the last layer being a grey flexible top-coat to finish it off nicely.

O-P1-roofs-ready-to-slate

Q-roof-ready-to-slate

This concludes the preparation work for these sections of the roof (the “N”, “O”, “P” and “Q”) and we can start slating .. .. but the last day of the week, the Saturday, was lost to rain but we worked inside in the workshop instead.

6 July 2019
Finished off the Oak Sills and Headers for the 13 Windows

On this rainy day, we worked in the workshop on our Oak timber pieces for our window frames.
We carried on with the task of shaping the Sills and the Headers with 45 degree angles at the ends and cut a small bevelled edge on all the visible front edges. Next we routed a drip channel on the bottom, near the front edge of each piece and then sanded all the marks and colourations away to produce two sets of smooth finished pieces, the bottom and top pieces for our windows.

Sills-complete

Headers-complete

Header-edge-details

The next job for the next rainy day, is to grab the pile of Oak timber planks, this time we will use the prime quality ones, to produce the vertical side frame pieces for the windows
And then build the complete window units.

6 July 2019