Roselea

Category: Phase 5

Building the internal framework of all the rooms, 1st floor joists and gallery.
This also includes building the sound proof Entertainment Room.
Plus also installation of insulation, OSB boards and construction framework for upstairs rooms too

  • Construction and Decoration of Cloakroom

    Now that we have finished installing the air ducting and water pipework that are travelling underneath the Cloakroom, we are now tackling the task of building up the inner surfaces of the walls inside the Cloakroom. One of the first jobs, is to put on horizontal utility rails on the door wall, so that we can have a small “control” panel beside the Vanity Unit and the entrance of the door, to provide knobs and buttons, to control the water coming out of the spout in terms of temperature and flow rate. Also, we would have a display to show the temperature when the water is flowing, and default back to showing the time otherwise. There would be a loudspeaker built in so we could have gentle music, or play gentle tones like the hourly chimes etc. finally, there would be a button to make the doors open!! We set this Utility Channel a little bit higher than our normal height, adding another 100mm. We wanted to keep clear of the Vanity Unit so that it is easier to keep the area clean and dry, and keep any water from splashing up to the Oak “control” panel.
    We also put another “control” panel over near where the toilet is situated. We created a niche in between two vertical legs, measuring 350mm wide. The niche is based on the same size and position as the Utility Channel, lifted up that extra 100mm higher. This niche will provide a place where we can put in controls for flushing the toilet, controlling the lighting levels etc. We drilled a hole in the bottom rail for a 20mm pipe, to go down inside the wall, underneath the floor and then back up inside the wall beside the doorway, to the other control box. Then we put in a short pipe connecting this control box to the Hall’s Utility Channel, so we can bring in data and power cables from the outside.
    The second control box also have a 20mm pipe put in the side and that travels down the wall and this time, goes across to the toilet and terminates inside the toilet internal framework. This will provide the means of adding extra features to the toilet, like having a heated seat, or perhaps have sensors to detect when the seat has been lifted up. A third hole was also drilled in the side of that control box, a smaller hole, to take a small 6mm plastic pipe, which also goes down the wall and across to the toilet as well, which will join with the existing bellows that causes the flush action to occur.

    We have measured exactly where these control boxes are, so when the wall boards have been installed, we can cut out the small segment of the wall, to to replace it with a piece of oak which will have the buttons and bits and pieces on them.

    We then turned to the task of installing the toilet framework and cistern into the body of the wall. We have gone for wall mounted toilets so it makes it much easier to keep the floor nice and clean, but also, hides away the cistern itself too. There will be just a small square access removable panel, so one could service the cistern, or even replace the filling mechanism etc. Everything is hidden inside the wall itself and will only show a small push button to flush the loo. We decided to take the opportunity to raise the toilet up higher than typical toilet bowls are, because it is sensible as we are all getting older. This metal framework provides a method of sliding up and down, to control the overall height of the ceramic bowl and we went for an additional 100mm higher, to make it come up to around 500mm off the floor, instead of the usual 400mm. Having done that, we then could measured the position of the large waste soil pipe and cut a piece to go horizontally from the stack, which then turns 90degrees upwards to join onto the elbow connecting pipe that comes from the ceramic bowl itself. Now, that we got this major pipework in place, we then could secure the framework into place using four coach hex-headed screws, two at the top and a further two at the bottom. That is it!

    Cloakroom WC Frame

    Cloakroom WC Frame


    We then connected the cold water 15mm pipe to the back of the unit, using a tank connector fitting to a copper pipe, which we soldered on a short piece of copper pipe and then bolted on a right angle bend which then had the plastic 15mm pipe inserted in and tightened down.
    Back of Cloakroom WC Frame 2

    Back of Cloakroom WC Frame 2


    We put in a couple of 20mm pipes, one of them coming from Bedroom One’s Utility Channel, to provide mains electricity if we ever needed that and the second pipe, coming across from the small control box already mentioned above.

    That concludes all the conduits and pipes going from here to there, including going under the floor as well, so we could get on with the next task. This is where we put in lots of glass wool pieces in that large space under the flooring, like we have been doing in all the other rooms, to insulate against the cold (or perhaps hot!) concrete slab.

    Cloakroom floor insulated

    Cloakroom floor insulated


    Then we glued and screwed the floorboard pieces that were already done (years ago!).
    Cloakroom floor down

    Cloakroom floor down

    This meant that we can now, and did, install the first layers of wall boards. The first layer is the usual 18mm OSB sheets and we worked our way around the room, doing each wall segment. Some of the pieces had pipes sticking through, like the 32mm waste pipe socket, waiting for the pipe to come from the basin, the bigger 68mm air ducting and the 15mm hot water pipe, to connect to the spout sitting on the Vanity unit. The tricky bit was the toilet wall, because it had two round holes to put in, plus also the “access” panel to the cistern, but also, a future rectangle access panel just above the ceramic bowl itself.

    At this point, we decided that we would install some additional lighting into the Cloakroom so we could see what we are doing better! We had various samples of LED lamps so we gathered three of them together and placed them on short pieces of 12mm thick plywood and hang them up inside the ceiling space so that they don’t intrude into the room itself as we will be moving around and fitting large pieces of our plasterboard sheets. We wired the lamps back out to the Hall and put on a pull-cord switch for a local control when we have turned on the Hall lighting.

    The next job was to trim the excess OSB material away from the door edges and also to cut out the Utility Channel that is beside the Vanity unit as well. At this point, we had a sudden thought that we had forgotten to make some provision for a future installation of more sensors and controls in and around the Vanity Unit itself, like detecting when the water is overflowing, or controlling the water by tapping the spout. So we needed an additional 20mm conduit installed, coming from inside the proposed Vanity Unit cabinet and going up to the Utility Channel we had just cut out. But, in order to do this, we had to sliced away a small portion of our new wall, to expose the hollow wall and the lower part of the utility channel framework itself. There, we drilled a 22mm down through the CLS timber for a conduit to fit through. We then took two pieces of our 20mm wide rigid plastic tubing and heated them to bend them 90degree right angles in them. Them using a small piece of 25mm wide water pipe, we could join the two halves together to form a single continuous conduit, going through the aforementioned hole. We finally, drilled a 20mm hole through the OSB cut-away piece, and then glued this piece back into the wall again. We will sand it all down once the glue has set rock hard and it will all disappear when we cover the walls with our plasterboard material anyway!

    Next, we sanded all the wall surfaces, to remove any splinters and roughen up the surface, ready for the glue. We also gently washed the walls down with a damp cloth as well, to remove the dust.
    Now, we can proceed to put on the Fermacell boards (our high performance plasterboards), and started on the back wall where the toilet will be hanging. We measured the locations of the various holes, including the “letter-box” future expansion, we drew a thick black line around the edge of the rectangular hole, wrote the exact measurements on the wall itself and then took several photos for future records ..

    Cloakroom WC Slot dimensions

    Cloakroom WC Slot dimensions


    .. and we continued to measure the other holes etc. The width of the wall in total was 1100mm so we collected up a sheet off our pile and took it to the Great Room where we had our working table set up. We marked out the newly measured locations of the four round holes (one large one, one medium one and two much smaller ones for the bolts) and the large rectangular hole for the “pretty” plate that has the flush buttons on it. These got drilled and sawn, as well as the whole sheet was sliced narrower to that 1100mm width. We test fitted the board back in the Cloakroom and we only needed to rasp some of the edges a little bit, to make them fit smoothly. Once we were happy, We dampened down the back side of the fermacell sheet, and sprayed PU foam glue all over the wall, put extra construction PU glue around the toilet holes and pressed the sheet into place. We then stapled it all over and screwed a half dozen of short screws in and around the various holes, to make sure that the fermacell is well and truly squashed flat against the OSB board, so that when the ceramic toilet bowl itself is bolted into place, it won’t crush, wobble or damage the fermacell material.

    We proceeded to cover up the other five surfaces in the room, including doing the surrounds around the door entrance way itself.

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (1)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (1)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (2)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (2)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (3)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (3)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (4)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (4)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (5)

    Cloakroom Fermacell Up (5)


    Before we could get on with doing the next step with the skirting boards, we needed to trim all the corners, plus also slice a small radius on the outside corners (the two vertical edges and one horizontal edges of the doorway, and also the corner of the linen cupboard). We had to open both of our doors to let out the cloud of fine gypsum plaster dust to slowly drift out of the house!!

    The next job was to put on the skirting board, but not a traditional wooden kind, but, made up using more fermacell material, cut to produce a heap of 100mm wide strips. We recycled many of old left-over pieces we had lying around on our sheet rack and from doing the current covering of the Cloakroom’s walls. But before gluing and stapling them on to the bottom of the walls, we passed them through our table router which had the giant quarter turn of a circle router bit and adjusted so that it sliced off a glancing chunk of the fermacell, to make a smooth and slightly elongated curve at the top of the skirting board pieces.
    We went around the whole room, which adds up to about 6metres in total, gluing and stapling each piece in place. The only section that needed special treatment was the section underneath the Vanity Unit, because it is where the fresh air comes out into the room. So we make a special piece where we curved up and over the “hole” and then filled in on either side with smaller lengths of the skirting boards.

    We then sanded the three outside corners, to make a gentle bend around from one line of skirting to the next line. All these skirting boards will be ultimately covered up with the glass fibre resin combination, going right across the floor and making a waterproof sealed surface.

    Next, we filled in all the staple holes, rubbed down the occasional joins, and filled in the five inside corners and smoothed down by using a 32mm diameter pipe, to produce a gentle rounded contour. We did the same with the floor to skirting board edges but this time used a 50mm diameter pipe so the fibre glass and resin covering will smoothly curved around up the edges, to make it nice and easy to wash the floor. We went around putting a little bit more on the vertical contoured corners, to help fill in small gaps etc. and then rubbed down using a piece of sandpaper stuck to a short length of the 32mm wide pipe so that we could end up all nice and smooth.

    We also have been testing various combinations of fibre glass and resin on test samples of the chipboard flooring material, to see how well it sticks down etc. We also painted fermacell pieces too. Then, we coated some of them with the finishing “top-coat” to see how slippery it could be to walk on. The test revealed that it is very well stuck down and the white top-coat is not that slippery when it is dry.

    So with that in mind, we proceeded to prepare the fibre glass matting for the floor, tearing pieces off the roll, to put down three layers in total all over, with one layer going up the skirting boards around the edges. We needed to achieve this task of painting the resin into the glass fibre, in such a way, that we can reach over to apply the resin without stepping on to any “wet” parts. This meant that the pieces of matting had to be arranged so that each portion of the Cloakroom was completed fully, before moving along to the next section. We decided to do the area under the toilet first, then do the vanity basin section next, and then the middle section and finally the doorway area to finish off. These jigsaw pieces were bundled up and put into a line, ready for the actual application of the polyester resin. The doorway had an strip of 12mm plywood covered up in parcel tape, to make it non-stick and screwed down so the edge of the fibre glass can be terminated neatly to approximately where the sliding door will hang. This 12mm thick plywood strip is a guide to control how much glass fibre we should put down and we are aiming for a gentle slope going up when exiting the room. This will provide a double useful feature; one for keeping in any water spills and secondly, to make the transition from the hard, and much thinner floor covering, to the much thicker carpet and underlay that will be put down in the Hall. So, we had a pile of torn off pieces of the fibre glass matting, getting narrower and narrower, as we get closer and closer to the “barrier” defined by the 12mm plywood strip. This task took several hours to get right!
    So after lunch, we got on with the job of mixing up the resin, we put in red colouring dye, to give it some interesting shade of colour and mixing batches, one for each section. We had five mixing pots so we started with 1.2kg of resin, put in 12ml of hardener and got on with the three matting pieces next to the toilet wall. We discovered that we needed to mix a further 500grams to finish off this section. Them, we proceeded with a 1.6kg of resin, to do the section under the Vanity unit and then moving across to the middle section with another 1.6kg of mixture. The last section of the floor had a 1.5kg of resin and then finally, an additional 600grams to build up the slope in the doorway. This took about three hours to complete this task, making sure that all the layers were pressed down, using the metal ribbed roller, to get rid of air bubbles and make sure the resin is well mixed with the glass fibre. All the skirting boards had plenty of resin brushed on them as well, as we were doing each area.

    Cloakroom Floor main fibreglassing done (1)

    Cloakroom Floor main fibreglassing done (1)

    Cloakroom Floor main fibreglassing done (2)

    Cloakroom Floor main fibreglassing done (2)



    We did come along and lay down another heap of glass fibre strips across the doorway, to build up the gentle slope, to raise up the surface so that it meets the carpet and underlay out in the Hall.
    Cloakroom Raising the threshold

    Cloakroom Raising the threshold

    This is the basic floor covering, which we will double check for bumps, sand the surface to make it smooth and then apply a finishing coats, perhaps two coats, to provide the waterproofing seal to the whole room and 100mm up the walls. This final “top-coat” will be done later on when we have finished routing various conduits going over the Cloakroom before we install the ceiling fermacell boards and complete the whole room, including painting it and the walls with our colour scheme. Once that is all done, we then will do the final coat of resin on our floor!!

    So talking about conduits, we did that task of putting any conduits up inside the ceiling space, see Installation of a Variety of Conduits from Tech Cupboard for details.

    Next, we installed some lighting conduits up inside the ceiling, short 40mm flexible conduits that goes from one lamp position to the next one, and then another short length to connect to the outside world in the Hall, to join up with the controller board out there.

    The final job to do up there, is to build an air ventilation module that will allow a circular “pretty” vent to be installed in the middle of the ceiling and then a 100mm diameter flexible pipe to come out the side of this module and goes through several joists, heading towards the main ventilation ducting that runs right around the whole house, up on the First Floor, inside the triangular void space. We constructed the module using pieces of left-over floorboards and glued and screwed it together to form a box. We then slid inside a piece of flexible plastic sheet, it is only 2mm thick and we cut it down so it fitted inside the box, but push it into a curve to help guide the air flow more gently around the bends. We also put in two little side wings as well, to guide the air towards the output pipe connector, which is actually a sweep right angle bend, with a socket sticking in the correct direction, to take our purple flexible pipe that will go through the joist as mentioned above.

    Cloakroom Air collector

    Cloakroom Air collector


    The last piece to put in is a small bracing wooden bar across the box so that the “pretty” air vent cover can be fixed up against the ceiling surface later on after everything have been painted.

    Now that we got our air vent module built, we push it up into the correct location, approximately centred in the middle of the room and marked off where the air socket is facing the webbing of the joist. After taking it out again, we proceeded to saw a series of 114mm diameter holes through five consecutive joist. We wanted the flexible purple conduit to poke up just before our main Air Duct which runs around inside our triangular void space upstairs. We drilled two overlapping large holes through the floorboard so it produces an elongated “oval” hole for the purple pipe to slide through at an angle and reasonably pointing towards the future Air Duct.

    Cloakroom Air collection in place

    Cloakroom Air collection in place

    Cloakroom air goes through joist and upstairs

    Cloakroom air goes through joist and upstairs



    We slid back the air vent module and screwed it in so it is all flushed with the bottoms of the joist and then pushed the purple pipe into the side socket and sealed it up with aluminium tape.

    That concludes all the conduits and pipes that lives up in the ceiling space, so we could start the process of installing the fermacell sheets up there to cover up the joists .. at last! But, one of the first tasks to do, is to glue a strip of “2 by 1” batten around the edge of the walls so that we had a something to enable us to screw up the ceiling boards. Sometimes, the walls are positioned in between joists and there is nothing up there to secure the edge of the fermacell.
    Next, is cutting smaller pieces of the fermacell material to build up the jigsaw pieces to slide horizontally into each section. It was quite an effort to work out the precise order. We took advantage of the joists running across the room, to act as a wide battens to allow us to butt together the two edges of the fermacell and have it nice and tight and flat, without having to do any major sanding. We got it organised so that we had only one tongue and groove joint to do, connecting the piece above the Vanity Unit and the two pieces over the door entrance. We ended up with four pieces.

    The next task is to drill various holes for the three lamps and a giant hole for the air vent. We didn’t want to have to cut these holes upside-down so we did it while we had the pieces loose.

    Now, it is time to glue and screw them up! We used our construction PU glue because it has a much longer working time, to allow us to slide the pieces around, to get them joined together and hooked into place, before we screwed any of the four pieces. We even pre-started the screws while each piece was lying on the floor so we didn’t have to used two hands to hold up a screw and drive it in. It helped enormously, so much so, that we are considering buying another piece of equipment to automatically drive screws in, by just using one hand – the screws are held in a long strip which automatically feeds into the screw driver!!

    We put up the piece over the Vanity Unit first, then the Toilet piece next, then the middle piece and finally the fourth piece over the door entrance way. We put plenty of glue on all the joists and battens, plus also the fermacell joints as well.

    Next, we went around filling in the edges at the top of the walls, to form a gentle contour between the wall and the ceiling, at the same time, filling in the little gap that we had at the top as well. We used a 32mm diameter plastic pipe to shape the tile adhesive mixture, because we got loads of it, but also, it is very easy to rub it smooth afterwards.

    We also put up our white concentric ventilation cover, in the new large hole, screwing it into place, plus also, we put in three flush fitting LED lamps too.

    The next job is to rub down all these fillings and apply additional treatment to areas that didn’t quite “do the job” first time around. While these are drying, we carried on making the heat exchanger module for our Hot Tank.

    Now reaching this point in our Cloakroom, we proceeded to spray the walls and ceiling, with the first coat of white emulsion paint. Our very useful sprayer machine is a powerful machine and did a quick work of covering all the walls and ceiling. We took down the air ventilation grill and put little plastic bags over the three LED lamps and sealed them up. They still glow brightly so they are still helping us!
    After the first coat, we went around and gently rubbed all the surfaces and discovered several missing holes which didn’t get filled in. We also spotted some of the joints between fermacell pieces that also needed more attentive work done to them too.

    Cloakroom first coat of paint (1)

    Cloakroom first coat of paint (1)

    Cloakroom first coat of paint (2)

    Cloakroom first coat of paint (2)

    Cloakroom first coat of paint (3)

    Cloakroom first coat of paint (3)


    The second coat is now on and we are nearly there. The surfaces is much smoother now, but, we still spotted unfilled holes !! So, we carried on and filled in those little holes and rubbed the surfaces down again smooth.

    It is now ready for the final coat of paint and doing the wallpapering. Our next job is to clean and oil the exterior cladding and oak frames.

  • Floor Framework for Ensuite One and Two Constructed

    While working on the Cloakroom and installing various utilities under the floor, we realised that the two Ensuites behind the Cloakroom needed to have their wooden floor framework built so that we could route the various pipes and air ducts across and use legs to tie them down.
    So, starting with Ensuite One, we got out our laser level line generator and got the laser line aligned to the doorway plank of CLS timber that is already there with then allowed us to see the projected line on the back wall. We marked the wall posts 20mm further down and this will introduce a very slight slope downhill from the entrance way, ensuring any water to flow away from the bedroom and towards the drain. We then cut a piece of treated timber to do the two side rails, measuring 1724mm and 1690mm (one of them had a gap to fit in). They were glued and nailed with 90mm nails on all the wall posts they covered. And then the back wall got it horizontal rail, measuring 2070mm and that got also glued and nailed too. We decided to divide the room up so that there are three further horizontal pieces to complete the floor framework. They measured 1650mm each (plus or minus a few millimetres!) and we then put three legs underneath each one. We rotated the joist so it flat and taking up less room, to maximise our plumbing pipes, especially the waste pipe coming from the shower area, so that we can have a slight drop in the pipe to encourage the waste water to flow away but still have plenty of height to allow us to connect this waste water to our heat recovery module.
    So, each of these horizontal rails had three legs so we needed to cut nine pieces of the green treated timber and dipped the ends in more preservative solution and then trimmed them just so that they fitted underneath the rails and give a solid support for the framework.
    Floor supports in Ensuite 1 (1)

    Floor supports in Ensuite 1 (1)

    Floor supports in Ensuite 1 (2)

    Floor supports in Ensuite 1 (2)


    Then, we tackled Ensuite Two and did the same there too. There was a couple of differences, one being that because this room is right in the corner of the building, it had two outside walls, with the vapour barrier membrane plastic sheeting covering up the walls. This meant that there wasn’t any room for having niches and a control box for the shower itself. Therefore, we went out to buy five planks of 89mm wide by 38mm and 2.4metres long pieces, and drilled five clearance holes using our drill press, to make sure that the holes are going in nice and straight and not veer off at an angle. We are screwing these planks through their wide direction so we needed 150mm long screws, hence why we wanted to make sure that we were straight. We screwed these planks 250mm above the concrete floor slab, to allow the horizontal floor joist to be safely glued and screwed without being too near the ends of the timber. The other difference, is that the middle cross rail had to be set at an angle. We did this so we could avoid putting a leg almost in the middle of the accessible region underneath the doorway in Bedroom Two. We needed to maximise this gap so we could fit our heat recovery module in, which could be quite large. So we shifted the end towards the hot water pipe that are encapsulated in PU foam and get the leg quite close. We ended up cutting the end with a 5degree angle and then putting the usual three legs underneath.
    Ensuite 2 Wall depth exspansion

    Ensuite 2 Wall depth exspansion

    Ensuite 2 floor framing (1)

    Ensuite 2 floor framing (1)

    Ensuite 2 floor framing (2)

    Ensuite 2 floor framing (2)


    That concludes this little job on the side, to enable us to get the Cloakroom finished.

  • Started Constructing Walls for the Rooms Upstairs

    These last two weeks have seen us start work on building the initial framework for the walls for the rooms upstairs. We would like to lay down a “floor-plan” of all our rooms.
    But first, we had to move our large pile of our 63mm CLS timber planks! We wanted to gain access to all the space where our “stub” wall will go around the edge of each room, the wall being four feet tall when it meets the sloping ceiling. So we had to move approximately 250 planks of timber, plus also 25 planks of “green” preservative treated timber as well. The green planks will be used for our wet rooms downstairs, where there is lots of water splashing about.
    Anyway, it took a couple of hours to move the timber!
    Then, we built a template that emulates a fully constructed “four-foot” wall, so that we can glue and screw up a whole sheet of a OSB board in one go, without having to slice it at all. This template is only four inches wide so we can slide it along on the floor, until it “bumps” into the sloping roof. We then would mark the floor with a green spirit pen and move along a couple of metres and do it again. The green colour was used because we had already other black marks on the floor from our previous attempts of laying out a rough plan of our rooms upstairs!

    We started near the Gallery and marked out the two “four-foot” walls, one between the Gable wall and the stair case hole, and the other one, on the other side of the room, from the gable to the toilet, which is situated opposite the stairs.

    Next, is framing around the stairs hole, positioning a footplate, made using our 63mm CLS timber. This footplate is lined up with the wall frame that is coming up from downstairs so that the wall surface will continue smoothly all the way up to the roof. We glued and screwed this CLS plank down, going all the way along the edge until it reached the steel leg holding up the Skylight. We then sanded the steel leg, using an angle grinder with a sanding pad installed, and polished the steel, removing all the paint and little bit of rust. We then glued a vertical plank of CLS timber on to the steel leg, using PU construction glue and clamping it into place for 24 hours.
    Next, we carefully took another length of our CLS timber and glued it upwards to the 11mm OSB boards that coats the underside of the roof. This plank forms the top-plate for our wall. we then cut a series of posts, getting taller and taller, with an angled 32degree cut on top of each one, and nailed them every 600mm (2feet) along this section.
    This forms the Hall side of the wall, for the stairs, and will continue across the upstairs, under the Skylight, to meet with the toilet wall.

    There is a steel plate that is glued to the floorboard that ties the two steel legs together, all part of the structural framework for securing the whole Skylight against twisting and sheer forces coming from the winds outside. This means that we needed to glue a horizontal piece of timber on top of this steel plate so we undid the original screws, but first, having used the heads to bash “dents” in our CLS timber so we knew where to drill the clearance holes through the wood. We have been using our green laser line generator which is fully automatic, finding a dead vertical line and projecting a horizontal green line as well. We wanted to extend the stair wall so that it keeps the smooth flat surface going across as well. So, we positioned our CLS piece and bashed those screw heads after we had lined it up against the green laser line. Very very useful tool to have, the laser line generator!!
    We sanded the metal plate like we did before, then glued the wood down and put in slightly fatter and longer screws so it would grip the steel instead of the wooden floorboards underneath, to tighten the new bottom-plate down tight to the steel and the glue.
    Then, we glued another vertical piece of CLS timber on the other side of the steel leg, to finish off that leg beside the staircase.

    While the glue was drying and curing, we continued marking where the “four-foot” wall is located around the rest of the rooms, doing the Study room that is over the Entertainment room and Front Door, around the large Office come Work Room to the right side of the house and then positioned our green laser line to go back across the other two steel legs, to finish the fourth side of this Work Room. The next line to mark down is between the back two steel legs that will have wall to front the Shower room and Toilet, plus entrance way into our Storage area at the back of the house.

    Now we started gluing and screwing down one layer of CLS planks, to follow these new green marks around the floor. We did the three sides of the Studio come Sitting room (which is also our spare Guest Bedrooms, next to the Gallery), to form a space measuring about 6.2metres across (20feet) and about 4.8metres deep (16feet). This is the space between the “four-foot” walls so that is not walking around head clearance, the actual 6foot clearance space is about 4metres (12feet) across, maybe a bit more.
    Then we laid down shorter pieces of CLS timber to form the Toilet, which measures 1280mm (4feet) across by 1800mm (6feet) deep. We put in a double layered wall for sound proofing purposes, and also, to allow a vacuum pipe to come up from below so we can plug in our brush and tube to our central vacuum system, for hoovering the upstairs rooms. The waste sewage pipe is also fully hidden inside the right side wall, plus also it will hold the steel framework that will support a wall mounted toilet bowl. The basin will be located at the back of the room under the sloping ceiling.
    The Shower Room came next so first, we glued and screwed down two lines of CLS planks going across and pass the two steel legs, heading towards the front of the building. This wall is the entrance way into the Office come Work room. Now that we got this line of wall done, we can work backwards towards the Toilet and put down the second wall on the other side of the Shower room. This room measures 1100metres (3½ feet)wide and 1800mm (6feet) deep again.
    Now we laid down a line of CLS around the circumference of the Office Work room, joining back to the piece going across the steel legs. This wall is also double layered so that the steel legs are hidden away so we don’t have unsightly “boxing” sticking out in our rooms. Nice and Neat!
    Finally, the Study room, which is a L shape room, had its line of foot-plates put in as well, joining up to the side of the Office Work room, including a short double skimmed wall as well for more sound proofing. The last line is the one going along the edge of the Stairs and out into the middle of the Skylight. We had to put in a “kink” when we reached the last section going underneath the Skylight, because the wall needs to align to the metal tie bar and the glazing rafter so that the wall surface itself can go up and neatly meet the wooden beam that is supporting the double glazing glass units. So the daylight is divided into the Hall and the Stairs, and for the Study room.
    This “kink” will have a gentle 45degree angle put on it, rather than a sharp right angle turn to the wall surface.

    We then put on two of the three horizontal utility rails, one for the Air Channel, including putting on the MDF 6mm pieces. Then, we put on the lower half of the Utility Channel and that is where we got to. We didn’t have any fermacell sheets sliced up into narrow 175mm wide strips. So, we are going to do that later.

    First floor foot plates

    First floor foot plates

    That concludes this little section of work, to basically define all our shapes of all our rooms upstairs. We can now do something else, for a change. And, we have decided to go and build our cold water header tank, that sits behind the Shower room. We want to get on with implementing a lot of our utility services like water and air ventilation, so we can actually start having the chance of having real running water in the Kitchen or Toilet etc. yippeee!

  • Constructed Finishing Surfaces for the Walls in Great Room

    We spent the last one-and-a-half weeks doing the work of building up the double layers of finishing surfaces for all the walls. Now that the floor is done, we can construct the various layers of the wall surfaces. We tackled doing the first base layer of 18mm OSB boards for this stage of the work in the Great Room.But, we need to make sure that we have put in the required conduits from the Utility Channels, going up to the lighting channel running around the top of the walls, going to the upstairs Gallery and so on. This included checking the hearing loop wiring that we had already fixed up above the doors and windows. It is a standard network cable, made up of four super-twisted pairs of thin wires and we wanted to make sure that a loop amplifier could generate a good strong signal, using this choice of cable. Normally, a induction loop that is fitted to a room is usually a single solid copper core wire but instead of having to buy this wire, we had loads of CAT5 network cable so we used that instead, plus also, this allowed us to experiment because, an electro-magnetic field is generated by two main variables, one is being the amount of current you can shove down the wire, or, increase the number of turns you have in the complete loop, or both, to strengthen the power of the magnetic field, hence making it louder for hearing aids users. So, we pulled out our existing hearing loop amplifier we had in one of our temporary bedrooms, and connected it up to our new network cable in the Great Room. Just by connecting the four twisted pairs together, so that it formed a single “wire”, worked just a treat. We even quickly tested the next configuration by joining up two twisted pairs together and then got it to go around the room twice before the signal ends back to the amplifier. That works nicely and it possibly sounded louder too. At this point, we accepted that the wiring was working just fine and we could continue with building up the wall surfaces, and bury and hide this network cable inside the wall. We won’t be able to replace it etc. It was a compromise between installing 35metres of black plastic 20mm conduits like we have done for the other rooms, or install the wire directly inside the wall and have the two ends dangling in our control box.

    But first we nailed up a complete loop of 63mm CLS timber pieces near ground level that we deliberately left for construction later on, to make it easier to lay down the floorboards. The rail sits the top of the Air Channel which is 150mm high.

    The next task, we noticed that our existing sixteen air distributors needed to be more secured so we went around anchoring them into place so they did not protrude beyond the CLS rails, avoiding being squashed when we put up the OSB boards, or fall backward into the wall cavity. We used little stainless steel screws to lock each plastic unit into place.

    The next job is to put in the Air Channel backing strips, to guide the air around the room and float gently outwards. We use our stock of 6mm MDF strips to go around the entire room but we discovered that we were short so we went out to buy another sheet of MDF material and sliced it up into more 150mm wide strips.

    We sealed both the MDF strips along the top and bottom edges and also the Air Distributors themselves so all the air will get sent out into and along the Air Channels and into our Great Room.

    Great room air outlets

    Great room air outlets

    We also painted the lower 50mm black so no one will be able to sneak a look along the carpets and perhaps notice something pale lurking inside the wall!

    We put up the top rail precisely so that our lighting channel is one aluminium strip gap under the slope of each roof. We had to do four sections of the roof, the “A” section which has a 32degree angle slope, then coming around the corner, is the “P” roof which is a 40degree angle inclination, which reaches the “O” section that is even steeper at 45degrees and finally, a short “N” section which is back to a 40degrees angle. We wanted to be able to slide in our lighting modules which will be housed in an aluminium extruded U-channel shape. It is quite thick walls so it can spread the heat from all the individual LEDs but these long units needs to be able to slide in and out for servicing, hence why we needed to make sure that the top CLS horizontal rail are positioned so that the metal U channel will slide in and rest on this CLS timber, after we have put on the wall boards.

    We then went around putting in a layer of glass wool horizontally, between the wooden rails so it fills the gap that would exist behind the OSB board and reduce the hollow sounds of wooden walls. This glass wool is supposed to be 100mm thick, but it is never is. We believe that the manufacturers are not careful enough when they squash the output of their factory productions into those rolls, ready to be transported. The gap that we are filling is only 38mm deep and so we staple up these so-called 100mm thick wool strips and they swell out only about 30mm or 40mm beyond the horizontal rails. This is sufficient for our purposes and the wall boards will squash this wool down and provide some degree of sound adsorbing filler, to make the overall resonance sound of the wall more solid.

    We then measured the two “control” boxes, one is the electrical junction box for all the cabling coming into the Great Room, as well as having a computer sitting there, looking after the various components that lives in this room, like lighting, sockets and speakers etc. The second cavity is over the doorway and that space will have the sliding door mechanisms and controls. Both of these boxes needs to have access panels and we will cut and remove the OSB sheet material later on after we have glued and screwed all the OSB boards up on the walls. Hence why we needed to measure the exact location and size of each box and its access hatch.

    Great room Control panel location

    Great room Control panel location

    Great room Door panel location 1

    Great room Door panel location 1

    Great room Door panel location 2

    Great room Door panel location 2


    One of the task we had to do before we got into putting up wall boards, was to re calibrate our two router machines that has tongue and groove cutters in them. We wanted to move the cutters further out of the machines so that they could cut thicker materials we may need to do in the future. But we needed to make sure that we set them exactly the same position so that the tongues and grooves came out in the same place as before as the walls coming down from the Gallery and the gable wall coming around each side of the Gallery, has already a groove cut into the bottom edge of the boards, ready to receive the new sheet materials later on. So, we readjusted the two routers so the cutters are now sticking out by 25mm, each tongue (and groove) are 8mm across at the widest point so in 25mm, there will be three tongues (or grooves). We have two machines because we discovered that these sheet materials, especially the OSB boards, are very slightly varying in overall thickness so you cannot just simply flip the board over and run the cutter on the other edges because that produces a very slight misalignment and does not bring the two surfaces to a smooth finish. So, years ago, we invested in two machines, one to do the tongues and the other one to do the grooves, without having to flip the board over at all. It produces a very very good joint that is very smooth indeed, and incidentally, makes a very strong joint as well, especially using PU glue too!

    Here, at this point, we started putting up the first layer of wall boards, using 18mm thick OSB sheets. We started on the wall that divides the Great Room from the rest of the house and the two nearest rooms, namely the Kitchen and Bedroom One. It goes under the Gallery, but we needed to connect to the existing wall that is already fixed to the upper half of the Gallery. It was a bit fiddly but we made it, on both side of the Gallery and concluding in the far corner where we got our 4foot wide window. Next, we tackled the two short ends, also cutting the top edge of the OSB board with the appropriate angle, to match the slope of the ceiling as mentioned earlier about the aluminium lighting modules.

    All our walls that goes up to the sloping ceiling are extra tall, measuring 2780mm or a bit over 9feet tall. That is just the wooden material itself, there is another 40mm gap at the bottom, and approximately 60mm gap at the top which makes the total height from floor to ceiling of 2880mm, or 9feet and 5inches!!
    And to just finish this little point, the middle of the room stretches up, and up, and up to our mobile lighting unit, hanging at the apex of the vaulted ceiling, is very nearly 4800mm tall. We know this because we could almost get a standard length of CLS timber to stand upright in the middle! That is nearly 16feet!!

    Anyway, we continued putting up the wall boards, having completed the two short ends, the “O” and “A” sections, and then we tackled the last long section that goes pass the Patio and Conservatory. We started at the doorway for the Conservatory and then worked back towards the “O” completed wall. It is much easier to put in the last piece of OSB board, cut down to exactly the correct size (and sometimes angle) and slide it into place by using the completed wall surface to slide along and force the joint nice and tight.

    The other thing we needed to do special along this section, is the Dormer where we got our exposed rafters and gable triangle section of wall that defines the start of the Conservatory. We are wanting to mount our lighting modules, the same aluminium U channels, to slide in but this time, to sit vertically so the light output will shine upwards into the Dormer section. This meant that the top edge of the OSB board is shaped differently and also it is slightly lower as well. The aluminium channel will sit on this cut edge, providing a small gap underneath, approximately 15mm, to allow for our electrical cables to run pass and continue the circuits. We tested this arrangement by screwing up a small piece of OSB in various positions and holding up a piece of our fermacell plasterboard and tried to slide in the aluminium channel. We discovered that the vertical layers of fermacell plasterboard that we had fixed up a couple of weeks ago, and painted white, was very slightly causing the metal U channel to jam. So, we scraped the bottom edge of this vertical fermacell material, to increase the gap, and angle, to allow the metal channel to slide in. We used our trusty little surform “razor” tools to go along the entire length of this Dormer section. We have exposed the grey interior of the plasterboard again so we will have to paint that little bit again!

    Great Room OSB Finished

    Great Room OSB Finished

    Great Room OSB Finished 2

    Great Room OSB Finished 2

    Great Room OSB Finished 3

    Great Room OSB Finished 3


    This pretty much finishes the first stage of constructing the wall surface, the basic “rough” structural walls and they are now ready for the next stage, when we are ready, of putting up the fermacell plasterboard, shaping them nice and neat and painting them to the required colours, whatever that may be!!
    But, for now, we are going to have a change of scenery and go back upstairs to carry on getting the First Floor rooms mapped out and some of the wall’s framework built so we can build things like the water header tanks and ventilation ducting etc. We wanted a change! But, We promised ourselves that we will get back to the Great Room and finish it off during the Summer and present a completed “show room!”

  • The Floor Is Completely Filled and Reassembled Permanently

    We spent the last two weeks in getting the flooring in our Great Room permanently fixed down at long last. We had originally laid the floorboards down a couple of years ago, but we weren’t ready to glue and fixed them down, because we needed to get the insulation put into the roof rafters and any rubbish pieces left-over, needed to be shredded and ready to put under the floorboards in the Great Room. The shredded pieces was used to insulate the room against the cold concrete foundation, but also to insulate against the heat that will be rising off the buried Energy Module we had under the concrete slab. It could reach 90°C and we didn’t want that kind of heat to flow into our Great Room, so we knew that we could put all the final rubbish and trimmings, under the floorboards and also protect ourselves from the very hot Energy Module.
    The first thing to do was to empty the entire room of all the items we had stored in various corners and move everything into our Kitchen, so we could lift the floorboards up.

    We started at the right hand end of the room, standing at the hallway door but it was locked into place by the tongue and groove system. Therefore, we had to move all the floorboard pieces towards the left end, by about twelve inches and keep each row of boards unconnected so we could move each row more easily. Another thing we did during this process, was to label all the individual piece with a row “letter” and “number” for each piece as the whole floor have been measured and laid down to fit the two doorways etc. We didn’t want to mix any up and run into trouble later on. So we pulled up three complete rows at the beginning, under the “O” window, looking out to our swimming lane at the back, and started filling in the huge pile of insulation boards pieces we had prepared from our time of doing the roof rafters last year. They are stored upstairs so we started chucking them off our Gallery, bit by bit!
    We also had six “ton” bags of random odd sizes and pieces of PU foam rubbish as well and we dragged each one down the stairs and along the hallways to the Great Room.
    And not forgetting a room full of “fluffy” stuff we had previously generated, being stored in our Entertainment Room downstairs!


    It is a slow job of laying down sheets of the insulation boards, skipping around air ducting, conduits, water pipes and so on. Building up the layers until we reach underneath the cross rails that is 63mm from the top. That is about 320mm to 330mm of cavity to fill up, depending on how thick the original concrete slab was. We first tried to fill the remaining space with fluffy fragments but we discovered that it is so light and “fluffy” (Of Course!!), that it would not keep still. We wanted to glue the floorboards down tight on the wooden framework and this fluffy stuff kept going everywhere!!

    Starting to fill Greatroom floor

    Starting to fill Greatroom floor

    So, we switched over to Plan B, and laid down 100mm layer of glass wool over the fluffy stuff. This helped greatly to contain the fluffy stuff and made it much easier to vacuum the rails clean and get the glue down without any problems.

    We used our spray gun foam to squirt a line of PU Glue Grade foam and then lay a floorboard on top. Next, we put in a collection of 50mm screws in each cross rail, to make sure that the 22mm thick chipboard boards will squash tight down onto the glue etc. For our first row, it started off at the left hand end, with a small piece, to bridge over the smaller spacing off the framework enough and the next board goes into the tongue and groove joint, getting knocked sideways to make sure the joint is nice and tight. This joint is also glued with more of our PU foam and this board is screwed down too. The final piece, is another larger piece, to finish the row. Each row always has three pieces but the first and last piece changes in size by approximately 600mm, to make sure that all rows do not have any joints aligning up consecutively, to improve the structure and strength of our floorboard generally.
    We then carry on doing each row in turn, making sure that we knock each row tight into the previous row, by using a small piece of the same chipboard material that has a groove on it, plus a piece of CLS timber glued on to the back edge so we can thump it hard using a club hammer, to provide a reinforced tool, that slots into the tongue on the board and that will not damage it, while we are knocking each piece into place.

    First row down

    First row down


    One of the jobs we had to do while the floorboards were up, was to seal the ventilation ducting to our wall distributor modules. The orange flexible 50mm conduit comes from a four way splitter and each duct goes off to various locations around the wall. Each end needed sealing up with aluminium sticky tape.
    We got to the spiral staircase position, row number “G” and “H” and one of the thing to do was to reinforce the flooring, to make sure that this zone is strong enough to support the entire stair case, in one single small spot. We are going to have a pillar going up the middle of the spiral stairs and it measures 200mm across, which will be the main load bearing element. So, we built up the framework structure, putting in a zone of 400mm by 600mm of solid layer of CLS timber pieces, all glued together into a single block. This is then supported underneath by a couple of sturdy cross pieces using a wider 89mm CLS pieces and then finally, underneath those two pieces, we put in four legs down to the concrete floor slab, two legs under each cross piece. Everything glued and clamped together.
    The final top surface was planed smooth, to remove excess glue and excess timber and made it level across neighbouring floor joists.
    Reinforcing floor for spiral staircase

    Reinforcing floor for spiral staircase

    Staircase Reinforcement smoothed

    Staircase Reinforcement smoothed



    We built this reinforced spot near a couple of existing legs so we have six legs in total in the immediate zone but there are a further two legs only 300mm away and also the floorboard itself will help spread the load right across all the framework and in turn, down to the concrete slab.One of the things we tried to do, is to run our shredding machine and get the output to go straight down into the cavity space under the floorboards but it proved rather awkward to generate a constant flow of shredded bits coming out of the machine. The machine itself couldn’t shred the foam and let the pieces fall naturally downwards underneath the machine, it was “fluffing” up all over the place! So, we tried to combined the large vacuum machine we had used before, but instead of filling up domestic bin liners of foam bits, we tried to connect a plastic conduit to the bottom of the plastic bin liner so that the shredded bits would fly down the tube and into the floor cavity. But, as soon as the bits started building up in the bottom of the black liner, it would block the output tube and no more fluffy bits would fly along the tube!! We abandoned that method and just took each lump of foam and fitted them in a collection of random positioning, mixed with fluffy shredded bits we already had done months ago. We also took many of these lumps and arranged them into larger blocks before putting more fluffy stuff in on top.
    It was a bit fiddly but we got there!

    We got the middle section where our Utility services runs across the room, heading at a diagonal for half the distance and then straight to the Conservatory doorway point. We will have air, electricity, compressed air, and hot and cold water coming in and out of this zone, so we needed to seal off the rest of the floor on either side, to stop an avalanche of fluffy bits falling into this section. So, we cut pieces of 25mm thick foam sheets and glued them vertically into place. The 100mm “purple” air pipes, four of them in total, were supported with lumps of foams and then held into place through these vertical barriers. All the other utility like water pipes was already fixed in a neat line coming through a sheet 12mm board of plywood.

    Now, we tackled the last furlong of the race of filling the floor and gluing and screwing down the floorboards, to the left of the Utility service channel, by removing all the floorboards and heaping them up over on the finished side, stacked in the correct order.
    We went around the edge of the room, nearer to the outside world, and put in a solid arrangement of narrow strips of foam boards so that we maximise the heat retention for the house against any temperature differences in the outside world.
    This left the middle area of the space to be filled up so we spread out all our remaining chunks of foam rubbish, and poured in all the last of our fluffy bits. And finally, topped the whole lot with two or three layers of 100mm glass wool, depending on how much there was to finish off.

    Starting on second half 1

    Starting on second half 1

    Starting on second half 2

    Starting on second half 2

    Second half nearly filled

    Second half nearly filled

    Second half ready for floor boards

    Second half ready for floor boards


    We then could get on with laying down the final rows of the floorboards, getting them glued and screwed down, all the way to under the window looking out to the Loke. The rows that went over the Utility Services, we had to mark very carefully to exactly where the floor support framework is located because we needed to know precisely the positions of the “hatches” that we will cut out after the floorboards have been glued together using our construction PU glue instead of the PU spray glue. We also put a layer of parcel sticking tape on the surface of the framework so any excess glue that may leak through the joints, won’t permanently stick the floorboards down to our wooden framework!!
    The final job was to get our track circular saw and slice down 22mm (and a bit), to cut our floorboards to those hatch markings. It was a nervous moment because we couldn’t undo any of these cuts!! But, It Turned Out OK!!

    Central Service area Hatches made

    Central Service area Hatches made

    That concludes permanently building the Great Room flooring, at long last! We can get on in building the walls next!

  • Great Room Ceiling, Lighting Gantry and Gallery Wall All Prepared and Painted

    Since our Christmas break, these last few weeks, we have been working on the upper half of the Great Room, including getting the Gallery’s wall constructed with all its gaps (ready for shelves and cupboards), above and below the Utility Channel plus the doorway too.
    Since we had finished the Skylight and didn’t need the use of the mobile platform anymore, we constructed the remaining wall framework in the middle of the Gallery, between the metal legs that are holding up the Skylight. We put in two more “gaps” for 600mm wide shelving units and cupboards, alongside a standard 800mm wide doorway that gives access to the First Floor room beyond. The wall surface was built up to match the rest of the wall that goes past the Gallery and down to the Great Room, forming an internal gable divider to the rest of the house.

    In the meantime, the fermacell boards that got put up before Christmas, had all their joints thoroughly sanded using our trusty old belt sander with a base plate fitted that allowed us to remove any slight ridges formed between sheets. We decided that because we had a solid OSB backing layer all over the ceiling, we didn’t have to “Tongue and Groove” the thin 10mm thick edges of the fermacell boards, only relying on the PU construction glue in the joints to hold everything tight together. This meant that there were a very slight variations in how flat we managed to staple up each sheet and the joints had a tiny steps in them. So, we came along with our belt sander and using a 40grit belt, went around “ironing” these steps and smoothed out the whole surface.
    The Dorma section was similarly done but had to be done by hand as the machine was too large to fit inside among the rafters!
    As that was happening, the staple holes and the now smooth joints were filled with good quality decorators filler. The initial wall, the “A” section, was done using a standard spatula tool but then had the idea of using a piping bag so we raided mum’s baking supplies for those disposable plastic bags and nozzles! It was a very good idea as we could squirt in the filler into the staple holes, after we had blasted them out using our compressed air, and leave a little sausage of filler proud on top, to allow shrinkage. On the first section we were doing, using the spatula, discovered that the fermacell plasterboards were so absorbent that they sucked the water content out of the filler hence shrinking it down in the holes, causing us to repeat the filling again. But, using the piping bags, it was much much better, in both time and efficient use of the filler.

    A roof of blobs

    A roof of blobs

    P Roof filler dots

    P Roof filler dots



    The intersection angle between two roof surfaces were trimmed and also smoothed with heavy use of the sander and manually using a surform shaving tool. We did the “M” and “N” long sloping junction, as well as the Dorma section over the Conservatory, showing off the exposed rafters. These were also filled in with filler especially around the exposed rafters so it comes out all in a straight line in both surfaces as they meet together.

    Then came the messy job of rubbing down all the filler! Fortunately, our orbital sander had a vacuum port, to suck up 99% of the dust. We had another lovely tool to help us with this task, a 9inch rotating disc sanding machine attached to a long handle grip, with the vacuum tube running up the handle. This made quick work on sanding down all the surfaces and only needed hand sanding around the edges and corners.
    Oh yes, we filled in the three corners between the sloping rooves, by using a piece of 110mm diameter drain pipe as a shaped spatula, to create a smooth curved surface to smoothly sweep around from one surface to the next.

    Initial sanding A

    Initial sanding A

    Initial sanding O&P

    Initial sanding O&P



    The Gallery section also had all the staple holes and joints filled in, including rounding the corner on the three edges around the doorway, and then all smoothed down too.
    The next task was to drill large holes for our lighting units we are going to have in the two wings of our Skylight, the flat strips that are coming perpendicular out from the Gallery wall and joins to the Skylight. We bought a sharp tungsten carbide teeth circular cutter measuring 95mm in diameter and proceeded to drill a set of eight holes staggered across the surface on each wing.
    Gallery Wall Built

    Gallery Wall Built


    We also lowered our mobile Lighting Gantry unit and turned it upside down on four trestle tables so we could finish with that as well. We first installed the aluminium U-channel bars, which will contain strips of LEDs to shine down the slopes of the ceiling, all the way around the edge of the lighting module. Then we surform the fermacell edges that overlapped the U-channels so that both came together with a smooth graceful line. While we remembered, we stuck down a line of masking tape inside the aluminium channels, at the base so that we had still a bare strip of metal after we had painted them white, for the LEDs to have a good thermal conductivity to aid keeping them cool and long lasting. Most LEDs products these days are over driven and have very poor thermal cooling, and unfortunately, these lamps have short lives. We do not wish to suffer this fate so our LEDs will be under driven, well cooled and hopefully long lasting- fingers crossed!
    Anyway, back to the gantry module, we then sanded the flat surface to make sure the joins are smooth and any screw points that pushed a little hump out, is all cleared away and left flat and smooth. Then, we drilled a further twenty-four holes, equally spaced out all the way along the module, only having to adjust very slightly their position twice to avoid internal metal framework. We now have plenty of downlighters to help illuminate our Great Room!
    Gantry Spot light holes drilled

    Gantry Spot light holes drilled


    The other thing we did to the lighting module, was to take one length of the aluminium U-channel and cut a very shallow groove inside the metal surface, near the front so we can slide in a short length of plastic diffuser in the section that will look over the Gallery under the Skylight. We didn’t want to have the LEDs fully visible, poking their bright pin prick light sources at you, and also to avoid being able to see the electronic control circuits as well.So we were getting closer to the actual painting at last. We double checked everywhere, put in any filler in missing holes and scrapes, installed a little conduit under the cupboards on the Gallery for future lighting options and then gave the whole area a good and thorough vacuum and sweep. Also washing with plain water all the painting surfaces with a floor mop to remove any dust, sanding a couple of missed “bumps” along the way!
    We then covered up the naked exposed rafters with masking thin plastic sheets, to protect the wooden surfaces so they can have the “pretty” veneer stick nicely to them .Finally, we can actually proceed to the painting at last! We got out our paint sprayer and got our 10 litre of white emulsion paint. It was quite thick and the sprayer said that it should be diluted with water, to make it thinner. It recommended a minimum of 10% of water and that the paint dribbles off smoothly and doesn’t form “bumps” or “tracks” in the paint before settling down. We ended up diluting it to about 12.5% before it looked ok. We had two spray nozzles and the wider fan nozzle, doing 50degrees wide fans, seem to be making a slightly bumpy surface on a sheet of insulation board. We switched over to our second nozzle, which produces a finer and narrower 30degrees fan, seem to be better.
    So we proceeded to spray the ceilings, starting on the “A” section and working around clockwise. We managed to cover almost all the ceiling surfaces before we ran out of paint. We were surprised that we couldn’t get the 10litres to last long enough to cover all the ceiling and walls. The instructions on the paint pot claims that it should cover about 130 square metres and we estimated that our Great Room ceiling and Gallery is about 70 square metres. It looks like that we had put it on too thickly. Then, we spotted that the paint pot also said that they recommend diluting their paint 25% if one was using a sprayer. Oh Dear!!

    Paint spraying equipment

    Paint spraying equipment


    In the full daylight on the following day, we also noticed that we had missed sections. We were painting in the late afternoon and we hadn’t had enough lighting. We are learning!!

    Another side-effect we have discovered, is that the fermacell plasterboards, which are made up of newspaper pulp mixed in with the gypsum, goes “hairy” when we do heavy sanding on the surface, like when we had to smooth out a joint. The paint has soaked into these hairy bits and produces a textured finish. But fortunately, we also discovered that by just simply sanding the surface with 240grit paper, it knocks off the hairy bits completely in one single swipe of the sanding paper. So, we went around the whole room with our large circular sanding machine, loaded with 240grit paper and got everything nice and smooth. This is good news and rather pleasing that it came out very nicely indeed.

    The next discovery, was that we had missed several staple holes, staples that were not fully hammered below the surface and various gouges that revealed themselves by the high contrast colour of the white paint. We went around with more filler and touched up these spots.

    Our new tubs of white emulsion, this time buying Dulux branded paint and discovered that their domestic grade paint is much thinner than the previous one we were using. We only needed to add 10% water to get it running and dripping quickly, as recommended by the sprayer people. We then used the first nozzle, the 50degrees fan and proceeded to finish those area we undone and we had to stop early to allow all that lot to dry and harden.

    On the following day, we went around sanding smooth all the blobs of filler we had put on, gave the Gallery wall a gentle rub to nock off the hairs and even now, we keep coming across a missing staple hole once or twice. There was a case where we had accidentally put on a strip of the fermacell back to front and the manufactured grid pattern was visible. This was the narrow strip up inside the doorway on the Gallery, so we diluted our filler mixture and applied a thin layer all over its surface using a wide bladed scraper. And just to finish off our morning’s work, we proceeded to spray the second coat of “Pure Brilliant” white paint everywhere, using well over another 15 litres of paint. It seem that we cannot help putting on more paint than what the tin says. We just shrug our shoulders and it is not a great expense, considering the cost of the underlying material we had already invested in.
    After lunch, we rubbed down that doorway surface, which came out extra smooth and gave that a coat of paint. While we were waiting for the second coat to dry, we remembered that we needed to cut two pieces of the aluminium U-channel, for the two Skylight Wings, to provide more lighting output to shine down the slopes of the ceiling. We took the metal channels and cut the grooves to hold the plastic diffuser strip and drilled a cable access port plus screw holes to fix the bars up and stuck down a strip of 19mm wide masking tape, like before, to maximise thermal transfer of heat being generated by the LED strips. Finally, we gave them a spray of paint as well.

    On the morning, the surfaces were again very gently sanded, to get rid of more hairy patches and after lunch, use our finishing coat of white paint, this time using a brighter Absolute White colour, which claims that it will reflect 90% of the light back into the room. The colour of this Absolute White is definitely “whiter” than the previous paint which is called Pure Brilliant White and it says that it has a 80% reflectivity of light. This paint has a very very very slight yellow tinge to it, especially comparing against the new Absolute paint we had put on.

    Upon the following day, the surfaces are looking much much better and we are definitely winning against any more hairy patches showing up. In the sunshine, we could see several patches of a slight difference in “Whiteness” so they got an extra squirt from the spray machine. And, after lunch, those patches have disappeared and it is looking very good indeed. We have decided that the job is finally done!

    All painted (1)

    All painted (1)

    All painted (2)

    All painted (2)

    All painted (3)

    All painted (3)


    There had been a great deal of learning involved during this particular task of building, preparing and finishing the final “plaster” layer for the ceiling and walls. We now know what to expect, what to do, when we repeat this kind of work again on other parts of the house, and it should be easier and quicker.
    The next job to do, before we dismantle the temporary flooring, is to cut and shape our wood effect laminate sheets and cover the exposed rafters at the Dormer section over the Conservatory.

  • Designed and Created Mobile Lighting Gantry

    Scattered over the last few weeks, we have been designing and creating a lighting gantry that stretches along the entire ridge line, up on our ceiling in our Great Room. This flat module is 7metres long and 300mm wide, hanging on six pairs of pulleys, using 3mm thick steel wire rope, replacing the original parachute cord (as previously stated in an earlier blog, because it stretched too much).
    The framework is a set of steel elements, made up of 2 pairs of 40mm heavier duty angle iron forming the basic 6metres rails that will have the ceiling panel screwed to it. Then, a set of seven? short 25mm angle iron pieces are welded between these two main structural elements, tying them securely together, and providing a flat surface to weld the final major piece of metalwork, a tube measuring 40mm high by 20mm wide and being 6.7metres long. We had to extend this tube with an additional 700mm piece, welded onto the end of the 6metre piece. We chose to use this kind of material because it provided a very neat way of attaching our pulleys by cutting a little piece of the tube away, like a door, revealing a cavity where we drilled two holes aligned across the width, to allow a bolt to be inserted and tightened down with a nut. This bolt would hold a ball-race pulley, centred by the use of two little pieces of aluminium round tubing, place on either side of the pulley. The steel rope can then be threaded along inside the rectangular tube, from pulley to pulley, while keeping the rope protected from being snagged up in among electrical cables that will be snaking back and forth between lighting units.
    Lighting Gantry 1

    Lighting Gantry 1

    Gantry construction

    Gantry construction

    Gantry wire & pulley

    Gantry wire & pulley



    Meanwhile, we got a sheet of 12mm plywood that we had on our rack of sheet material, and a sheet of our “plasterboard” material called Fermacell, which is gypsum mixed with recycled newspaper and squashed very precisely into a 10mm thick boards. We sliced both sheets into 320mm wide strips and then proceeded to glue a pair of each together and stacking them up and adding six concrete blocks on top, to make sure the glue is well pressed while it dries and cures.A week or so later, we took these bi-layered strips, now 22mm thick, and very carefully sliced off both of the long edges, an angle cut of 40 degrees off the horizontal (which is 50 degrees to the sheet). All circular saws are vertical cutting machines and they can only tilt over to a maximum of 45degrees off the vertical, but we wanted to go another 5 degrees further, to make a shallow angle slope. So to solve this problem, we tilted our track up by placing it on a long piece of 63mm CLS timber, giving the machine an additional 15degree approximately. This enabled us to tilt the saw to the required 50degrees (off the vertical, which is the same as 40degrees off the horizontal) and run the saw along the aluminium track to slice the new sloping edges.

    We also made sure that all three strips were all 300mm wide.
    The next job was to cut one in half, because they would form the two ends and they both needed the short end edges cut off, one of them needing an even more extreme angle of 32degrees off the horizontal, to match the slope of the ceiling at the left end of the lighting module. The other end terminates up against a more pitched roof, measuring at 45degrees so we could cut that edge by using the circular saw in its “normal” mode.
    Now we have our two ends, we next needed to cut a tongue and groove ends so that we can connect up each strip and join all of them into a single monolithic strip. But, we had to get the two ends up on the metal framework first so that they were touching the two slopes of the ceiling at each ends, so we can measure the middle two strips so that it all fitted together into a neat single strip.

    Gantry hanging

    Gantry hanging


    This “false” ceiling doesn’t quite touch the main ceiling around it, because we wanted to provide illumination down the slopes of the roof, to provide a gentle indirect glow shining off the ceiling and into our room. So we are going to install an aluminium channel with LED lights in it along the edges of the gantry. There will also be a dozen or so round lighting units along the bottom of entire mobile module, to provide direct main lighting when we need it. Also, being mobile, we can lower it down and attach other decorative lighting features like Christmas lights etc.
    Talking about lowering it down, we have built a winch with a long handle so we can unwind the steel rope more easily, in a controlled manner and take the strain of the weight of the whole module. We also sprayed on lubricating PTFE “oil” on the steel rope so it slips through the plastic conduit much better and don’t wear the plastic pipe away. It will not be that often, operating the wince and lowering the lighting module, perhaps once a year at Christmas time.
    In between these times, we put on a safety braking and locking system, to clamp the drum down tight so the lighting module is securely held up and won’t budge.
    Gantry winch (1)

    Gantry winch (1)

    Gantry winch (2)

    Gantry winch (2)



    Eventually, we may replace this hand-operated winch, with an powered one. We will see!

  • Great Room Ceiling Finally Filled and Covered

    Over the last two weeks, we have been getting on in finishing off filling the roof rafters up in our Great Room. It is a simple case of inserting a mixture of 150mm and 200mm thick glass wool to finish filling up the space in the rafters, in front of the hard PU insulation. Some of them were well filled so we could only get the 150mm thick wool in, but most of it had the 200mm put in. One thing to remember about these glass wool these days, the label says 200mm thick but even after leaving it unrolled and laid out flat for more than a day, it only expands to 150mm thick. We just can’t see how these manufacturers can claim that it will expand to the full thickness as stated on the labels. So we have learnt over the last year or so, to automatically downgrade the thickness and work with that.

    Anyway, we went around all the rafters we got left to do in the Great Room, and then proceeded to cover it up with our usual black plastic vapour barrier.

    Last of the plastic lining 1

    Last of the plastic lining 1

    Last of the plastic lining 2

    Last of the plastic lining 2

    Last of the plastic lining 3

    Last of the plastic lining 3



    Then this week, we protected this plastic layer with our 11mm OSB boards. We had 42 sheets left in our stock and we ended up with four sheets left-over. Not bad guess for ordering hundreds of sheet way back last year!
    We had to make sure that we got the nozzles for our fire suppression system to poke through by marking the blank ends with a gel paint and then drilling a 25mm hole to get them through. We had seventeen of them to do!
    We also made sure that all the diagonal join lines were reinforced, to make sure that each panel is nice and secure, plus also nice and straight too. This is going to be our show room and the most visible room in the whole house.
    Last of the OSB Linig installed (1)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (1)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (2)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (2)


    To help us put up these sheets, we made a concrete block “stands” so we could push two of these stands up against the wall, at the bottom of the rafters and we adjusted the height so the OSB board would land just in the right place, to start building up the rows of sheets up the rafters.
    Board Support Stand

    Board Support Stand


    Now that we have finished the last major piece of work to the shell of our house, we are now fully insulated in all directions and at the moment, we do not need to heat up the house because there is enough solar energy coming in our Skylight to keep the whole house relatively warm at around 15°C which is just pleasant for working in and not get sweaty. We have a min-max thermometer and it is reporting that the down stairs only varies between 14°C nighttime and 15°C daytime, even if the overnight temperature drops to 5°C !!

  • First Level of Testing Great room Fire Suppression – Passes with Flying Colours

    We spent this morning giving our newly installed Fire Suppression system a check over against any leaks, by connecting up our compressed air supply, on each half of the Great Room’s pipework and nozzles. We mounted a pressure gauge on as well, and put in 7bars of compressed air into the system. We waited a few minutes, watching the gauge. We noticed that it was going down after a few minutes so we went around with a bottle of soapy water, to dab on every single joint and see if any bubbles grew. One of our nozzles was not tight enough so we tweaked it just a fraction with a pair of spanners and got it tight so no more bubbles came out. Two or three of the T-junctions had tiny little leaks so they got the same little tweaks too. After this process was done, the pipes was pressurised again and we then waited a good half an hour without any loss.
    We repeated the same test cycle on the other half.
    We now have two circuits of microbore pipes with nineteen nozzles, all sealed and this first level of testing coming up good. We will do a second level of tests, by using “live” water next time, but after we have installed the actual spray heads themselves and we will record the results and report back soon.

  • Skylight Double Glazing Units – Part 2

    These last two weeks saw the installation of all our double-glazing units up into our long Skylight at long last.
    But one of the last pieces of preparation work to complete was to cut the freshly painted white battens into twenty-two sets. Fourteen of them had four pieces and eight had just three. We took the glass size of each unit and added a generous 20mm to their measured lengths and cut the battens accordingly.At this point, we had to inform our glazing supplier that two of the triangle units were not manufactured correctly. We had specified that these two particular windows had a very slightly non-right angle corners and we had clearly indicated this in our drawings we had sent off, but somewhere along the process, this piece of information was lost and it was only third time lucky, after we had to strongly argue with our supplier that there are such things as non-right angled triangles, we finally received the correct shaped units yesterday. They fitted ok .. more later !

    So, in the meantime, we started at one end of the Skylight, at the North end and specifically number 18, the first square one and proceeded to install each one in turn. Our first one nearly took all day to do as we were learning the procedures and order of getting each step done correctly. The first step was to test fit the glazing unit up into that window, to make sure the physical glass went in and had enough gaps all round for the sealant to go in. Then, it gets taken over to the cleaning department so that the outward facing surface was thoroughly cleaned and polished. There is only one chance to get this done perfectly because we won’t have access afterwards. At the same time, the polycarbonate outer glazing pane was also polished and double checked for any ‘dirt’. The double sided sticky tape was stuck all the way around the framework. The third step in our procedure is to put the glass unit back up into the Skylight and hold it up using two temporary wooden rectangular battens with two screws in each, to take the stain of holding the weight up. These 28mm thick units, comprising of two panes of 4mm thick toughened glass and 20mm space that has been filled in with argon gas, were quite heavy, ranging from 17kg to 26kg for the square shaped ones, and about 13kg for each of the triangle ones. This made them just a bit too heavy for a person to hold it up while we did various tasks, hence the two support battens on each of the upright sides.

    Uint held up by temporary battens

    Uint held up by temporary battens


    At this point, we balanced the position of the glass unit by putting in plastic spacers on each edge, so we had an even gap all the way around. We wanted a sufficient gap to squirt in our low modulus double-glazing approved white sealant and make sure that it is completely sealed against any water vapour and dirt from entering the upper chamber. So, we stuck down bent over plastic spaces around the edges so when we insert the glass unit in for the final time, it will go up straight and evenly in one go, without worrying about accidentally slipping sideways and sticking the glass in the wrong place.

    Putting spacers in to center the unit

    Putting spacers in to center the unit

    At this point, we can release the glazing unit and lean it ready to one side of our working platform.
    we now need to make up the two trays that holds the desiccant powder, cover it up with a breathable cloth tape and put two pieces of aluminium sticky tape at each end to seal the cloth tape to the tray, to stop the powder coming out.

    Dessicant tray with tape on end

    Dessicant tray with tape on end

    Dessicant tray filled with chemical

    Dessicant tray filled with chemical

    Dessicant tray covered up

    Dessicant tray covered up



    This powder is highly active in absorbing the water moisture out of the air and we had to be very careful to tidy up afterwards each time we make a tray, or we get a horrible pool of very wet ‘sludge’ as we discovered! We modified our procedure, and we collected up any spillage by using a strip of toilet roll paper and poured any excess back into our pot of powder, clean the worktable, and vacuumed it as well to remove any fine powder.
    These two trays then were immediately put up into the Skylight, to sit on their little prepared shelves, one at the top and the second one at the bottom. Then, the security tape had its protective wax paper peeled off and we lifted the glazing unit back into place, making sure that our plastic spacers were all still in place and push up hard to stick the glass to the sticky security tape. We reapplied the temporary battens to hold it in place as we don?t trust the security tape to hold the glass forever!

    The next part of our long list of tasks to perform, is to measure the bottom and top edges and cut the battens with 45degree angles at both ends, using our chop saw. We had our super sharp mitre guillotine up on our platform, to allow us to trim a tiny bit off the length until the battens fitted in. A thin double sided security tape was then stuck on these wooden battens. Meanwhile, we used our compressed air sealant gun, to push a decent amount of sealant into the gap between the glass unit and the frame, all the way around on all edges, except the small section blocked by the temporary holding battens. We generally use about one and a half 300ml tubes of sealant for each window, but sometimes it is a bit more and sometime a bit less, depending on how big the gap around the glass unit is. We had bought thirty-six tubes and, we very slightly under-estimated the quantity, so we had to order two extra tubes!
    Anyway. The next step is to push the batten hard up against the glass (remembering to peel off the wax protective tape!) and then nail the wooden batten into place using 50mm long brad nails, using another one of our compressed air nail guns. These nails have very tiny heads, so we only need to put very small spots of plaster filler on and rub it smooth, ready for painting. All this will be done later.
    Having, done the bottom and top battens, all nailed and secured, we then can unscrew our temporary battens of the vertical sides and then finish squirting in more sealant to complete the full circuit. Here, we then measured the final two battens for the vertical sides and fitted them into place, with any small trimming to ensure that the mitre joint is neat as possible.

    Nailing the battens in place

    Nailing the battens in place


    That finally, concludes the procedure of fitting one of these windows! As you can see, the first one took us many hours to get it all done, but after the fourteenth one, we were getting them installed in about 75minutes!

    Then, we tackled the triangle ones! At this point, we were now in the Great Room so three of the four windows went in smoothly. The only addition that we had to adjust in our procedures, was that we needed to be able to cut a mitre angle at 22.5degrees, half of a 45degrees which are the normal square corners. Now, the four triangular windows have one 90degree corner but two 45degree ones which means that we need a way to cut the battens with an even sharper angle than the machine can manage. We made a ‘wedge’ to support our batten with an additional 22.5 degrees rotation and the blade now can slice long diagonal cuts.
    So, as I was saying, three of them went in with reasonable ease, following all the steps we did before, but, for the fourth one, we discovered that the glass unit wouldn’t slide into place. It is very similar to the first window we put in a couple of weeks ago and like that time, we had to file and grind the framework on the long hypotenuse, to widen the ‘entrance’ to allow the glass unit to slip in. Once inside, there was enough gap all round so we resume our list of tasks and got that window done as well.

    Lot's Double glaing units (1)

    Lot’s Double glaing units (1)

    Lot's Double glaing units (2)

    Lot’s Double glaing units (2)



    The final stage of doing the Skylight windows was back down at the other end, to put up the last four triangular units. Two went in ok as usual, and then we had the delivery of the two special ones with their non-standard right angles and we got them in too. One was very tight and the other one was very loose! It used up a lot of sealant and we were very glad to have ordered those extra tubes!
    One observation we made today was the huge amount of condensation there was on these two last windows. The temperature had dropped overnight to below 10°C and the air inside our house was 60% humid and contained lots of water because it is still warm inside and we arrived this morning to find the outer polycarbonate pane covered in loads of water.

    Condensation on a plain window

    Condensation on a plain window

    We wiped it all off. We then went to inspect all our other twenty windows that we had completed before today and there is no signs of any condensation at all. This is very hopeful and we keep our fingers crossed for these windows surviving for the long term. It depends on how good the outer rubber seals are on both sides of the polycarbonate pane. We can gain access from above if we need to do any extra sealing in the future and replace the desiccant material with fresh dry stuff.