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

Extended the Ventilation Ducting for the Conservatory

We spent this week building and constructing the rest of the ventilation ducting that connect the Conservatory to our Air Con system. We had built the lower half that went across the Great Room, underneath the flooring and then up inside the wall structure between the window and the door facing the Conservatory. See Conservatory Air Duct Built Inside Wall for more details on the work we did two years ago.

Just the duct from below

The internal gable wall that separates the Conservatory from the Great Room goes up 14feet up (about 4¼ metres) above the ground floor and now that we got our temporary platform built, we could gain access at last. The first job was to put a layer of 100mm thick PU foam boards all across the back of the cement boards and followed by a layer of smooth aluminium coated 25mm thick PU sheets. This forms the back surface of the air ducting we are going to make. We then drilled a small 5mm hole on either side of the central vertical post, keeping well clear of it so we can then cut a large 180mm (about 7inches) hole on both sides. This hole then had a short length of some left-over twin-walled plastic pipe inserted into it. Everything was glued into place and left overnight to set.

Insulate wall and insert two inlet ducts

Then, the next job was to build up the two left and right vertical sides of the air ducting, using more of our 25mm smooth aluminium coated foam board, connecting from the existing ducting coming up from below, and widening it out so both holes can be encapsulated within the ducting. We shaped the final part at the top of the two sides so that we can bend the lid around a quarter circle to help guide the air flow more smoothly when it is sucking the air out of the Conservatory.

Ducts trimmed & Side walls built

Then, the final fourth side was created, the lid in front. As previously mentioned, the lid had the foam sliced at regular lines across the sheet and this allowed the board to ‘bend’ around the curve. The whole thing was then glued into place and aluminium metal tape stuck over all the joints, to make sure that we are air tight and where possible, the joints are nice and smooth so that the air won’t catch any sharp edges.

Duct covered

Eventually, we will cut out the large holes through the cement boards when we have built the Conservatory and put on a couple of neat unintrusive air grills that will allow the passage of lots of air with minimal noise.

We want to be able to keep the Conservatory cool and comfortable, even during very hot sunny days, hence we have done this very large capacity ducting, equivalent to four 100mm diameter pipes.

9 August 2023
Taking Measurements and Getting Quotes for our Triple Glazing Windows in Skylight
We spent the last three days measuring all our Skylight windows so that we can send off for quotations for creating triple glazing units. Now that we have built our new working platform, it meant that we could get the whole job done in one go without interruptions.
We decided that we would use lots of thin insulation boards that we had left-over and proceeded to cut a ‘template’ for each individual window in turn. We found some slightly thicker boards, measuring 40mm thick and also very flat as well, so we could test to how easy, or difficult, it was in moving the template into place, avoiding the various obstacles like the steel cross ties etc.
The proposed triple glazing units are currently selected to be using 4mm thick glass panes with 16mm cavities which makes an overall 44mm in depth. Our 40mm template is a good size to test the installation of the real thing later on, the heaviest glazing unit being at around 40kg each.
Happily, we can report that all 22 windows passed this particular test with flying colours!
Another reason for using a thick foam board, is to also find out to how ‘flat’ our wooden framework is up there in our Skylight that we built all those years ago. The PU foam material is quite stiff and we can detect whether the pseudo glazing unit template sits rock steady or wiggles.
Generally speaking, the majority of each window hole was pretty damn close to being flat and we will be able to get away in using only 3mm or 5mm thick sticky foam tape for the first stage of sealing the units into place. Only one window had a serious wobble, caused by a break in our framing timber. We will have to do some tidy up of the joint and recondition it so it is back to the same original coatings of fibre glass resin.
After the 40mm foam was close to the right size (fits with a little ‘slop’), we made a copy onto 20mm foam and measured and labelled it and inserted it into the skylight. It was quite slow in getting each window done, we didn’t want to rush it as it will cost many £1000s for the windows, especially the triangular ones, four of them at each end of the Skylight.

Each template is numbered & measured

The list of our windows breaks down into these quantity and approximate sizes:
- Great Room: 4 triangles measuring about 1150mm high by 1100mm wide and 2 rectangular – 1120mm high by 1190mm wide
- Sitting Room: 5 rectangular – 1120mm high by 966mm wide
- Stairs/ Hall: 2 rectangular – 1150mm high by 750mm wide (one of these is a special shape!)
- Study: 2 rectangular – 1145mm high by 1066mm wide
- Work Room: 3 rectangular – 1145mm high by 996mm wide 4 triangular ? about 1140mm high by 1110mm wide
Skylight glazing

To measure the triangular templates we created a tool from aluminium bars which could hold against all 3 sides and measure the correct size of each edge (the foam is too soft/crumpled to measure directly)

The Triangle Templates

Measuring Triangles 1

Measuring Triangles 2

We have sent a request for a quote off to our local manufacturer, based in Norwich. We wait to see what they can do.

We have requested that the outer pane of glass is treated with the infra-red reflective and absorbing treatment so we can reduce the sheer amount of heat that we get during the Summer months! Hopefully, it won’t be too expensive. We will have to have safety glass in one way or another but we may be able to have a lowest pane to be laminated and the other two higher panes can be ordinary glass, to save money of not having it made with toughened glass. We now wait and see ! This expenditure will be the last major outlay for the basic building structure and materials.
26 July 2023
Built a Temporary Working Platform

We spent the last three days in building a temporary working platform, right across the Great Room so we can access the rafters and get them filled up with insulation, cover them up but also gain access to the entire Skylight so we can measure and order the triple glazing units while we have this platform up. We will also put up the finishing surface, the Fermacell “plasterboard” sheets and paint it all brilliant white, including in and around the Skylight that is over the Great Room too. We want to design and build a lighting panel that will have the capability of being lowered for maintenance, adds or remove lights etc as well.
All this is difficult to do without this temporary platform so we proceeded by putting up our green laser line generator and then screw up a ring of CLS timber support rails around the edges of the room, so that we can then put a series of nine joists, separated by exactly 4feet, or 1220mm. We also put on an extra cross beam positioned at the end of the Gallery so that we can support these joist that lies beyond the Gallery. Then, we created a couple dozens of legs, along with a footpad to spread the load from the leg, and got them located every 4feet along each joist too. We wanted to make sure that our platform is good and strong and as sturdy as possible because we will be working with heavy pieces of equipment like a board lifter.

A forrest of legs 1

A forrest of legs 2

A forrest of legs 3

Next, we now brought up a whole load of 18mm thick OSB boards from our store room (Bedroom Two!) and shoved them one at a time, up onto the framework. We started next to the end of the Gallery and put in five whole sheets, in the eight foot direction, starting from the “A” wall and almost reaching the “O” wall, with only a few inches short. This shows that our Great Room is five sheets of eight feet each, a total of forty feet!
We carefully screwed plenty of screws to fix all the edges and for the second row, we sliced up an old sheet in half so we could offset the whole sheets to overlap half way. and finally, we put in a third row of another five sheets and again, there is only a small gap to the long “P” wall.
The gaps left and right of the Gallery were then filled in. the Kitchen side had a 1900mm board cut and fixed in, while the larger other side had two more whole sheets put in. This left a 240mm gap which we found lots of left-over pieces where we could slice them down and fit them into this gap.

Great Room ‘First Floor’ 1

Great Room ‘First Floor’ 2

Great Room ‘First Floor’ 3

We now have an accessible working level, connected to the First Floor, with a small six inch step down (it makes it easier to get at the bottoms of the rafters) and we can get on in doing the last section of the roof to get populated with insulation etc. And, by the way, the width of the room is four whole boards plus a bit, so that is four times 4feet which is 16feet!! This is what is called a large space, in fact, it’s a Great Room !!

An because everything is screwed in place all the wood and OSB can be used for building the First floor walls later on so nothing will be wasted!

22 July 2023
The First Floor Roof Rafters All Filled With Insulations, All Covered in OSB!

We only needed these last couple of days to finish off covering up the plastic vapour barrier membrane with our 11mm OSB boards. We completed the “J”, then the “K” and then the last two sections, “H” and “I”.

Then, we did the strip along the bottom of the “J”, “K” and “L” with a narrow 135mm wide strips of the same 11mm OSB material, this is to protect the exposed plastic membrane against accidents where something may damage it. This is our main storage area so we need to make sure that the vapour barrier is protected.

All covered in OSB 1

All covered in OSB 2

All covered in OSB 3

All covered in OSB 4

That means that we have done all the rafters that we can access from the First Floor and now we can start work on the Great Room portion of the roof rafters and get them filled up etc.
But first, we have to build a working platform right across the whole Great room, extending our Gallery so we can access the rafters without having to resort to using ladders all the time. It is very much safer and much much quicker to work on a solid level platform.

20 July 2023
Visit from Building Control to Inspect What We Have Done

We had a letter in the post a couple of days ago, asking whether we had completed our build yet. It had been several years since we had an inspection so we arranged to have visit and bring Building Control up to date.
The inspector arrived this morning and had a look around the outside and inside our house.

They took some photos as the walked around, They only thing they wanted a confirmation of the fire suppression treatment that we had applied to our Larch timber that covers all the walls nearest our boundary. We sent the photos and blog report that shows the certificate.
They were happy to what we have done and we only need to call them out again when we require them to “sign” off our project, for both the house and garage together.

12 July 2023
C is Half Complete, and Progressing on H, I, J, K, L and M With the Glass Wool and Vapour Barrier Installed

For the last two weeks, we have been making steady progress in inserting the horrible glass wool insulation into the roof rafters, filling them up to the brim, and then covering it up with our plastic vapour barrier too.
This includes constructing the gable wall that sits over the Front Door that will form the end wall for the little Study room, or perhaps a spare bedroom.
We put in a layer of glass wool vertically between the few upright CLS legs, filling it up as we normally do for all our walls, and then we cover all this up with our vapour barrier membrane.
Then the next job was to nailed on a set of horizontal rails, again using the usual 63mm CLS timber. The bottom rail forms the Air Channel that has a 220mm high strip of 6mm thick MDF material fixed between it and the floorboards. Normally, our Air Channels are only 150mm high, but here, on our First Floor, we are having an extra multiple sandwich layers of dense “sound absorbing” plasterboards, a soft “vibration absorbing” foam and topped with another 18mm thick OSB board, all these layers adds up to 70mm thick. We saw this technique at a house building trade show 20 years ago and we thought that it was a clever idea of isolating noises generated upstairs and make it more pleasant for anyone who is trying to sleep or want peace and quiet downstairs.
The next couple of horizontal rails is for the regular Utility Channel, with the usual backing layer of fermacell, bringing together a couple of electrical conduits that we have coming through the wall from the outside wall and eves. We then screwed two long diagonal pieces that follows the slopes of the roof and finally, a smaller one half way up to finish providing support and anchorage to hold up the wall boards later on.

Utility channels and boards on ‘C’ wall

With this done, we proceeded to insert two layers of our newly arrived 150mm thick glass wool insulation, into all our remaining roof rafters that we can access here up on the First Floor. We now have all of “H”, “I”, “J”, “K”, “L” and “M” sections filled up to the brim of the rafters.

Insulation Finished 1

Insulation Finished 2

Insulation Finished 3

Insulation Finished 4

Then, we covered it all up with more of our black plastic sheeting, only just managing to complete that task before we ran out!

Plastic finished 1

Plastic finished 2

Plastic finished 3

Plastic finished 4

And the last few afternoons this week (we had quite a lot of interruption in the mornings), we started the job of cutting and screwing sheets of our protective 11mm thick OSB material. We started backwards and got half the “M” section done, gone around the corner and completed the “L” and got the first row done over on the opposite side on the “J” section.

Starting boards on second half

One of the little side jobs we had to do, was to install a second air duct for the other half of the toilet come shower suite of rooms. We had originally had just one room to provide the shower cubicle and toilet plus basin for the upstairs rooms, but we realised that we could reposition our entrance doorway into the Storage area and split the shower and toilet apart. This meant that we needed another exhaust air vent for the toilet room.

We thought that these two rooms will be more used by our guests so when the shower is in use, the toilet is still available, or vice versa.
So when we resume our next building session, We will finish off putting up the OSB boards and then start working in the Great Room, installing a temporary flooring all over which will allow us have a much easier time to access the roof rafters and get them all filled and covered up. This will also enable us to survey our Skylight windows and calculate exactly what we need to order from our glazing manufacturers, to finish putting up all of the triple glazed windows up in our Skylight and complete the super-insulated shell for the whole building.

8 July 2023
Shaun Falls Down The Stairs!

After lunch, we were putting a sheet of plastic on the gable wall, the “C” section, to cover up the glass wool we had just installed in that morning and Shaun was crouched down taking the shallow triangle point right down into the right hand side corner, right under the slope of the roof.

Shaun moves towards the gable

Unfortunately, Shaun made a rare mistake in not fully realising to where he was located and he was bending down, to fit under the slope of the roof and stepped over the wooden footplate that was screwed to the floorboards that defines the edge of the stair case. We had put up a hand rail barrier along most of the stair hole, only leaving a small 18inch gap unbarricaded because it was very low down the slope of the roof!!

Stairs are protected by rails

Shaun managed to find that small gap, while bent over into a crouching position and stepped out into thin air.

Puts his foot out thinking he has reached the end of the stairs

He said that nothing special occurred, like “everything slowed down” or “my life flashed before my eyes”
He said, “it was a normal sensations and I remember falling through the air, then crashing into the last couple of steps of the stairs and sliding down the rest of the way to the floor.”(the photo below may look bad but it is not, Shaun is just recovering his breath)

and tumbles down to land at the bottom of the stairs

(Another point to make about the photo, We went back a week later to take that picture and Shaun laid back down in approximate position, in an artistic pose, for this blog report!!)

Stephen tried to warn Shaun but he wasn’t quite looking in the right direction, was sorting out his own end of that black plastic piece and his shout came too late. He immediately came thundering across the First Floor and thumped very very quickly down the stairs. Shaun remembers all that and “he wanted to know whether I was hurt anywhere. I was breathing in lots of short sharp breaths, waiting for the shock to wear off.”
Stephen took off Shaun’s dust mask and carefully took off his helmet too. Shaun was able to talk more or less normally, to report that he hadn’t broken anything and just banged up. No sharp or stabbing pain anywhere, just a couple of broad islands of aches. Mostly on the upper shoulder blade and upper left arm. Second one located just above his waistline on the left side, and a final minor ache on his leg, upper left thigh. No cut or abrasions anywhere!
After about 5 minutes, he was able to stand up and walk back home, while holding Stephen’s arm.
As you can imagine, that somewhat put an end to our work for this day.
Actually, it stopped our work for the entire week!!
We switched over to doing electronic and database design work instead.
It has been five days now, it is Saturday, as this report was written, and Shaun reports that he has greatly improved and almost all the aches has gone. There was very little bruising on the surface, but there is still deeper aches still at the moment.
This is one episode that we DO NOT wish to repeat !!

19 June 2023
Roof Sections D and E plus Alcove F and G Are All Complete

This week, we resumed our work of inserting glass wool insulation into the roof rafters for the next main sections of the upstairs roof rafters, namely the “D” and “E” section.

Glasswool in D & E

But, before we put up the black vapour barrier plastic sheeting, we went into the Alcove portion in the corner of the roof, where we have a small gable wall extending up from the Side Door and Porch. This is the F section and a tiny sloping piece, the G section, coming back to the levels of the main rafters. We had already inserted the hard PU foam boards into these three areas and they needed to be covered up with a protective OSB sheets next. For the vertical gable part, which also had an air ventilation port, ready for the fume cupboard for our workroom. We cut triangular pieces using 18mm thick OSB boards and managed to slide them into place, but only after we had to slice them into smaller pieces!
We then did the same for the two sloping sides, but using the thinner 11mm OSB boards instead. these pieces were fairly complex, especially the left hand side (the “G” section) because the pieces needed to come all the way out to the front of the rafters so that it protects the vapour barrier plastic. But we made it! Finally, we cut and shaped several more pieces of the 11mm OSB, to fit and cover the “shelf” that ran along at the floorboard level, at the back of the Alcove.
We now could proceed by filling the last few rafters and the aforementioned shelf with more glass wool and then covered everything up in lots of the DPM plastic, our two main roof sections, “D” and “E”, all the surfaces in the Alcove, the “F” and “G” sections

Plastic on D & E

Then covered all that lot up with more 11mm OSB boards, including all the ready-made pieces we previously created.
We now have completed this rather complicated corner of the roof and we can carry on in filling the rest of the rafters with a little bit more ease. We go back and finish off the “C” section, the large gable wall above the Entertainment and Front door wall.

D & E Covered in OSB

Side Porch area completed

17 June 2023
Completed Section A and B of Roof Rafters

Today saw the conclusion of filling and covering up the rafters in section A and B of our roof. These last few weeks had loads of glass wool being inserted into the rafters, in front of the hard PU foam, to finish filling it right up to the front. We used our 50mm air-powered staples to secure the wool in place.

Glasswool insulation in the A & B roofs

This section of the roof, is right over our staircase so we had to be careful, employing a temporary platform to support us and our ladders etc.
One of the tasks we did at this point was to take half dozen of our 63mm CLS planks and proceeded to run the circular saw along the entire length of each planks at different angles. Some were sliced at 32degrees and the remainders were cut at 45degrees. Why these angles? We wanted to provide a solid turning point at the bottom of the rafters, for the plastic coming down the roof, to neatly turn downwards in a more or less vertical direction, to the floorboards which is then sealed using butyl-glue strips.
The angles corresponded to the particular angle of the roof for that section. The A and B section are both have 32degrees and 33degrees respectively so they both had these modified planks nailed upwards into each rafter. We went around all the sections right around the first floor, putting in the appropriate angled plank, to have them ready later on.
Interdentally, we had a moment with our trusty old nail air gun, it seemed to have blown a seal around the trigger section so we had to switch over to our other air gun and use different strips of 90mm nails we had on hand, luckily!! The main gun is being serviced and we are awaiting spare parts to come from China.
So after this interruption, we continued to covered up all the glass wool with DPM plastic to provide a vapour proof barrier to stop the human moisture and other sources of water vapour, from penetrating into the wood-work of our roof structure and forming condensation, which in turn allows the fungi and other biological pathogens to grow and eat our timber!!

First two sections covered on plastic

The next step was to cover and protect the plastic from being punctured by putting up 11mm thick OSB sheets we had already a stockpile of. We bought them many many months ago before all the massive price increases.
We started down on the bottom of the rafters, with a whole sheet and screwed it up using the 50mm screws that offers very good performance and secures the board very tight upwards against the rafters. We put in five screws in each rafter, to make sure that it is well fixed because it is going to have to hold the much heavier Fermacell “plaster” boards later on when we get to that stage.
Then we got another sheet and laid it next to the previous one and that allowed us to finish the row, meeting the valley hip joint between the A and B roof sections. It is a long angled slope.

We then did the same around on the B section, which needed just one board to complete that bottom row. It was very tight working conditions but making use of a couple of 140mm thick concrete blocks which happened to be exactly the correct size to help support the bottom edge of the sheet while we screwed it up!
The next two rows were, as you can imagine, a lot easier, especially when we created three little “hooks” to screw to the previous lower board and that also helped to hold up the large sheet while we also screwed it up too.
The last row is up to the skylight itself and that was a half width piece to finish it off and a 350mm wide strip to finish off the B section.

First OSB covering finished

We now have a much better looking roof, ready for a future stage of work in a few months when we start building the internal framework of all the upstairs rooms. The rest of the A section will be completed when we have populated the roof rafters over in the Great Room because we wanted the OSB boards to flow neatly across into that space in contiguous rows.
We now resume by proceeding in filling the D and E section next ..

31 May 2023
Shredded the First Load of Foam Rubbish!

This week, we used our new shredder machine to tackle the mountain of rubbish we have been collecting over the last couple of weeks !!
We started this task but we soon discovered that we were filling up our ordinary black bin bags so quickly that we were spending more time in changing over the bags than the actual shredding process. So, we went out to buy those super large wheelie bin liners but none were available in our local shops so we had to order it overnight.

The only problem was they are made with a very very thin plastic and when we put one bag on the dust extractor, the pressure from the air coming in was strong enough to start stretching the plastic and blow a hole !! We started slapping tape over the holes but more would start elsewhere…
Oh boy!
But we had a light bulb moment and put on two bags at once, one inside another. That solved the problem. We even had to put on an extra cable tie on the bottom seam because it would sometimes blow that joint as well!!
In the photo below, you can see to how fine the shredded material is. This is great because when we pour it all under our Great Room floorboards, we will achieve even better insulation affect and help to keep the large Energy Module from heating up the Great Room.

Here is a short video of us using the machine. We put on ear muffs, eye shields and most importantly, good quality dust masks as well. (Warning it will be a bit loud…)

We would blast ourselves clean with compressed air at the end of each session (lunch time and end of day) so we didn’t bring the mess into our living quarters!!

The original roll of wheelie bags had only 20 on it and so we quickly filled up nine “containers” so we had to resort back to the ordinary bin bags again. We eventually got it all done!

We then moved all the collected shredded material in their bags and took them downstairs to our Entertainment Room, to keep them out of the way and keep them safe from accidental damage and spilling very fine material all over the place.

We now can carry on filling up the next section of rafters, doing J, K, L and M in our next week of work starting in May. Next week, we resume our work on the electronic side of things where we can collect data from our batteries, the solar panels and the weather prediction, to provide a more intelligent charging of our batteries during the night.

20 April 2023