Category: Rafters

Surface of the Ceiling is Levelled Up and the Dormer has been Filled Up

We spent three days levelling up all the “ceilings” of the Great Room. We wanted to make sure that the overall surface of each plane of the sloping roof is nice and flat, without any major wobbles. To achieve this, we mounted our green laser line generator on the side of each section of the roof rafters and adjusted the laser line until it is on balanced all even from one edge to the other edge of the roof.

Using laser to align rafters

Measuring Rafter alignment

Then, we stapled various different thicknesses of wooden shims, depending on where the green laser line is in relation to each spot on every single rafter. We had a collection of 1.5mm plywood, 3.5mm hardboard, 6mm MDF, 9mm plywood, 11mm OSB and even some 12mm plywood pieces, all stapled using our air staplers and using 50mm long staples. We sometimes used combination so that we levelled up every rafter so that all of them matches up in one flat plane.

Spacers to align rafters (1)

Spacers to align rafters (2)

We progressed right around on all four individual roof surfaces we got in the Great Room, especially the “O” section where we had to cope with one of the rafters having a steel band with lots of hex headed screws in as well. For this roof plane, we had to put in an entire strip of 11mm OSB board, with various thicknesses of shims so that we can mount our 11mm sheet right across the ceiling surface and miss the metal band and its screw heads.

In the meantime, we then got on with filling in the space in the Dormer section with glass wool and then covering it up with our usual black plastic vapour barrier and protecting the plastic with our 11mm OSB sheet material too.

Dormer boarded out

This section is now ready for the layer of Fermacell plasterboard sheets in a few weeks.

16 September 2023
Creating a ‘Dormer’ for the Great Room

We decided to add a ‘feature’ to the Great Room by exposing the rafters where they run in front of the Conservatory Extension Gable wall. We are going to continue the room walls up to the roof of the Conservatory extension and keep the roof exposed on the inside. This will form a ‘Dormer’ niche, this allows viewing of the rafter size and illustrates the depth of the main roof.

To this end we insulated the external wall to about 200mm depth

Conservatory gable with Foam insulation installed

Then framed the extension of the wall up to the roof. We then need to extend the roof surface of the extension the inside of the main roof. We was a little tricky because there was not much depth to align thing with so we fixed a strip of Osb down the roof to get an alignment then fitted noggins between the rafters.

Framing Dormer intersection (1)

The noggins needed to have a complicated compound cuts to get them to align correctly which took quite a lot of ‘trial & error’! We finally got them cut and glued in place.

Framing Dormer intersection (2)

Framing Dormer intersection (3)

Dormer Framed

We initially made the 3 sections each side of the centre then looking at it decided we had to make the last sections as well.

1 September 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
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
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
Progressing with Filling the Roof Rafters with Insulation

We are making steady progress on filling our roof rafters up with the first load of PU foam insulation boards.

We have now completed the I section, the H section, the G and F porch section as well as finishing off section E. Together with the previous sections D, C and B. We have used about half the quantity of the foam bits and pieces we bought and we still have a fair number of pieces upstairs, waiting to be used up.
We estimate that we have completed just short of half way. So, it will be a race to whether we will have enough to complete the job when we get to the Great Room. This is not really a problem because we had originally designed for our roof rafters, which are 400mm deep, to have glass wool put in. This would give us an U factor of 0.1W per square metre per °C difference. For much of our roof, we will be even better than that, coming in at around 0.075 W in some spots.
To give you some idea of what that means, our roof is about 300 square metres in total so if you multiply those two numbers together, you would get about 25W of heat loss through our roof for 1 degree difference. So if we run our house at 25°C, nice and cosy, and the chilly outside is hovering around 5°C, then there would be a difference of 20°C so multiply that number with the other number we got .. 25W times 20°C will give 500W of heat loss for the entire roof area of our house, on that chilly day! One small fan heater on low power would be enough to keep us warm!!

We have reached a point where we need to tidy up the large rubbish pile that we have created (as well as 2 bags of bits accumulated over the last year)

So we now need to build a shredding machine to reduce the rubbish to small lumps, ready to be poured under our floorboards in our Great Room.
So read our next blog for a report on building another quick’n’easy piece of DIY equipment!!

15 April 2023
Loading Up the Rafters With Insulation

We finally restarted our building work on our house again, after several months of rescuing our Financial Crisis caused by the soaring runaway energy prices. We had the delivery of our second-hand PU foam boards way back last year and we have now started making use of it.

We decided to tackle the section of the roof rafters upstairs over the front door region of the house. This is section B, C and D. Section C is actually a gable internal end to the roof as the rest of the hip roof is the overhanging porch on the front of our house.

This meant that we had to build an additional internal wooden framework to form the backbone of the wall for that room, and then we proceeded to fill it up with 300mm thick of PU foam boards pieces. Then, the sloping rafters next to this gable end were also filled up with more PU foam bits and pieces.

It was during this task that we were wondering to how much material we got outside and whether we were using it up too quickly to make it last long enough to accommodate the rest of the whole roof including making sure we had enough to do the Great Room which so far, haven’t had any insulation inserted yet. On conclusion, we decided to be careful and from now on, only put in one layer of PU foam boards in all the remaining rafters until we have done the Great Room and we can know to how much left-over we got. We then can go back and fill in another thinner layer in certain places to fill them up a bit more and use up the last of the foam boards pieces.

Another aspect that we are having to be careful, is making use of any larger single piece of boards because we need to make sure we can make single “triangular” fillers for the rafters that contains either a valley or a hip. It would be quite tricky to try to insert small pieces, pushing them upwards against gravity and holding them there while the glue sets. Very awkward so hence why we are putting to one side any larger single pieces.

This stage of our building work will be a long job, not at least because we are also doing our computer work alongside at the same time so we will only write a blog report every so often as we finish major sections of the rafters, like for example, We have done as far as possible for the moment, the B, C and D sections and we have even done some of the E section as well. We will just carry on and drop a quick update now and again.

18 March 2023