Roselea

Category: Site Management

  • Sun Shield Installed on Temporary Living Quarters

    We put up a new tarpaulin on our long corridor in our temporary living quarters, to block out the sun’s rays. We usually put up a sun shield each summer to reduce the amount of energy blasting into our corridor and making it bearable to live.

    We took an existing sheet of plastic tarpaulin and cut it down to 3metres wide by 10metres long. Then, using a soldering iron with a flat head on the tip, melted the edges over a thick rope to keep the covering taught and neat without having to use eyelets and having it ripping out.

    Hopefully, this shield will last the Summer and that’s it!

  • Preparing Site for Delivery

     Yesterday and today were spent levelling out areas alongside our Loke, so our building materials can be delivered and unloaded.

    2 Packs of CLS timber in the middle

    2 Packs of CLS timber in the middle

    The Pack of Cement boards and 2 Pallets of Plywood at the end.

    The Pack of Cement boards and 2 Pallets of Plywood at the end.

    2 Pallets of Plywood here - near the Garage

    2 Pallets of Plywood here – near the Garage


    We want to make sure that we can access each of the materials at any time, so each zone needed to be pointing in the right direction.

    For example, the long 4.8metres timber stacks will be slightly rotated so about 300mm is always exposed to allow a length of timber to slide pass other pallet loads of stuff!

     

    We are now ready for the 1st delivery load !!

  • New Replacement Flood Light Created and Mounted

    A week ago we put up one of the 300W LED floodlights. We made a timber bracket and mounted it above the pole above the camera. The bracket snapped in the high winds a few days ago, bringing it crashing down, luckily the light was not damaged.

    The old one was made of 63mm CLS wood but during very strong winds, it split up the middle of the wood, so we decided that we had to replace it with a metal construction instead. Using 25mm square steel tubes, we welded together a new rigid framework.

    We then cut and folded thin steel sheet, only 0.6mm thick, into flanges to bolt directly onto the lamp unit so it will block the glare from intruding over into our neighbours. One of these flanges, the largest piece, was polished to a semi-mirror finish to reflect as much of the light downwards and not be lost up into the sky.

    We then spray painted all the metal work with black protection, except (of course) the mirror was sprayed with a clear varnish.

    Then using 2 ladders, both tightly tied down to support us going up and give us confident to handle the fairly heavy flood light unit, and bolt it into place at the top of the camera pole. The electric was all connected and pinned down neat and tidy, and all works just fine.

    Installing-first-floodlight

    Installing-first-floodlight

    Shaun-helps-install-floodlight

    Shaun-helps-install-floodlight

    The-first-floodlight

    The-first-floodlight


    The final test was in the dark later on, with the ground being well illuminated and the neighbours in the shadow and didn’t get an eye sore glare from the powerful 21,000 lumens lamp!!

    First-floodlight-illuminates-site-1

    First-floodlight-illuminates-site-1

    First-floodlight-illuminates-site-2

    First-floodlight-illuminates-site-2


     

  • Electric Box Wired Up

    This morning, we wired up a 4 way socket strip inside the Electric Box with a RCD unit inline, but only after we had to change the supply mains cable from the Garage to another one!

    Temporary-Electric-Finished

    Temporary-Electric-Finished

    We discovered that during a preparative testing phase before connecting up the electricity proper, there was a “leak” between  the Live wire and the Earth wire!! Oops! This must mean that there was some damage in the insulation of the wires inside the cable somewhere so we had to pull through another cable, a recycled smaller 1.5mm2 twin and earth cable.

    This time, we checked out the quality of the cable BEFORE we threaded it through and now everything is working just fine!!

    We now have outside the convenience of a rain proof cabinet with 4 sockets inside and a reel of 50metres of electric cable ready for whatever we are doing.

    Temporary-Electric-With-reel

    Temporary-Electric-With-reel

     

  • Electricity Box Installed

     The wooden box was painted with the bitumen rubber solution yesterday to provide a good rainwater protection, and today, it was installed outside beside the huddle of conduits in where our Utility Room would be.

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-Installed-1

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-Installed-1

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-Installed-2

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-Installed-2


    It was screwed down into the concrete using standard wall plugs and 4 screws, and the mains electric conduit cut down and fitted to the underside of the cabinet so we can pull through an electric cable from the Garage, which we duly did this afternoon.  The distance from the Garage to inside the box is approximately 10 metres, as measured by the length of the string we pulled out which was connected to the 2.5mm2 twin and earth cable.

    Tomorrow, two double sockets will be screwed up inside the box and wired up using the cable now ready, and a standard  13Amp plug fitted on the beginning end of the same cable inside the Garage and plugged into an ordinary socket. We are already storing the electric reel in the box and closed the door!!

  • Temporary Electrical Box Constructed

    This afternoon, we constructed a wooden box to provide electrical sockets and a place to store a reel of cable, all inside a rain proof cabinet.

    This cabinet will be located beside the group of conduits and pipes sticking out of the concrete inside what will be the utility room, and we will stick the 50mm conduit from the Garage up through the bottom of the box and thread through a 2.5mm2 twin and earth electric cable and connect up 2 double sockets inside the cabinet.

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-for-house-2

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-for-house-2

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-for-house-1

    Temporary-Electricicty-box-for-house-1


    Using recycled 11mm OSB boards, we made a box measuring 420mm wide, 350mm deep and 600mm high, with a door and a sloping roof on top.

    Tomorrow, we will paint the whole thing with bitumen rubber paint to make it rain proof and not rot. We couldn’t paint it today because when we brought in the container of bitumen from the outside storage shed, it was so thick and treacle like from the cold temperature, we abandoned the attempt! We put on the fan heater in the workshop overnight to warm it up so we can apply two coats of the paint twice in the same day.

    This will make is so much easier to attach electrical items like floodlights, the automatic rain water extraction pump and anything else we need mains electrical power whilst working on the house.

  • Automatic Pump to Extract Rainwater from House

    This morning, whilst it rained, we made an automatic pump to extract and remove the rainwater from inside our house footprint. The concrete  is open to the sky so we are collecting all the rainwater that falls down upon us!

    The pump is located in the sump up next to the Great Room as it is better situated for reaching more puddles of rain water than the other sump.

    We had a false start with the first try of running the pump, we were not getting any flow of water out of the end of the hose pipe. We had to take apart the pump completely to get to the centrifugal disc unit and discovered a mass of fibre material blocking the middle portion of the disc, where the water should have been allowed to enter but couldn’t!! We cleaned it up and reassembled the pump back together and reinstalled it back into the sump and now it is working.

    The flow rate coming out of the hose pipe is about 10litres per minute or 600 litres per hour so it shouldn’t take too long to remove much of the water whenever it rains, as every 1mm of rain that falls, we would be collecting about 260litres of water.

  • Electrical Conduit buried and Cable Threaded

    Yesterday and this morning, we buried a conduit around the building site, from the garage at the bottom of the camera pole, all the way to the top of the garden at the wooden barrier at Mount Sod. A 1mm2 twin and earth cable was threaded through using a string, which  was first pulled through using a vacuum cleaner. It was hard work pulling the cable through as the conduit was 50metres long and also only 20mm in size, and the string was straining with the effort of dragging the cable through!

    This cable is to power the second floodlight at the top end of the site so, together with the first floodlight (at the Garage end), will light up the whole building site during the early dark afternoons as we like working until at least 6pm most days.

    We are going to use LED cool white lamps, each being 300Watts in power rating and each producing over 21,000 lumens of brightness, giving us a total of 42,000 lumens over the whole building site.

    300w-LED-Floodlight

    300w-LED-Floodlight

    This is equivalent to about 6 standard 500Watt incandescent flood lamps, but instead of 3000watts of power, we are only using 600watts!! That is the fantastic nature of LEDs and it will only get better in the years to come!