Roselea

Category: Stoppage

  • Snow!

    We woke up to a lovely coating of snow over everything!

    Snowy-House

    Snowy-House


    It isn’t a real stoppage to our work as we have things to do in our workshop but there were plans to look at our garden shed’s roof and also put on extra tarpaulin coverings on our timber storage stacks .. but alas not when we have about an inch of snow on everything!!

  • Postponed O Ridge Installation!

    Starting really early this morning, at round 8:30am, to avoid the incoming thunderstorm front, we went outside to have a go at installing our latest created rafter, this time, the O Ridge that has the 45degrees angled sloping down beam.
    But unfortunately, even though it wasn’t raining at this time, and we even had sunshine out too, the rafter was still very damp from yesterday’s bad weather so we had to postpone the operation to another day when it is dry.
    All we did was to move the two scaffolding towers around and positioned them into the approximate positions and then turned the O Ridge rafter upwards to allow it to drain and dry off easier when the rain comes. We sandwiched the rafter between the two towers to make sure it didn’t tip over.

  • High Winds Rips Off Roofing Felt!

    We woke up to the rattle of tremors of storm Agnes passing over and when we looked outside, we discovered a piece, actually quite a long piece of roofing felt lying on the ground just in front of our front door! Where did that come from we thought?

    Storm-ripped-this-felt-1

    Storm-ripped-this-felt-1

    Storm-ripped-this-felt-2

    Storm-ripped-this-felt-2



    So climbing up onto the roof of our temporary living quarters, we went inspecting our roof! It turned out to be just one single strip of roofing felt that has been ripped off cleanly the roof, leaving behind the marks of the old glue lines and the rest of the felt still clinging on for grim death!!
    From-here

    From-here


    The roof is still protected against most of the rain water as the ripped off felt strip was covering existing roofing felt and it looks good enough (with only a few signs of actuall holes) so we can wait for the strong winds to die down and we get some clear and sunny days back again before we repair the roof.

  • Water Pump Blockage Sorted and Rain Tent Abandoned!

    This morning, after the thunderstorm and lightning we had from 4am to 6am, and collecting 22mm of rain in that time too, we had to go out and see why the water wasn’t draining away from our floor slab, plus also why our rain shadow tent had a huge bulge in the tarpaulin roof!

    Water-bulge-in-Tarpaulin

    Water-bulge-in-Tarpaulin


    First of all, the pump was running and seems to have been doing so since the early hours! The reason for the water not being suck up was .. lots and lots of wooden rubbish blocking the input vents at the bottom of the motor!! The whole thing was wrapped around with a plastic netting which is where the blockage was so we took off the netting and promptly all the remaining rubbish we couldn’t get out of the water got sucked up and blocked the inside of the pump instead! Argh!
    We unscrewed the bottom plate and after a while of scratching our heads, realised that another piece also came off the bottom to reveal the impeller .. and the blockage of rubbish!! We cleaned it all out, flushed it backwards using the garden hose and put it back together but with an additional metal mesh to try and keep the finer plastic mesh away from the pump and its input vents. The motor went back in the sump hole and it merrily pumped away and within a couple of hours or even less than that, most of the water, which we estimate to be about 7000 litres, was flushed away down into our underground rain soak-away module!!
    Updated-pump-filter

    Updated-pump-filter


    Next, dealing with the bulge in our tarpaulin tent roof, we tried lifting it and pushing it from below, but it was far too heavy. It is likely to have been about 400 litres or more which means it weighs 400kg! It was amazing that the tarpaulin was able to support that amount of water and weight! We solved the problem of shifting the water by the old fashioned trick of syphoning it off with a hose and sucking on the end to get it started (and suffering a mouth full of water!!). It gushed out quite quickly and soon the bulge was no more!
    Syphon-hose-in-water-bulge

    Syphon-hose-in-water-bulge


    But, we discovered that more rain water managed to get inside between the layers of the tarpaulin and the whole thing was sagging in many spots and also some of the eyelets that had rope tying them down had ripped completely out too!
    So we decided to abandon the whole tent idea and take the tarpaulin down. It was much simpler to wrap the LVL timber in another tarpaulin instead to protect it from the rain! Oh Well! That’s Life!

  • Summer Bug Brings Down Half the Workforce!

     We had an incident where half of our workforce was struck down with a nasty Summer cold virus, from last Monday (29th May) to today (5th June). All outside work on putting up cement boards, rafters and other work needing two people had to be postponed.

  • Friday Mostly Lost to Rain!

    No work outside today as it was wet all morning and occasional showers in the afternoon too. Plus also we were only going to work until mid-afternoon because of other commitments. So the day was mostly written off.

    We did get the stop/start switch on the work bench replaced (it was damaged a few weeks ago), the new switch is much easier to press!

    New-Stop-Start-Switch

    New-Stop-Start-Switch

    Hopefully we can get on doing the windows and doors tomorrow.

  • Rain Stops Work

    We discovered the rain was falling down when we wanted to start work on the new week, and the forecast had a high chance of more rain all day so we called it quit and did other tasks unrelated to the building project.

    Tomorrow, the weather looked much better so we hope for a good day of work.

  • Too Icy and Risky

    Our concrete slab is frozen again and there are too many patches of solid ice. Again, we abandoned the outside work.

    Tomorrow, there are other meetings that have to be serviced so no work for Tuesday either.

  • That’s What We Call Frozen Solid!

    Today, Sunday, we woke up to a world of white over everything and a real chilly snap in the air .. this is indoors we are talking about!

    We were going to carry on with the assembly of the steel framework, even though it was Sunday so we could catch up on the lost days earlier in the week but fate has intervened again!

    The outside temperature right now is -3°C at 9am and that’s barely warmer  than the -4°C we had during the dark hours!

    So No Work Today! We call this a stoppage because it interrupted our plans!!

    Oh Well!

  • Day 3 of Freezing Temperatures and Ice Stops Work

    Here we go! Here we go .. again! It was such a lovely sunny morning to the start of the day but we had freezing temperatures overnight and it refreeze the water on our concrete.

    We talked about putting down loads of salt to try and melt the ice but we decided that we didn’t want the steel legs sitting in a salty solution for weeks and weeks while we built the house up, around and over the steel framework.

    So, frustratingly, we had to abandon this day too!! Roll on Saturday and let’s see what we get .. this time!!