Category: Walls

Exterior Larch Cladding and Oak Frames Cleaned and Oiled

In the glorious sunshine, while it was far too hot indoors, we decided to start one of our Summer job now. We needed to do some serious maintenance to our exterior cladding of our house, giving it a thorough clean, and give it a good treatment of oil, and perhaps a touch of colour dye as well.
So, the first part of this task, is to clean the larch cladding and the oak guttering and the oak surrounds at each window.
We got our pressure washer out, pulled the hose off the reel, all 50 metres of it and only just got to the far end of the house! And started washing down the walls, using the rotating nozzle that seems to do the trick of shifting the dust and dirt out of the grain of the wood. Some of the larch has fungi growing on them as well, especially in those locations that don’t have a lot of sunshine on them, and gets wet from the rain. We are planning to apply some anti-fungi treatment, mixed in with the timber oil solution as well and give the wood some protection against further fungi growth.
But, right now, we slowly worked our way around the whole house, doing each section by section. We even blasted the gutters as well, they are starting to turn silver and the pressure washer seems to give them a new leaf of life and colour again.

P1 Wall before cleaning

Clean a Stripe

As you can see from the photo, the walls were definitely grimy, and also, much of the original “burnt” colouring has disappeared as well. It is amazing that the Sun was able to bleach even the burnt colouring. O Boy!

So we now have a fresh looking house again!

Walls all Cleaned up (1)

Walls all Cleaned up (2)

Walls all Cleaned up (3)

We have decided that the Larch Cladding had come out much better than we thought so we are not going to add any colouring dyes to the timber oil and just leave it natural.

We pulled out a spray machine that we required from somewhere in the past but discovered that the old Lead Acid battery was dead. After replacing that with a 12V mains supply adapter, we got lovely pumping noises .. but no liquid coming out the nozzle! Upon opening up the little pump, we discovered that the rubber membranes had stiffen up and were no longer flexible anymore. So, we ordered a replacement 12V pump, trying to match the specifications, like size and shape and wattage, as much as possible. Our new one is only slightly more powerful but otherwise the same. We swopped the two pumps around and we now have a lovely sprayer. We poured in our timber oil we still had from our original application and poured in about 25litres into the tank. We started on the O section, at the back of the house, and worked our way clockwise around the house. We even sprayed all the Oak framework around each window, plus also the Oak covers on the corners of the building.

Cladding all re oiled (1)

Cladding all re oiled (4)

Cladding all re oiled (6)

Cladding all re oiled (8)

We then had to wash all of our twelve windows, to remove the oil that had splattered onto the glass. We used a handy little vacuum wiper that sucks off the soapy water after the glass has been scrubbed.

And, because we had washed the windows, we went around and painting more oil onto the sills. Some of them needed three coats of the oil before it stopped soaking in.

Finally, we spent an afternoon, rubbing down the Oak timber, to reduce the “fur” texture that had lifted off the surface after we had blasted the timber with our pressure washer. We used a soft sanding pads to knock off most of the white furry surface, also rubbing the sills as well. Some of the windows needed a bit more energetic scrubbing using courser sandpaper.

5 July 2024
First Stage of Improving Our Skylight Windows

Today, on this lovely sunny Monday, we took the opportunity to go up on our roof, to our Skylight Windows, to do some upgrades and improve the windows. We have been having some problems with moisture getting in, but we never realised this had been happening because it is very, very small amount indeed. It is only because we have installed our double glazing units, with the moisture absorbing crystals, sucking up this small amount of rain water, and only in the last couple of weeks, some eight months later from when we installed the units, we are now getting leaks. They are coming from the metal tray of these crystals, which have now turned into liquid and running out of the trays. Yukkkk!

Sklight first leak sign

So, we got the task of finding and sealing the windows better, hence this upgrade and improvement task.After careful analysis, even removing a section of the plywood on the inside of our Skylight, to dig around in the body, to backtrace the water, it seems to be coming from the glass and these trays. The “walls” of the Skylight are not damp at all, so the rainwater is not coming in from around the edges, underneath the glass.

This leaves the rubber seals themselves that we got squashed on both sides of the polycarbonate plexiglass material. And when we inspected the window up on the roof the other week (very chilly and very windy), we noticed that the bottom edge is showing definite signs of water moisture underneath the plastic glass, inside the rubber strip. We can see quite clearly through the plastic. We then unscrewed the clamping aluminium bar that we used to hold down the bottom edge of the pane of glass, and it is very likely that the rain water is managing to slide pass the thin rubber padding we got under the aluminium bar, and dribbling into the screw holes we got through the plastic. We didn’t do a very good job of creating a seal to block off the clearance holes. Some of the holes had extra sealant in them, but no way enough substance. Not good at all. we decided that we will replace the thin rubber strip with a 18mm wide strip of butyl heavy duty black glue that is designed to be very long lasting and resistive to drying out and very very sticky. We did that aluminium bar on that day a couple of weeks ago and waited for better weather.

That day came today when at last, we had a calm day and reasonably sunny as well so we got back up on the roof, to first unscrew all the aluminium bars off all the windows, a total of 32 of them, leaving behind the one we did earlier, and take them all down to our tools room. The one thing that we nearly forgot to do, was to label the individual bars with a location code so that we could return each aluminium bar back to its original place.
We then used the bench sanding machine to clean off the old glue, throw away the thin rubber strips and then apply the new strip of the butyl black glue and get them ready to go back after lunch. They got a protective waxed paper on.

Rooflight front strips with Butyl adhesive applied

After lunch, we took a bucket of hot soapy water and a scrubbing pad to clean the dirt away that was trapped under the bar and a towel to dry it off (it turned out that the Sun was strong enough to help dry the plastic by itself) and we went around clockwise with one of us cleaning the bottom edge of the window, moving backwards and the other poked the screws through the holes and the waxed paper, polished the surface to make sure that it is dust free and dry, position the bar down on the holes and tightened the screws up again.

We completed the job at about 5pm and the last dozen windows was lovely because the built-in solar panels was hot from having the Sun shining on them so we had warm bums !!

We couldn’t do many photos while we were up there and no one to take any of us sitting up on the pinnacle of our house !

22 April 2024
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

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 Door panel location 1

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 2

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!”

27 March 2024
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

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

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 filled with chemical

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

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 (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

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.

14 October 2023
Skylight Double Glazing Units – Part 1

We started the new week by tackling the task of installing our new double glazed units up in our Skylight. We have twenty-two units to put up, 8 triangles and 14 rectangles.
But, the first job is to prepare the framework and make sure that it is nice and solid, without any gaps etc.
So, using our new High Platform, we went along and blasted out all the crevices with compressed air, put in short lengths of 10mm PU “sausage”, squashed into the gaps, to help to reduce the amount of sealant, squirted in plenty of sealant and bringing it all up so everything is more or less smooth and level.

Next, we gave the windows a thorough clean on both the outside and inside. Shaun went outside on top of the roof with a bucket of hot soapy water and armed with a squeegee and sat on the Skylight itself. He lent over to reach all corner of each window with the microfibre scrubber pad and then drew off the water using the rubber scraper. The windows haven’t been cleaned for several years so it took a while to get the dirt washed off. Shaun shuffled clockwise around all twenty-two windows and ran out of energy, and clean soapy water, by the time when he reached the solar panels so we will come back another day to do those.

Shaun washing skylight windows

We will invest in a long handle cleaning tool that can telescopically extend out but also has a hose pipe going up the middle to supply a flow of water at the same time while scrubbing the surface. This tool will also serve to clean our seventeen solar panels as well. It will save us having to clamber up onto the roof tiles and be able to do this task from the ground itself, or at least, on a high platform at the gutter level.While this was happening, Stephen went around inside to clean the inside surfaces of the windows, using a little gadget that scrubs and sucks up the dirty water at the same time. But, it was also needing several washing cycles and each were polished with a microfibre cloth. He was standing on our high wooden platform. These windows needed to be extra clean because they won’t get a second chance after the double glazing units gets sealed in later in a few days.

We were considering what sort of battens to secure and fix up the glass units, and after thinking about making it out of Oak, we decided to phone our local timber merchant and ordered a set of planed 21mm square beading. They come in 4.2metres lengths and we calculated that we would need 23.5 pieces so we round this up to 25 lengths just in case. It is quite shocking to how high the price of timber is these days, it cost us about £1 per metre of 21mm by 21mm planed pine wood and only a couple of years ago, we paid £1 per metre for 63mm by 38mm planed timber!!

Next we adapted a compressed air sealant dispenser tool so that we can get a constant pressure and flow of the low-modulus neutral cure glazing sealant that we need to squirt all around the edge of the 28mm thick glass unit and make sure that it is completely filled in. The problem we got with our existing tool, is that it is too long. It was designed to take a higher capacity sealant tubes that were 1½ inches longer. It is a pity that there wasn’t a unscrewable section on the body of the chamber and therefore adjust the tool to take shorter sealant tubes.
We made an internal extender to take up the slack by cutting out three circles from a piece of 12mm thick cement board, measuring 47mm diameter, using a core cutter. These three pieces were glued and bolted together to squash the joints and waited overnight for the glue to set. Next we found a little length of 50mm wide plastic pipe which is a fraction too wide to fit inside so we sliced a very small chunk out of it so it can close up to fit smoothly into the gun. Then, we “turned” the solid cement plug very fractionally so it also just fitted smoothly inside the plastic sleeve. We made sure that the cement core was exposed by 5mm or so so that we can slide on a fat O-ring rubber seal over the cement core and sit snuggly down to the edge of the plastic sleeve. The whole lot (minus the rubber O-ring) was glued all together so that it forms an air tight plug with just a small hole down the middle to allow the compressed air to enter the tube of sealant. The O-ring squashes up tight to the ends of the sealant tubes and the cement plug also seals against the original rubber seal at the bottom of the gun.

Air powered Sealant gun

It works very nicely without any air leaks! We can now go ahead to provide a steady flow of sealant for our glass units when we get them installed up into the Skylight.

We also modified some sealant nozzle to flatten them to allow the sealant to be pumped into narrow gaps around the units.

Modified sealant nozzle

Our wooden battens arrived this morning (Wednesday) and we got on with shaping all 25 pieces in our router machine attached to our router table. We just wanted to put on a single extra flat surface on the corner of the square 21mm by 21mm batten, to chamfer at a 45degree angle a third flat surface to provide a slightly more pretty finish than just plain square.

Double glazing battens

We then proceeded to give all pieces two coats of primer and undercoat, rubbing them between coats and get them ready for when we install the glass units.

The last piece of work for this week is to make the moisture extraction system. It sounds fancy but all it is, is a tray of desiccant powder with a breathable tape over the top. We bought a heap of long 1inch wide by ½inch high extruded aluminium trays, measuring 5metres long. We then cut these up to make two trays, one at the top and another one at the bottom, in each square window and one tray at the bottom of the triangle windows. We had pre-built a little “shelf” in each window, to hold these trays of desiccant but, we discovered that some of them are slightly tight so we sliced off a couple of millimetres to reduce the height of these trays. We made 36 trays in all, with eleven of them reduced in height. We also rounded the ends and then taped a small piece of aluminium tape to seal off the open ends, to retain the crystals.
Lastly, we test fitted a couple of our triangle glazing units because we discovered that the last two units that we had to order again were not correct. We were cleaning off some sticky tape that the glass people had put on and cutting off excess amount of the tough sealant that is filled inside in between the panes of glass, when we tested the angle of the “right angle” corner and discovered that wasn’t correct. We then measured all three sides and the glass people neglected to take any notice of the hypotenuse and just assumed that these two triangles were exactly right angles when they were not. For some reason, they failed to noticed that these two triangles had special angles. We took them up to the Skylight and made sure that we couldn’t get them in. We will now have to go and chase them up and get them to admit their mistake. What a Fuss! We tested two more triangle windows, number 22 and number 19. Number 22 fitted in straight away but number 19 was ever so slightly too tight and we had to make some minor adjustments to the wooden framework so we could eventually get the glazing unit to fit into place.
Finally, just for completeness, we also tested one of the square windows, number 18, and it went straight in with no fuss at all.

We will carry on in dealing with the Skylight windows so it is all done, before we resume working on the Great Room.

30 September 2023
Finally Installed the Last of the Utility Connections for Outside Expansion

While we were waiting for some replacement router tongue and groove cutters, we decided to get on and finish the final piece of work we started last year in May, see Installed Dozens of Conduits and Pipes through the External Wall for Future Expansion for more details.
We had to wait because the location had a giant bag of insulation foam rubbish occupying the area, so only when we had emptied it, and tidied it all up, that we could gain access, to dig a large hole in the soil underneath the Bedroom One’s window. We drilled four holes through the concrete blocks, just underneath the slate skirt.

Holes-drilled-for-connections

The first one was a 16mm hole for the copper pipe and connector, ready for cold water to irrigate the garden. The next two holes were drilled with a 22mm drill bit plus a short depth of 25mm to accommodate the pipe adapter on the back of the electrical waterproof junction boxes. The final hole was also done using a 22mm bit and this one is for the temperature conduit that is buried into the soil, going down 2 metres. We got out our vacuum to drill this 2metre hole!

All-connections-installed

The water connection had a temporary outside tap fitted so we can have access to water without having to run the hose right around the whole garden.

Pipe-to-a-tap-on-a-pole

All-filled-in

The last uncompleted job was to install the weatherproof mains electric socket up on the wall itself, we will do that in a couple of weeks when we can get into the other corner, Bedroom One is full of sheet material at the moment.

Electric-socket-for-M-Alcove-1

Electric-socket-for-M-Alcove-2

5 March 2022
Vapour Barrier Plastic Membrane Installed (Part 1)

To finish off filling in the outer walls, and to provide a vapour barrier too stop moisture getting into our timber elements, we proceeded to cover up the glass wool with a layer of a plastic membrane, from top to bottom. We used the thick heavy duty DPM polyethene material, comes in rolls of 4metres wide by 25metres long. We started at the Front door again (like for the glass wool) and cut strips off the roll, either 2.75metres or 3metres lengths, depending on whether we had a wall going right up to the floorboards of the first floor or to the underside of the joists of the first floor. The Great Room has another length of 3.2metres to reach the roof rafters as there are no first floor structure hanging over the Great Room.
To ensure a tight seal to the timber framework, we decided to use a line of thick high quality double sided glue, namely butyl .. .. .. that comes in rolls of 25mm width. We stuck it onto the freshly sanded wooden surfaces of the bottom footplate and along on the top-plate timber that support the first floor. Where there was plastic already up there on those sections of the wall supporting the joists of the first floor, we used another sticky tape, this time an acrylic based glue that is much thinner (and cheaper) but still very sticky to join the two layers of the plastic together.
So over the week, we proceeded to shape, cut, glue and staple the plastic membrane up going around the house to cover up the glass wool. Windows we went straight across and then cut out the middle and used the side flaps to wrap towards the oak frame of the window but we stopped and started again at the doorways.

Vapour-barrier-installed-Front-door

Vapour-barrier-installed-Great-room

Vapour-barrier-installed-H-wall

We had to pause in the middle of this, while the Conservatory Air Duct was Built Inside Wall was installed but it was fairly easy in covering the wall.
The only complicated bits were the corners and places where an internal wall meets at right angles the outer wall. They needed the plastic to go around the obstacles but also seal onto the membrane coming along the walls. That took a while to do each one in turn.
The final task left to do was to seal all the conduits that had to pierced through the plastic membrane so we used a very conformable 60mm wide butyl glue tape to wrap around the conduit and stretch flat onto the plastic.

Vapour-barrier-installed-duct-exit

Vapour-barrier-installed-sealed-up-penetrations

This concludes Part 1 of this job, Part 2 and perhaps Part 3 will be done when we have managed to get access to the sandy soil outside the window of Bedroom 1 to install more underground conduits and junction boxes, used up a lot of the CLS timber in the Great Room, move the tools and supplies in the Utility Room and finally all the roof rafters upstairs needs filling up with insulation foam board, glass wool and more of this vapour barrier membrane.

13 July 2021
Conservatory Air Duct Built Inside Wall

We spent a day or so making an air duct that will extract the hot air from the Conservatory. It needed to go inside the wall between the window and the door, going all the way from the concrete floor level and right up to the top of the wall and beyond.
We used more of our supply of 25mm thick aluminium coated insulation PU foam board, careful to retrieve ones that had no defects or wrinkles in the surfaces and sliced them up into various width strips so we build the four sides of the ducting.
But first, we had to dig out old insulation boards because we filled the space up before we remembered that we were always going to have an air duct here! It measures approximately 250mm wide by 150mm deep in the interior which is equivalent to very nearly five 100mm diameter pipes so it will have a good capacity to carry lots of air at minimal pressure loss. We even “bent” the last foam board to provide a sweep bend at the bottom of the shaft, to help the air molecules to change direction smoothly. We did this by slicing every 30mm through the back paper layer and snapping the foam to make it wiggle and still be attached to the front layer of the shiny aluminium paper, then taping this floppy piece around a large circular drum that had about a 500mm diameter and finally, spraying tiny amount of expanding PU foam into the opened up cracks to glue it all back together again.

Conservatory-extract-duct-in-P-wall-back-and-sides

We put aluminium 50mm sticky tape across all the joins inside the vertical shaft to reduce turbulence and air flow rates and finally put on the front lid, made up of three pieces and joined with more of the aluminium tape.

Conservatory-extract-duct-in-P-wall-complete

Conservatory-extract-duct-in-P-wall-exit-under-the-floor

Conservatory-extract-duct-in-P-wall-inside-the-duct

Eventually, we will make a chamber at the bottom to translate the rectangular duct into four 100mm pipes that will go across the floor towards the corner of the Great Room with the Kitchen and go back up to the first floor to join into the main air duct running down the whole building. The upper section will be finished off when we have working platforms positioned for when we need to fill in the roof rafters with more insulation foam boards.

10 July 2021
Glass Wool Fills the Air Space in Outer Walls

In preparation for filling and covering the walls we went around and planed off any of the plywood spacers between inner and outer wall posts which were sticking out from the wall, this will allow the horizontal rails to be nailed on without damaging the vapour barrier.

Sticking-out-plywood-web

Web-planed-off-smooth

It then only took a few days to insert the horrible irritating glass wool insulation into our outer walls, to fill in the airspace void between the rigid existing foam boards already in the walls and the room’s wall boards. We didn’t want to have lots of hollow sounding walls so we went around filling in this void with various thickness of glass wool. We started first with the lower section and we put in a mixture of 100mm thick wool but sometimes we needed 150mm thick. We used our spray gun foam glue to help stick these vertical strips of the wool material but we also fired 2inch long staples to mechanically hold the wool into place too.

Final-insulation-at-base-of-walls

The next job was to do the upper sections of the walls, this time using mostly 200mm thick and occasionally 150mm thick glass wool in places we had originally inserted thicker rigid foam pieces. Again, we used the PU spray glue to stick the wool in but this time we deliberately had much longer pieces and all the excess length were pushed up and through the gap at the first floor floorboard level and piled on top of the rigid foam. We did this to provide a fire break in the vertical direction just in case the PU foam causes a path for the flames to travel up and into the roof space but for the glass wool acting as a barrier. It will also protect the roof from a fire on the outside of the house getting into the roof through junction of wall and roof.

Final-insulation-in-the-walls-1

Final-insulation-in-the-walls-2

Insulation-rising-above-the-first-floor

There are sections of the walls that we cannot do right at this moment in time, mainly in the right hand end of the Great Room because of the huge pile of CLS timber, again in Bedroom 1 because we haven’t installed the conduits through the wall to the outside world and finally, in the Utility room because it is full of our tools and supplies. These sections will get done later on when we have used up much of the CLS timber and removed the obstacles outside Bedroom 1’s wall. All the left-over rolls of the glass wool are now located upstairs at the back of the house.
The next job is to cover all this yukky stuff with a vapour barrier .. !

6 July 2021
Extra Framework and Insulation Over Doors and Windows

We spent these last four days putting in extra insulation foam boards over the top of all the doors and windows. We needed to do this first because when the vapour barrier plastic membrane goes around the walls, they will go over the doors and windows, and below the windows too. So we put some extra CLS pieces horizontally, aligned to the door’s (and window’s) upper frame and then inserted a slab of OSB board pieces to provide a platform for the insulation to sit on.
The insulation was the standard PU foam boards, three layers of them so it filled from back to the front and high enough to reach the approximate level of the first floor floorboards.

Window-header-and-insulation-installed-1

Window-header-and-insulation-installed-2

Some of these regions we had to do from the first floor level itself and slide in the foam pieces in like a jigsaw but we managed it. The next job is to put in glass wool in the walls to fill the airspace between the rigid foam boards and outer surface what will be the room’s wall structure itself.

1 July 2021