Category: Windows

The Windows in house and garage, framing, glass and anything else to do with windows

Gutters, Porch and Windows

Monday was a wet day so we did other tasks inside the temporary quarters finishing off repair work caused by the Flood.
Tuesday was a nice lovely day so we got outside and finished mounting the oak pieces to build the gutters, for the last three sections of the roof, joining back to the very beginning when we started all those months ago.

FG-H-gutter-woodwork-finished

Wednesday saw the glass-fibre and resin applied to the three corners (two outside corners and one inside one connecting to the downpipe channel) before the rain came at 5pm!

FG-GH-corners-fibreglassed

Second-half-of-HI-Corner-fibreglassed-8-months-later

Thursday: Inspected the new gutters and analysed the flow of the rainwater along the side door porch’s gutter to see if we needed to jack up the middle of the beam supporting the porch’s fascia and guttering. This was all done before we put up our new aluminium support arm. The results were that nothing was adjusted as the rainwater flowed at optimum rates so we simply screwed the diagonally mounted arm into place.

Middle-porch-support-installed

Blocking-added-to-EH-corner

The afternoon was spent in the workshop processing the oak timber that forms the octagon side pieces for each window. We hadn’t attended this task for a while and we discovered that some of the oak pieces had warped very slightly and we are wondering whether that will badly affect the quality of the join when we make the octagon joints. So we took four pieces, 2 wide and 2 narrow ones, and sliced them down to the required widths of 97mm and 70mm. there are two straight ones and two of the slightly warped ones. We will then put the pieces through the router with the special cutter to form the tongue and groove joint angled (at 22.5°) and learn how they fit together with different conditions.
Friday morning duly saw the test pieces processed and the tongue and groove seem to be working just fine, including the ones that were slightly warped. This meant that we could and did carry on and we processed all the other fifty pieces of oak timber, slicing a new 45degree angled slope at a consistent width, a wider one of 97mm and a narrower one at 70mm.
On Saturday, we got on with the job of cutting the 22.5° angled tongue and groove special joint on all the pieces of oak and also rounded off the sharp edge on the wide pieces. We have two sets of oak pieces with quite a series of cuts and slices.

Window-octagon-parts-to-cover-cladding-ends

Tounge-and-groove-octagon-joints

Test-octagon-parts-glued-up

For next week, the weather forecast is for dry but chilly days so we will be working out on the roof to get the rubber liners in the gutters and then get the breathable membrane strips up and all the wooden battens nailed into place too.

26 October 2019
Membrane Installed on Section A and B with Half of Wooden Battens Plus Work on Oak Timber for Windows

This report is for the last two weeks of work, we had some of the days on other commitments, but we mostly worked on our roof with some in our workshop processing more oak during the wet days.
The first task was to put in our Rubber liner into the gutters, in section “A”, “B”, “C” and “D”,. It was a bit hit and miss in finding clear weather but we managed to complete this task over two afternoons.

The next task was to complete the Hips and Ridge lines, building up the layers to form the edge of the main slate surface and allow for our flashing slates to protect these edges.

Then we concentrated on putting up the breathable membrane on just the “A” and “B” sections, to allow us, later on, to get on with the job of putting up slates (which will, in turn, allow us to do another rearrangement of our working platforms so we can reach the remaining of the “E” section and go around the corner onto the “F” Side Door Porch).
The “A” roof is the largest section and it needs 55 rows of tile battens, each one being at least 10 metres long each. By the end of the 2 weeks, we have got that done with half the battens installed, but at least, we now have two sections rainwater proof.

Roof-A-half-battened

Roof-B-half-battened

When it was raining or strongly forecast to be (which amounted to about 4 days in total), we got on with the operation of planing our Oak timber to make the decorative Octagon shaped ‘pillar’ that stands on each side of each window. We had sliced wider planks in half with a 45degree cut and we had thought that we weren’t going to get very thick finished pieces because there seems to be lots of patches of “dips” and “bulges”. We did actually reject about ten planks anyway and got replacement ones from storage. We learnt a valuable lesson about Oak timber (well any timber!) and how random and natural they are!
We ended up with 54 finished, all 20mm thick after planing . Half are the slightly wider ones for the front facing piece and another 27 smaller ones for the angled piece going into the window frame.

Oak-window-octagon-parts-planed

After the gutter rubber was installed we noticed that water collected in the front porch gutter i.e. the ‘C’ gutter, It was over 20mm deep before starting to flow away. This shows that the temporary legs we installed when we built the porch are not supporting the roof properly. We need to install proper support before loading hundreds of kilos of slates on the roof! We need strong legs which will stand up to being bashed by materials moving around, so we decided to use metal posts. As the posts go into the ground we wanted rust proof ones, we started looking at stainless steel and even got as far as trying to order some but the supplier did not deliver to our location. Whilst searching for other suppliers we looked at aluminium (which is as strong as Stainless steel) and found it was half the price of stainless so we bought Aluminium instead. The post will be 50mm square hollow tubes with 4mm thick walls with 6mm thick plates at the top and bottom. The final task of this period of work, was to dig three holes at the spots where the metal posts will go. The holes were dug down 450mm to the standard frost level point and concrete was poured in to form solid pads about 450mm square and 150mm thick. The metal posts will then stand on these pads and stretch up to connect to the framework forming the porch, about 3.2metres high.

1st-Hole-for-prch-post

2nd-Hole-for-prch-post

3rd-Hole-for-prch-post

Aluminium-ready-for-porch-posts

Next week, we will carry on installing all the other half of the wooden battens for “A” and “B” roof sections while we wait for the concrete to cure and strengthen and start putting up Slates, firstly to finish off the last little bit of the “P” and around onto to “A”.

17 August 2019
A Mixed Bag of Tasks and Jobs Done This Week

A week of a mixed bag of lots of little tasks, jobs and errands, with a mixed bag of super-hot days, thunderstorms and a cool damp day to finish the week!
For the first job on Monday was to finish as much as possible the of the ‘P’ section of the roof, putting on several hundred more Slates. We couldn’t finish it as the last few columns need to have access from the other roof surface (the ‘A’ section along the front of the house) so we had to stop there and started the process of tidying up everything off the platform modules, ready for them to be moved.

P2-Slated-as-far-as-we-can-go-now

But first, after almost forgetting to do it, we washed out the finished gutters using the pressure washer and sanded smooth the joints (removing the expanded glue) and surfaces along the guttering. Then we removed all the edging plywood strips off our working platforms, removed all the screws joining the modules (there were eight of them) together and released them from the walls of the house too.
But we couldn’t move them for two reasons number 1 was that we had two crate’s full of Slates were in the wrong position, or rather, they clashed with the need to locate the line of our working platform to go along the front of the house and secondly, the old little covered storage hut (containing sheet materials) was blocking the route when we needed to move the eight modules around to the front.
So the next job was to make a new storage rack inside the house, this time, a four layered construction with room for a large pallet on the concrete floor for the cement boards.
After the external storage hut was emptied, we took it apart and recycled some of the bits and screws but most of it was beyond use and carried away ready for burning or other items put into the rubbish bins.
Now the next job was to empty two crates of Slates and we moved about 3200 of them and piled them on top of our other four crates. We used our large flat bed trolley to help us with that massive heavy job!

Slates-moved

Now at last, we could move the eight modules, one at a time. We made it easier for us by clamping a wooden bar across the legs and carrying each one the long way around the house. The eight modules gave us the scope to work on all the ‘A’ section, all the ‘B’, ‘C’ and ‘D’ and the first bit of the ‘E’ sections of the roof, this is nearly all the sections along the front of the house. We will have to move two more modules to enable us the access to the rest of the ‘E’ section to the corner with ‘F’ but we will do that later on.
That was the end of Wednesday and we finished a little early too because it was very hot (our air temperature was 33°C and the ground was reading 40°C on the sandy soil but our slates on the roof was reading 50°C!!

Thursday, we avoided the hot sun by working in our workshop to process the next set of Oak timber planks, to make a series of narrow flat vertical pieces to form the octagon shaped pillars on each side of the windows. We brought in all the 27mm thick by 2metre oak planks, about 75 in total. We will only need some of them as we are making a set of 100mm wide parts and a set of 70mm wide parts, 26 of each (we should be able to get two parts from many of the wider planks). We would like to pull out the nicest quality ones so we try to avoid those ones with knots and twisted grains. We first chopped all the ends, removing any split ends and other defects and got started on slicing one straight edge using our track saw. We managed about 25 planks so far.

Lots-of-Oak-planks-for-window

We had Friday off because of other commitments but we resumed on Saturday and catching a break in the rainy weather, we went out to fix and join all the eight platform modules together and anchor them to the building, also putting on the edge plywood edging strips too.

Scaffold-platforms-along-ABC

Scaffold-platforms-along-CDE

That concludes the mixed bag of things we did this week, but at least, we now have everything ready so we can resume work on the roof, this time along the front of the building where we continue putting on the gutters, fibre-glassing the corners, inserting the rubber and then the membrane and everything else!

27 July 2019
Continuing with P-Q roof and P-A Corner plus Progress on Oak Window Sills and Headers

On Monday this week, taking advantage of the good weather, we proceeded to glass-fibre and resin the two complex junctions and the corner we installed last week. The two Downpipe Channels on either side of the Conservatory, designated P-Q1 and P-Q2, and the outer corner for the P and A roofs, the P-A corner.
These were rubbed down and smoothed off, removing bubbled up left-over glue etc. Next, the glass-fibre matting was cut up to fit the various surfaces and angles and then painted into place with the base resin layer. After rubbing that lot down smooth, the final top-coat black resin layer was applied and left to set overnight.

Q1-downpipe-finished

Q2-Downpipe-finished

PA-corner-finished

The other little job was to complete building up the layers of the plywood strips for the P-A Hip line, up to the kerb.
Upon the next day, in the afternoon (the morning was spent doing an emergency repair in a friend’s bathroom shower unit), we tidied up the fibreglass-fibre coated junctions and also reconnected the drain pipes to the Downpipe Channels too, all before the rain arrived later on.

After that small job, we returned to the workshop to continue with the job of cutting the slope into the other set of Oak timber pieces, this time for the Headers (the top of the windows). We planed the 14 pieces including our prototype piece.

Headers-sloped

Then everything was cleaned up and put away, we had finished with the planer for the time being and generally swept up the workshop.
The next several days, while we waited for the wet weather to go pass, we shaped the ends (both ends) of both the Sill and Headers so they will fit into the 13 window holes already in the house. We built two jigs to guide our circular saw to cut the various lines in a couple of directions, and produce the first step to make these complex shapes.

End-shaping-jigs

Sawing-end-of-sill-with-jigs

The saw cuts were manually finished off using an old-fashioned carpenters saw because it is made of a thicker metal to help slide into the pre-made slots. We also made use of the jigsaw to help.

Small-window-sill-ends-cut

Sills-and-Headers-with-ends-cut

The remainder of the week, Friday and Saturday, we got on with the task of applying the breathable and rubber membranes to the P and Q roofs and building up the counter and tile battens.
The first job was to install the rubber strips into the gutters, on the P roof (both the 1st and 2nd sections, either side of the conservatory) and used the double layer contact glue to stick down the rubber ends to the glass-fibre black surfaces. Then we glued remainder of the rubber that goes up the slope using the rubber glue, again allowing the two surfaces to dry a bit before carefully rolling the rubber membrane up the roof. We wanted to ensure that we don’t get rainwater slipping behind the rubber and into the gutters but on the wrong side (o boy!) as it will take a few days to get the whole P roof all covered in the breathable membrane and the chances are that we will get more rain!!

P1-Gutter-lining-glued-in

P2-Gutter-lining-glued

The last job of Friday, was to stick on the three layers plywood strips along the ridge line of the Q roof and also the outer edge too, all ready for the flashing slates (with its rubber under-skirt) to be applied.

For our last day of the week, we then got the two sets of valley counter battens that will support the glass-fibre trough installed, sitting on top of a metre wide breathable membrane. The two came together at the top, along with the ridge line. We put on excess lengths of battens, just in case we need it all when we sort out the complex arrangement of the main slates and the flashing slates meeting together and maintaining waterproofing etc.
The last task was to lay down the first row of the breathable membrane along the bottom, overlapping the rubber by 100mm and going over the hip and valley ends. This was secured down with the counter battens at each rafter position. We got the P1 section covered as well as both sides of the Q done too.

P1-start-of-membrane-and-battens

Q2-Valley-and-start-of-membrane

22 June 2019
Making Oak Window Frames Started

Because of the changeable and very wet weather we had this week, we decided to switch over to our backup plan and work on our Windows and sort out the Oak Timber for the framework.
We got 13 windows (9 large, 3 medium and 1 small), each having a Sill and a Header plus a octagon shaped “pillar” vertically on each side, made from three different Oak timber sizes. For this week, we worked on the Sill and Header pieces, using 50mm thick Oak timber planks. We pulled out from storage all those planks that were wider than 160mm. The Sills will need to be 175mm deep and the Headers 145mm deep.

30-pieces-of-Oak-for-window-sills-and-headers

We found 30 planks in all and we have rejected four of them for being too warped or twisted down the length. We may have to use one or two of these rejects if we find ourselves running out.
The next job was to slice a straight edge to establish a base line to work from. We had to use a standard mobile circular saw to get a deep enough blade depth as our Oak timber were, in some cases, deeper than 50mm. The track saw we had, which would have been ideal for this job, could only cut about 48mm thick.

One-edge-straitened

The next task was to pass all the pieces through the big circular saw module in our workbench. We selected 12 pieces for the wider 178mm set and another 12 for the smaller 153mm set plus one left over which we cut in half (for our single narrow window), one each for the two sets. Initially, we had to cut very slowly as the equipment was prone to overheating and the safety protection breaker kept tripping. Also the blade was getting hot too and leaving scorch marks on the Oak. We decided to change the blade to a branded and pleasantly discovered that it started cutting much more cleanly, a little bit faster and no heating at all!! Just shows you that one should really change the original blade that came with the machine to a more professional branded blade!!

After all that fuss, we got our planer equipment out, plus our two extension tables and proceeded to plane one flat side of all the 26 planks plus two spare “test” pieces for prototyping the complicated shapes later on.
After careful analysis at this half way point, we then earmarked which plank would go for the Large windows (9 of these), another 3 for the medium windows and the odd one for the narrow window. We also flipped around each piece to find the best edge for the nicest visual presentation too.
The next stage of operation is to convert the planer machine into thickener mode (we put away the long two extension tables) and got out four roller support stands and using a long straight aluminium bar to adjust the heights of the rollers (we had to do this every time we adjusted the thickener to plane off more material) and got all 28 pieces planed down to a general 46mm thickness. The finished surfaces were not perfect because we knew that much of the “bad” parts will disappear when we cut the slope in, and also there are sections that will be cut away to develop the outer wings of the sill and headers.

Ready-for-slope-cutting

The final job for this week (day 4 of wet rainy weather, we measured that we had 23mm of rain in that time!!) was to build a angled support jig that will guide our oak planks through the planer and cut the slope on them.

Planing-the-slope-on-the-sills

We managed to do all the wider 173mm Sill timber pieces.

Sills-finished-planing-1

Sills-finished-planing-2

We stopped here because the weather changed for the better and we could get on with outside tasks.
When we get wet weather again, we will continue with the job of cutting the slope into the narrower set (the headers) and then cut the fancy shaped ends and round off the edges etc.

15 June 2019
Sorting Oak Timber for Windows
Because we had an interruption of work outside, due to rain all day Wednesday and also Thursday morning, we switched over to doing alternative work indoors. This time, we tackled the task of sorting out the design and quantity for the Oak timber used in our windows in the house. The windows will be our next task to do after we have finished putting the slates on the roof.

We have 13 windows as follows:
- 9 large windows, 1700mm wide
- 2 medium windows, 1100mm wide
- 2 small windows, 500mm wide
They all have a height of 1600mm and are set at 500mm above the floor level.

This is the basic design of all windows (showing the front and side cross-sectional views)

The glass we are planning to use is triple glazing units which measures 50mm thick so some adjustments is needed to the framing to accommodate this. We had originally planned to use double glazing, one on the outside and one on the inside. But we can get better performance in thermal insulation using the triple glazing units at barely higher prices since triple glazing is becoming more popular.

The Oak timber summary (of 2m long planks) is:
- 12 pieces of 50 x 160 mm for the sills
- 12 pieces of 50 x 160 mm for the lintels
- 26 pieces of prime 35 x 95 mm for vertical framing pieces
- 52 pieces of 20 x 90 mm for the octagon “covers”
- 52 pieces of 25 x 20 mm for the glass beading
We will start processing these oak pieces whenever we have rain in the future and build up a stockpile inside our dry house, ready for the day when we do the windows!
9 May 2019
Quantifying the amount of Oak Planks

Today was spent on the computers, looking at the guttering, the facia and the windows, to decide on what kind of Oak we will need, what size and how much. The items we are examining are as follows:
· Facia: This would be 150mm high and at least 27mm or 40mm thick.
· Gutters: These will be 100mm high by 100mm wide and probably 20mm to 25mm thick.
and for windows ..
· Vertical frames: 40mm to 50mm thick by 75mm wide
· Lintel and sill: 50mm thick by 150mm wide.
It seems that the prices for Oak comes in a variety of different packages, bundles where width can be a little random but all the same thickness and length which is about £1200 per cubic metre of total Oak, or more precise and controlled width along with thickness and length will cost more at about £1500 per cubic. These are for seasoned Oak, but there are green waney boards that comes in at a starting price of £750 per m³.
It is an interesting choice and we have to decide on what level of work we want to do ourselves, what chance we will take to what comes in a package and what the quality of the supplied Oak is too.
More analysis and calculations are needed before we can send off the final shopping list to these timber suppliers and get a final quote.

16 September 2017