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Plumbed in the Hot Water Tank and the Pump into Hot Water System
We got on in tackling the next task of connecting up the Hot Water tank and the Pump to the pipework that is running around the house. This high capacity 28mm pipes forms a circulation system to supply constantly hot water to all our rooms. We started at the Hot Water tank and we have six connections to do. They are as follows:
- Overflow
- 28mm High and Low
- 22mm to internal heat exchanger coils
- 15mm Filling
We needed to get these pipes out from the Hot Water tank, over the other side of the vertical air duct, to bend down towards the concrete floor of the Utility Cupboard. We needed to avoid the various removable hatches and modules on the air duct itself so we screwed on a couple of horizontal battens on the side of the air duct to help guide and anchor the pipes into place. That copes with the five water pipes but the Overflow pipe is different. This emergency piece of pipework needed to get down pass everything and then run horizontally off towards a U-bend trap, ready to go further into the waste pipework. We dealt with this pipe first because it will get covered up by all the other pipes. So we routed it out horizontally for a few inches from the tank and then immediately turned 90degrees down against the insulation until it reached the air duct that disappears under the floorboards. We then turned 90degrees, plus a little 45degrees horizontally so that we could run the overflow pipe horizontally along just inside the wooden framework of the cupboard, making sure that it constantly is travelling on a downwards slope. All the joints were solvent welded together so it is now permanent.

Hot Tank Overflow
The next pipe connection to do on the tank is the 28mm diameter pipe that sends the water deep inside the tank. This is our Low filling point and the water will always flow down this pipe and push water down at the bottom of the tank. This means that the circulating hot water coming back from the rest of the house, will immediately connect to this pipe. The hot water return comes into the cupboard, goes through a T-junction with a 15mm side connection that has a shutoff valve and a garden hose connection point (for allowing drainage of the pipework). The other side of the T-junction immediately has a right angle compression brass piece which connects to a length of 28mm plastic pipe to go up and bends around to connect to the tank we mentioned already.

The next connection on the tank is the first of the 22mm to the heat exchanger coils and that came out and also followed around in a gentle curve but diverted back towards the wall once it is across the air duct, ready to be connected to all the Water Management System. We repeated this with another 22mm pipe to connect to the second tank connection. The next point along the side of the tank is the 15mm filling point and again, that came out and also followed the route of the other 22mm pipes, back to the Water Management System. And finally, the last connection, is the second 28mm pipe for extracting hot water and sending it around the house. This pipe came out just like the other ones, and it curved around but, this time, goes slightly backwards so that it can connect to another isolating manually operated valve and a flow rate sensor, before going through a flexible rubber pipe to join to the pump. The other side of the pump then bends around in a tight sweep to go down to the second isolating valve and then connected to the main 28mm circulation system running around the house.

Hot Tank Connections

Hot Tank Pump

The next task to do, before we can test the circuit and all our connections, is to go around installing a pair of isolating valves at each tap-off point at each of the Bedrooms, Bathroom, Great Room and the end of the circuit in the Kitchen. In the Kitchen, we installed a short length of 15mm plastic pipe to join the two ends together, so that we can test the circuit for any leaks.

We then tested the plumbing by sticking the garden hose into the hot water tank and shoving the hose up the second 28mm extracting pipe inside the tank, to fill up the entire pipe circuit running around the house. We had to do that because the pump needed priming (filling it up with water) so that it has something liquid to suck upon. These kinds of pump do not run dry and cannot suck air, hence the need to prime the circuit with water and remove the trapped air inside. While the water was going in, we went to each tap-off point and check for leaks.
None so far ..

Once the pump is primed and connected to the electronic controller, we ran the pump at various speeds and pressures, to thoroughly test the entire system and make sure we don’t have any leaks. AND, We didn’t !!

The flow rate sensor was sending a pulse every litre that is flowing through the pump every second and at the highest power setting, we managed to get a 47litres per minute rate. And that is with a little 15mm pipe acting as the temporary bypass in the Kitchen. If we had a full size bypass, then the rate could be quite a bit faster!! And this is deliberately what we want to see, so that when there are sudden demands of hot water in two or three different locations, the pump can adjust itself to supply even more hot water and the human won’t notice the change, especially something like the shower.

This concludes getting the Hot Water circulating system commissioned and not having any leaks!
17 May 2025
Created a Sheet Material Hoist for Upper Level

We spent the last couple of days creating a much needed hoist to haul up lots and lots of sheet material up to our Upper Level. We have a great number of 18mm thick OSB sheets, each weighing 25kg each, and our even heavier 33kg sheets of the 10mm thick Fermacell – high performance plaster boards.
The first thing to design and create is the Cage that will hold up to five sheets and the whole thing will be hoisted up. We decided to build a complete frame using 63mm CLS planks and heavy duty right angle brackets on each corner, to both ensure a proper solid joints and also for the steel rope to hook into the groove on the back of the brackets. We put a double pair of CLS planks on the bottom edge for extra strength and then three large pieces of 11mm OSB boards to provide racking stiffness and also to retain the sheets material we are transporting. We also put on an extended bottom shelf with a batten on the edge, to make sure our sheets will not slide free and come crashing down to the ground floor. The steel wire that goes around the whole Cage, was a bit tricky to install. We wanted to tension it up as tight as we could so that there was not too much slack in the wire when the electric hoist pulls on the wire to pull the whole Cage up. We finally managed to tension up the rope by using a hand operated cranking racket device we found in our Garage. We used three clamping grips to join the two tails together.

Next, we created the two vertical tracks for the Cage to travel in. The Cage will have caster wheels bolted to it and these wheels will run inside the track. The track is made using three 63mm CLS full length planks, using the straightest ones we could find without bows and bends. These three planks were screwed together and then repeated for the second track. The next item to put on the top of these two vertical tracks, is a C channel steel beam. We had one that we had swopped out for a wooden beam so we had a 3.7metre length lying around. Our Cage measures 2600mm wide so we need the two vertical tracks to be positioned slightly wider than that. Hence, we sliced the steel down to 2800mm wide, enough so that we could mount two more right angled brackets to hold the C-Channel in place. All this assembly was done while the two tracks and the Cage is lying on the floor of our Great Room, underneath the Gallery. We then mounted the electric winch in the middle so that the steel cable with its hook is approximately centred. The next trick we had to perform, is to lift the whole lot up into its vertical position. It is rather heavy especially with the steel beam situated at the top. We employed a four way block and tackle and plenty of rope to slowly lever the whole contraption upwards and then shuffled it so that it was leaning on the Gallery.

We slid on a couple of wooden footplates to help spread the load of the hoist across the floorboards, especially that we will be lifting up a potential weight of more than 150kg loads! We also put on a toggle to rotate from the top edge of the Cage, to ensure that the sheets will not tilt forward. We then put on a further four caster wheels to brace the Cage sideways so it didn’t jam on the vertical tracks. Plus also, we noticed that the steel rope was still being pulled quite a bit when the electric winch lifted the Cage so we decided to bolt on a pair of U bolts to straddle the steel rope in the middle, where the hook is connected. This made it much tighter and didn’t suffer very much stretching this time.

Sheet Lift 1

Sheet Lift 2

We put on guard rails around the hoist up on the Gallery and everything is well secure and safe now for operation later on this year.

12 May 2025
Hot Water Tested

Over the last couple of weeks, at various spare opportunities during our work around the house, is to deal with our Hot Water tank. We wanted to test it for leaks, run the water right up to maximum temperature and see how long the heat stays in.

One of the first steps to do before we proceeded to test the tank, is to put on our cement lid on to a rim of silicone, to create a seal. We put a line of parcel tape on the underside of the cement board so it didn’t stick to the wet silicone sealant, and just patted and laid the heavy lid down on top.
We did put on four layers of PU foam board on top, creating a insulation layer of 160mm thick.

We filled up the Hot Water tank that we previously installed a few weeks ago. Then, using spare solar energy from our roof panels, we heated up the water a few hours each day (when it was bright with sun) and eventually, got to 80°C. There were no leaks! Yippee!

We also tested the tank for any hot spots by using our Infra-Red camera sensor that gives a calibrated picture, showing actual temperatures and everything. We noticed that the back edge had a bloom of rising heat drifting up and we realised that it seems to be hot water vapour that is escaping the lid and the seal.

The temperature seems to be dropping at about an 1°C per hour, which is mostly because we still have two large uninsulated sections where the pipes and electric cables comes out the tank. Our calculations suggest that if we had a solid insulation of at least 100mm thickness, without any missing chunks, the temperature should last much longer at about 6hours for each 1°C drop.

Once the hot water cooled down to ambient surrounding levels, we inspected the lid and internals. We noticed that the lid has very slightly coiled up in the heat, and also the under side (exposed to the steam), had sprouted some limescale deposits of some kind. We hadn’t sealed the cement material against water so it looks like that the steam had managed to penetrate the substance and caused this side-effect. We cleaned it off using a piece of sand paper and decided to find some roofing rubber membrane we had left-over from doing the Garage roof. This will withstand the steam and protect the lid. We also installed ten captive nuts and bolts around the edge of the lid so we could flatten the lid back down on to the silicone seal again.

We will do another test soon, but after we had constructed the air ventilation that is situated next to the tank.

30 March 2025
Installing Air Ducts Underneath Utility Room and the Hallways

Today, we started the task of installing the air ducting for our fresh air. We decided to tackle this particular job now as we are waiting for more building supplies to come, plus also, we are waiting for warmer weather to stop the condensation from forming up in the Skylight. We need to dry out the moisture before we continue replacing the lining up in the Skylight.

The Air Ducting is needed to be built, to take our fresh air from the Utility Room, down underneath the floor, across the room, into the hall and down long the hall, going all the way to the Great Room and the Conservatory. This distance is 22metres approximately. We got a pile of left-over chipboard boards, that already had a coat of varnish painted on them, to seal them against moisture. There are twelve sheets, measuring 580mm wide by 2400mm long. We needed to sliced these boards up in such a way that we had the section in Hall Three created with 150mm high sides as the framework for supporting the flooring was done in a different method., compared to the rest of the flooring. And, Hall Three is about 5metres long, which is two sheets. So, we sliced two boards up, making the 150mm wide strips and the left-over piece will then become the base board of the ducting. We needed two more 150mm sides so we passed another one of our twelves boards through the table saw twice more, so we ended up with four equal 150mm strips. Now, we adjusted the saw table to a new width of 178mm because the rest of the framework under the floorboards, has more room but slightly narrower. We can fit in a 400mm wide base board instead of the 430mm that is in along Hall Three and after taking off 400mm the original board width of 580mm, we were left with 180mm. but before we go for that size, we have to take into account the thickness of the saw blade itself, which is just over 2.1mm thick. This is why we have gone for 178mm. So we sliced seven more boards to produce a single strip of 178mm and a left-over piece of 400mm. Now, we are left with two boards and we proceeded to slice these up into six 178mm strips, three off each board. And finally, one of our left-over piece, we also passed through the saw table to produce that seventh strip, to go with the first set of seven, to make the two sides of the Ducting, for each of the seven base boards.

Sliced Up Boards

Sliced Boards 2

So, starting in the Utility Room, we lifted a strip of floorboards, the line next to the Utility Cupboard that will contain the tumble dryer cabinet, the vacuum machine and small cupboards. There is a couple of layers of 50mm thick PU foam boards sitting on top of the concrete so the Ducting can sit on top of them. It just so happens that the gap between the foam boards and the floor joist running around the edge of our Utility Cupboard, is 200mm high. This is ideal because our base boards are 22mm thick and our sides are 178mm high, and fancy that, that makes 200mm in total !! We proceeded to saw out an rectangle hole through the cupboard wall, which is made up of two layers of 18mm OSB and one layer of 10mm Fermacell plasterboard. We sliced a 400mm wide by 200mm high hole, and our base board now can slide all the way along and into the Cupboard.

Across utility

Next, we built a side-shoot off to the side cupboard that houses the tumble dryer cabinet and the vacuum cleaner system so that they can have fresh air, plus also the Study Room upstairs needs a connection to our fresh air supply as well. Oh yes, the Utility Room itself also needs a heated fresh air supply as well, plus also, the vacuum system will need a supply of cooler air, to keep the motor from overheating. We realised that this side branch cannot have any control valves or flaps because it will be underneath the floorboard and they will be glued and screwed down (eventually!), which means, we cannot service the mechanisms etc. Hence why we are having a fairly large opening in the main duct and having it angled into the side branch. We used a larger piece of our coated OSB board to make this junction.

Side branch in utility

We then carried on with the 400mm wide base board, turning the corner at an approximate 45degree angle and headed out underneath the doorway into the Hall, to connect diagonally to the next straight section running down Hall Three.

Now, we took our vertical side pieces, the first ones being 178mm tall, to go from the Utility Cupboard towards the doorway. But, we realised that they were too high to allow us to slide a 6mm lid into place. So, off we go back to the saw table and slice off another 8mm, to give us room to get them in.
For our side branch, we cut the compound angle on both pieces, half 45degrees, so that the joint was nice and neat. When it came to the side pieces for going under the doorway, it is a change of hight again, because the main ducting in the Hall is slightly higher up and slightly wider, being 150mm high and 430mm wide. So, that meant that the sides needed to be trimmed so that it fitted the gentle slope up, including to remember the extra 8mm gap to get our lid in. It was tight, very tight but we managed it.
Now, we had to put in lots of pocket screws into the side walls, to help screw the pieces tight down to the base board, plus a load of glue as well.

Turn into the hall

Once the glue had dried, we went around shaping the corners so that the air can flow more smoothly around the bends, especially the outside corner where we put in a thin sheet of plastic that can gently guide the air around the bend. We then taped up all the joints, corners and so on, with aluminium metal foil tape, to make sure that the joints are air tight and also provide a smoother path for the air too.

Next, the lids were made of just 6mm MDF boards. We Got a full sheet off our rack and coated one side with two layers of varnish, to seal it in against water moisture.
We then sliced three strips off the narrow direction, creating 400mm wide pieces by 1200mm long. We proceeded to to slide each one into place over the air duct, cutting the necessary angles, to make them fit and going around the corner. We used a piece of carboard to “map” out the shape of the lid and then transferred it over to the MDF sheet, to cut the finished article. We did both the side branch going into the side cupboard, and also the bend towards the hallway using this method.

Corner Template

Next, we screwed the lids down and then taped up the joints with more aluminium tape, to seal against any leaks.

Covers on in Utility

Finally, before laying the floorboards back down again, we drilled two 70mm holes into the wall of the side cupboard, and inserted two lines of our 50mm flexible conduit. This is going to be the hot fresh air supply for the coat hanging and footwear rack section, over beside the main exterior door.

50mm Ducts in Utility

Now, we carried on down Hall Three, this time, laying down 430mm wide base boards and 150mm high sides. We made little wooden wedges so that we could jack up the air duct so that it is tight underneath the cross rails that are the framework holding up the floorboards. We then crossed diagonally slightly at the Cross road Centre, which we changed over to 400mm wide and 175mm sides. The base board actually stays the same level, it is the lids that goes upwards because the framework design for the floorboards changes to have 63mm CLS planks going flat across, instead of the more traditionally upright aspect. That gives us more room for the air duct to be taller by another 25mm, and we could reduce the width down a bit as well.

Anyway, we joined the Crossroad ducting in, having to cut the ends at an angle and then resumed the straight run down Hall One towards the Great Room. We again, had to cut a slight angle for joining to the base board in the Great Room. By this time, we were running very low on material as we had originally been using the pile of left-over chipboard floorboard pieces from building the First Floor and all the Ground floor rooms too. But, we just had enough for us to get three quarters the way across the Great Room. This is fine because the final destination for this ducting, is to supply fresh air to the Conservatory and we are planning to have an adaptor converting the output to four or five individual 50mm conduits, or perhaps 68mm rigid plastic pipework that we got loads of as well and taking fresh air to various locations around inside the Conservatory.

Everything was glued into place and one or two occasional pocket screws as well, to help hold things together while the glue dried. The doorway into the Great Room was a little bit more complex because the joists running across the doorway had 63mm CLS in their upright orientation so we had to fill in the gaps upwards and then cover it up with lots of aluminium tapes to provide a smooth transition from one side to the other side.

Hall Ducts built (1)

Hall Ducts built (2)

To add to this scheme of providing a smooth transition from one side, or chamber, to the next chamber, we made lots of small rectangular plastic strips to go underneath the cross rail, inside the ducting. We glued and stapled these clear thin strips and this helps to block off any air gaps that our lids may have generate. So we wanted to reduce any leaks as much as possible.

The next job is to make the lids. We estimated that we needed two-and-a-half sheets of our 12mm thick MDF boards. We proceeded to apply a nice thick coat of varnish on all three of them and allowed that to dry overnight. Next, we sliced 5 pieces of 400mm, well actually, 398mm wide pieces on our table saw!! We did five pieces off each sheet and the sixth left-over one was exactly 430mm, which is exactly what we wanted. We repeated this on the second sheet and then slice two more 430mm wide pieces off our third sheet.

Then, we cut each one to exactly fit each section. We started in the Great Room and worked our way all the way to the Utility Room. We drilled 6mm holes down both long sides of each lids, three of them and then screwed in a captive nut into the side wall of the ducting. Each lid now has six bolts holding it down.

Lids all fixed down

That concludes the main 25metres of air duct, to deliver the fresh air to all our rooms!

29 March 2025
Dealing With Desiccant Dribbling All Over Plywood Liners – Part 1

Now, we have reached a major decision to make. We have been thinking about the problem where our attempt to control the condensation up above the double glazing had failed and the calcium chloride desiccant material has dribbled all over our plywood boards that we have lining up inside our Skylight. We tried to dry this constantly moist surfaces, using both a hot air blower and even a gas blow torch, to cook the crystals, trying to break them down etc. But, alas, it didn’t work. The plywood would go wet again after a day or so, and it is not because new water was dribbling in as we had glorious sunshine and dry weather for 10 days. It is probably the original desiccant is reabsorbing the moisture from surrounding surfaces, or straight from the air.
So, what do we do?

Do we try to cover this mess up? Put a line of plastic over it to stop the moisture staining our finished plasterboards? Or, paint a thick layer of varnish on the back of the plasterboard?

But, this is not good at all. This means that the plywood will stay damp for years and years because the calcium chloride desiccant holds on to the water forever. Also, the calcium chloride liquid is slightly corrosive and we got our main heavy duty steel RSJ beams up there supporting the whole roof and Skylight.

No, we are going to play safe.

This means ripping off all the “infected” plywood and replacing it with fresh new material. We decided that we can use 11mm OSB boards instead of plywood, as it is not a structural element of the Skylight. We ordered 10 sheets and they will arrive soon.

In the meantime, we went along the Skylight, on our trusty platform, to pull off each piece. They were both screwed and glued on!! It was hard work yanking off each sheet! The glue was so strong that we were actually ripping a layer of ply off the back of the boards! We tidied up all these broken strips of ply, removed broken screws and generally got it cleaned up.

Lining stripped

A contaminated board

Now that we have removed the plywood covers, we can see in some locations where the desiccant liquid has managed to get behind the plywood and soak the timber and the top of the steel RSJ itself.

So, we need to neutralise his liquid and the web says “use soda powder, which is sodium carbonate” or “use baking powder, which is sodium bicarbonate” and this converts the calcium chloride into calcium carbonate, which is limescale. It also produces table salt, Sodium Chloride and in the case of the bicarbonate powder, also produces carbon dioxide gas.
Nice and simple!
We had washing soda in our washing supplies so we mixed a good heap of the powder into hot water and dissolved it all. We then filled up a spray bottle and went around squirting on the damp patches and saw an instant reaction where it went white. This being the calcium carbonate. We also got a large sponge and literally soaked the surfaces of the plywood pieces that we had laid out flat on top of our Swimming Lane outside. This also caused the wet patches to go white too. Hopefully, that will solve that problem and once it is dried out, there will be just a mixture of calcium carbonate and sodium chloride salts sitting there and minding its own business.

We also liberally sprayed all the spots on the floorboard where the desiccant had dripped down from the Skylight. This includes the stair case as well. We deliberately soaked a good amount on the first three steps at the top of the stairs and also wiped the next three steps down too.

But, in the meantime, we have been attempting to dry out all the condensation that managed to freeze on the outer pane of plexiglass. We had made it worse ourselves because we kept running the air fan all night as well, and unfortunately, we hadn’t realised that the air that we pumped into the Skylight was getting more and more humid, and alas, the moisture froze on the plexiglass, especially during the icy cold weather we had been having.

So, we needed to get rid of all this moisture first, before we could continue doing the repair work up in our Skylight. to achieve this aim, we rigged up an air drying chamber, using a large rubble sack, put in a water proof plastic tray and put a folded up mesh situated above the tray. The mesh held a large pile of Calcium Chloride crystals, which will grab the moisture out of the air passing through the plastic rubble sack. We made a hole at the other end and connected our air fan, to continue pumping dryer air into our Skylight.

The results of this operation is that we are slowly winning the battle against all the moisture. The Skylight windows are slowly clearing away and soon we can resume work. We have already had to empty two loads of dissolved crystals and we have just ordered a couple more bags of the Calcium Chloride. We will continue with this operation for another couple of weeks.

While all this had been going on, We have been working on our Ventilation system downstairs!!

25 March 2025
Building the Skylight Boxing, creating the Air Ducting and installing more insulation

While the weather and temperature are cool at the moment, we took the opportunity to complete the Skylight while we still had the work platform available. The Skylight is a good 3metres (10feet) up and it would be very awkward to to reach that high up on just stepladders, so, it is just prudent to get on in finishing everything that needs to be done up there, before we have to dismantle our large work platform.One of the first task that had to be done before we got into the Skylight, is to move our stack of 63mm CLS timber planks! It was situated going across the width of the large room just near the Gallery, which meant that it was rather in-the-way of our Skylight work. So, we simply rotated the pile around to the right and stacked up the 200+ planks out of the way, so we can move our platform back and forth lots of times, and get the maximum benefit at a much reduced time and effort. It only took about an hour to move all the timber, which is well worth the effort!!

Rotating CLS

Just to recap to what we got up there in the Skylight, is a 50mm square steel beams going across from one side to the other side, that supports a similar 50mm square steel post going upwards which has the wooden ridge beam running on top, supporting the Skylight Windows themselves. These steel beams will define and form the basic shell, or box, to cover up the solar panels, to hide the air ducting and provide somewhere to house the Window Blinds and lighting units as well.

So, we needed to construct a wooden framework that goes from one steel cross tie, to the next cross tie. They are like upside down capital T. But, in order to attach the wooden elements to the steel, there needs to be metal tabs welded on to the sides of the steel tube. We already had two pairs of tabs going up the vertical post, ready to take a 38mm thick CLS timber, but, we needed two more pairs of tabs to take a 50mm thick piece of timber, this thickness matches the size of the steel tubes. These pieces of timber will support both the layer of OSB boards that is going inside the boxing, sitting on top of the steel frames, and also to allow the plasterboard to be glued and screwed upwards, to encapsulate the steel bars from underneath. Both surfaces needed this timber framework so that we could screw the materials in place quickly, without having to resort to wet slow drying glue as the sole fixing method.

So, we needed twenty-eight more steel tabs. We looked on our steel material rack and found a strip of 5mm thick bar measuring 70mm wide and we did sliced off twenty-eight pieces, measuring 48mm long. We did have to run our belt sander all over the steel bar because it had a rather gritty coating of rust, and after we had cut the pieces, plus drilling two 4mm holes, we put them all in a solution of anti-rust liquid and hung them up to dry on a length of string, like a necklace!!

There are seven sections that needed these extra timber pieces spanning the gap between the ties, varying from 1495mm, 1520mm, 1595mm and 2140mm. We found the straightest 63mm CLS planks and created seven triplets. We did add an inch to the lengths, just in case there were local variations. All the timber pieces were taken to our table saw and proceeded to slice them down to exactly 50mm wide. We now have a heap of 12mm thick thin strips which probably will be useful in some future job!

Before we can fix these pieces in place, we had to weld our new tabs on to the side of the horizontal steel tube. The first one is positioned in the middle of the steel bar so that the wooden piece will go aligned to the front surface of the vertical steel posts. This is where we will put our plasterboard sheets on that flat vertical plane. The second tab is just approximately half way along the tube heading towards the edge of the Skylight, so we had a template to position that second tab consistently on all sections. We moved the platform along to do each section. We did have to design and build a mobile welding station, with drawers etc. see Building Welding Station. It made things so much easier in having the welder close to our work.

Now, back upstairs, with our pile of 50mm by 38mm pieces of wood, we went along gluing and screwing the three pieces in each section. The first one on the front, glued and screwed into place, making sure that the alignment was good, followed by the second one in the middle, and finally, the third planed piece of wood is glued directly on to the plywood surface using PU construction glue, and screws to anchor it down while the glue sets. The plywood surface was thoroughly sanded using an orbital sander with a rough paper loaded, to get rid of the weathering.

While we are in a section, after we had put in the three pieces, we also put in four short lengths of 63mm CLS pieces, flat, going right angles to the other framework, to join them together and provide a flat surface for the plasterboard to be glued and screwed into. Without them, the plasterboard is not strong enough to be supported 600mm from joist to joist. Hence these extra pieces being glued and nailed into place.

Skylight Base Frame

Now, we proceeded to haul up sheets of 18mm OSB board pieces. We had a pile of already used boards and they are a bit painty with white emulsion. These came from the time we had built the temporary platform when we were constructing the ceiling and Gallery in the Great Room. There were eight half boards and one two-thirds sheets and turned out to just fit the entire length of this new boxing, a total of 11660mm end to end!

We had to cut notches in each board piece, to go around the steel post, also wide enough to avoid the two metal tabs as well, when we lower each sheet into place. It got the usual PU glue and dozen screws to fix it down tight. The first three sections working from the Great Room end, had the board trimmed by about 30mm and the final four sections, had only 10mm bit sticking out to be trimmed off.

Next, we put in the first horizontal CLS piece that is sitting on the newly created OSB floor, all glued and then screwed using the metal tabs to anchor it. This helped to stiffen up the framework very nicely.

Skylight Frame 2

by this time, our delivery of eleven sheets of PIR insulation 50mm thick boards had arrived. This type of insulation is the modern version of the old PU foam and offers a much better fire safety response. PIR stands for PolyIsocyanuRate and it is only slightly worse thermal properties than PU foam.

We needed this insulation boards because we need to protect our house energy where the solar panels are situated as there is no double glazing etc. So, we went along underneath each solar panel section, there are eleven of them in all, and cut an almost square pieces, measuring 1040mm wide by 1170mm high. We had to create a template to locate the four holes (two air holes for cooling down the solar panels, and two smaller holes which has the electrical cables coming through) and using this template, we could drill out the holes and insert the foam sheet up into place. It was a bit fiddly at times, and one of our solar panels had a different positions for the air holes, but, we made it all the way along. We then repeated the process again for the second layer of foam boards, this time anchoring the sheets up by using a strip of 12mm thick CLS left-over pieces and screwed them up to grip the edge of two boards with four screws. Finally, we used the left-over pieces of foam, to stick on the plywood panels at the back of the compartment which improved our house insulation a little bit.

Insulating Solar Panels

Now that we got up the insulation panels, we reconnected the cables from the eleven solar panels and tested each one to make sure that all eleven are still working. BUT, No! The first one (nearest the Great Room end) was not working. It was reading zero volts! Oh No! This meant that we had to undo the two layers of the 50mm thick foam pieces, unscrew the MDF 6mm thick board, to gain access to the solar panel itself. Then, we could see that the wire coming from the back of the solar cells and going into an adapter box, the soldered connection was very poor so we used our gas powered soldering iron, with fresh solder, and we got the wire solidly resoldered much better this time. We now have proper amount of voltage coming down the wires, some 20volts since it was a bright sunny day. We reassembled the cover, and the foam pieces, clamping it back down again.

We next tackled the task of installing an air supply to the Solar Panels, at the bottom, using 40mm diameter white plastic plumbing pipe, with push fit T-junctions for the middle nine panels and right angle bends for the outer two panels. We are planning to have air supply coming up from the main air duct running downstairs underneath the hall, going through a 50mm flexible conduit and that terminates into a switching chamber where the air can be diverted to either the Solar Panels to cool them down during sunny periods, or, through the gap above the double glazing to control the condensation. The cool air will push the hot air out via the upper air hole and will be taken away via several valves on the air duct that we got running inside our Skylight Box.

Air to the Solar panels

Talking about our air duct, that is what we did next. We took three sheets of 18mm OSB boards, laid them out on the floor in our Great Room and proceeded to give them a double coat of polyester resin, to give a smoother finish, filling in all the holes in among the strands of wood, plus also to prevent moisture to build up in the fabric of the wood as well.

Varnished OSB

Then we sliced up two of those boards, into eight 150mm wide strips from the first sheet, and then eight 300mm wide strips off the second one. These will form the main duct running along the whole Skylight Boxing, fitting just nicely in between the two “chimneys” that will take the waste air away. We fixed them using small pieces of 25mm by 38mm battens, using three of them on each 150mm high 8foot vertical sides, gluing and screwing them into place. We used the 300mm wide lids as a spacer to position the second line of battens at the back. We had previously set our green laser line generator to give us a ruler straight line for the front side of the ducting. We marked the surface with lots of dashes.

Next, we looked at the beginning of the ducting, the furthest end away from the Great Room, and designed a gentle curving duct that flows the air around ninety degrees and also to bend slightly downwards. It also had to squeeze the air a little bit, to fit the chimney hole itself, before it spreads out in the channel down inside the sloping roof, to the main duct running around the first floor.
We used a piece of our 1mm thick flexible plastic to provide that gentle curve, to encourage the air to flow around the bend smoothly. We then finally put on a lid to cover everything up. Eventually, all these joints will have aluminium sticky tape to seal against any leaks etc.

Next, we proceeded along the length of the ducting, to drill holes into the lid and sides, to screw in a captive nut, and then screw down the lid with steel bolts. We used all eight of our 300mm wide by 4foot length pieces.

Now we are at the other end of the duct, there is a far more complicated situation to deal with. As well as the chimney to connect to, we also had a large round vent to connect with, this being the vent for the Skylight inside the Great Room. It was a case that this 250mm diameter circular vent is positioned in the middle and we had a metal square post only a few inches away. Plus, another issue was that we needed to have a valve somewhere near by to control the amount of air being drawn from the Great Room. This louver valve is square, also 250mm internal size. Furthermore, the round vent hole is much higher than the rest of the ducting so indeed, we had to design a sloping downward construction, incorporated that 50mm square post, pass through the gate valve and then squeezes down and widens out to join with both the main duct running down the Skylight Box and also to the chimney. After careful measuring and thinking about shapes and angles, cutting pieces of cardboard to test things, we finally got a wooden square like object, with extra bits and pieces to help convert to the round shape, plus lots of spray PU foam, to allow us to rasp the hardened foam material into a morphing design to transform from that round hole, to roughly the square ducting. We then covered up all the foam, which is rather rough, with lots of aluminium sticky tape which has a very smooth metal finish. We also covered up the other joints and transitional surfaces and edges, in and around the chimney with more aluminium tape.
We only just had enough of our third resin coated OSB board to make this complicated adapter and putting up the sides and on a lid etc.

Tamplate for Central Duct connection

Templ;ate for side of duct

Central duct built

Lots of foil tape

Duct ready for the lid

This concludes most of the structural work for our Skylight for the time being. We now have to tackle the problem of the desiccant dribbling all over our plywood lining. Phew!

11 March 2025
Arc Welder Mobile Station

One of the first job to do, is to create a mobile arc welding station, which we have been meaning to build for several years now. The reason that it has come around now, is because we will need to weld on extra pieces of steel tabs right up inside our Skylight section and it would be far more convenance if the equipment was reasonably mobile. So, we went about designing and creating a medium size box like structure, with four drawers in total. Three smaller ones and one larger one. We had a pair of solid rubber tyre 6inch plastic wheels and we found some 12mm steel rod for the axle. The argon gas cannister is positioned at the back of the station, held in place with a Velcro strap, the welding machine was situated on top of the box, and clipped down to anchor it down. We used double extension drawer ball-bearing runners for all four drawers.

Welding Cart 1

Welding Cart 2

10 February 2025
Hot and Cold Water Tanks Serviced
Over the last couple of days, we have been servicing the Cold Tank and also Activating the Hot Water tank, ready for heating. We wanted to get our Hot Water tank operational, which was empty. So, the first job is to fill it up with clean fresh water and we thought we would get it from our Cold Water tank since it is lovely and clean, soft rain water. But, we discovered that the water in our Cold Water tank has been growing scum. We had originally dropped a couple of chorine tablets but it was clearly not enough concentration to inhibit the biological processes. The main problem was that the water had been static for months, ever since we had filled it up last year before the Summer, and of course, the place got rather warm with all the sunshine pouring in the Skylight. There was enough dirty surfaces inside the tank to provide food and nutrients and perhaps, in hindsight, we didn’t do a very good job of sterilising the tank itself before we put in fresh cold water from our rain water tank, going through our three stage filtration system of 1micron particle filter, activated carbon chemical filter and UV to kill biologicals.
Silly Us! Phew! We learnt a lesson about getting things clean first!
So we spent the day emptying the dirty water out of the tank and down into our sceptic tank via a waste pipe we had available upstairs. We sucked the water out using a submerged pump and then vacuumed the rest of the water at the bottom of the tank, as much of the scummy rubbish as possible. We then half filled the tank up using more rain water, going through our filtration system of course but this time, we brought some bleach liquid and poured the entire bottle in, squirting directly onto all the walls and then scrubbed the surfaces with a large brush. We even got our battery powered pressure washer to blast the parts of the walls that we could not reach with the brush. We also wanted to flush out our water pipes running around our house, especially those pipes feeding the cistern and basin in our Cloakroom. So, we found a coil of 28mm plumbing pipe we had left-over and connected one end to the end of the main pipe in the Kitchen, run the plumbing pipe out into the Hallway, then out the Front door and finally out to our Loke, to discharge the “Dirty” water. We powered up our installed cold water pump in the Utility Room and blasted the bleachy water through our pipe, including flushing our toilet several times and running the basin water as well. Next, we filled the tank back up, this time, right to the top and rinsed all the surfaces down including the feed pipe, and proceeded to empty the whole lot again, to flush out the pipework and this time, we refilled the tank and dropped in five of the chlorine tablets this time. There is definitely a smell of chlorine now.While that was going on, we decided to fill the Hot Water tank with the domestic mains water instead, knowing that it is clean and chlorinated and even though it would have a tiny amount of calcium carbonate salts in the water, it is just an one-off amount and will not cause any problems with our valves and pumps etc. The size of our Hot Water tank is 270litres so it took a few minutes to fill it up. Just as a comparison, our Cold Water tank upstairs is 500litres, so you can imagine how long that took to fill and empty three times !!

Anyway, the Hot Water tank is now full.
Next, we finished making the electric heating elements. We had to extend the length of the cables because the manufacturer only supplied a metre and we wanted at least 2metres and more, long enough so that the heating element itself can reach down to somewhere near the bottom of the tank so that the heat will rise up, especially with our automatic circulation system where the hot water is continuously sent around the hot pipes and re-enters back into the bottom of the tank. We needed to make sure that the joints are boil and water proof so we got some high temperature sealant to squirted into the heat shrink tubing that is covering the soldered copper wires.
We got ten individual heating elements, eight of them are rated at 50volts DC (so they can run directly from the solar panels and batteries) and two mains 230volts AC (as an additional backup).
The 8 DC elements all come with different power ratings as follows:
- 1 x 500Watts
- 1 x 750Watts
- 6 x 1000Watts
And the 2 AC are as follows:
- 1 x 1000Watts
- 1 x 1500Watts.
Most of the time, the Hot Water will be heated using the DC heating elements, which means that we can gradually turn on more and more elements as there is more and more solar energy being collected and we can fine tune how much power is drawn into the hot tank, anything from 500W, in 250W steps, all the way up to 7250W in total.
So, we lowered all ten elements down into the water in various locations around the tank so that none of the heaters were touching each other and we now have a whole bunch of cables coming out of the tank at the top.

Hot Tank Elements 1

Hot Tank Elements 2

What we would like to see now, is a full blown test of bringing up the temperature of the water, all the way to as near as to boiling point as possible. We want to make sure that the tank itself can handle the heat and that we don’t have any leaks. It is ok at the moment but it is only cold water.
9 February 2025
Finishing Entertainment Room with Carpets, Lamps, Sockets, Television and Door!

We have been spending the month of January in getting the Entertainment Room all finished, including putting up our 43inch Television!! But, before that happened, we carried on from where we left things before Christmas, with the task of putting carpet up on the walls etc.One of the first task to do was to slice out the Utility Channel all the way around the room. We had previously marked where the horizontal zone is located in this room, as it is not at the normal height because we had deliberately lowered the flooring to accommodate the lowered ceiling. We used our trusty track saw to guide the circular saw and carefully slice through the 18mm OSB board, to produce a 100mm wide slot. We stopped 60mm short of each corner so that when the carpet gets fixed up onto the walls, the gap between the end of the Oak covers will be a nice distance from the corners.

Utility Chennels cut out

The next job is to trim a little thin recess, only 1mm deep and 12mm wide, on all the top and bottom edges of the Utility Channel and we then glued a thin narrow strip of steel. We had some old computer cases which were made of steel thin plates so we sliced that in our mechanical heavy duty guillotine machine and glued them so that we ended up with a general purpose magnetic surface so that we stick on our Oak covers into place, without having visible screws etc.

Metal strips glued in

Oh yes, we rounded the edges of the window, the two vertical edges, using our largest round cutter so that the carpet can bend smoothly around the corner when it goes into the window hole. The horizontal top edge of the window was turned with a smaller radius cutter, just enough to get the carpet to bend around.

Now we were ready to start the next big task of sticking our carpets to the walls!

We started on the TV end of the room, the narrow wall, opposite the window and we got our 2.4metres by 4metres piece and then painted both the wall surface and the back of the carpet with the latex rubber glue. We had already determined that this glue works very well and it just needed to dry while the surfaces were pressed together. Another advantage of this glue, is that it dries fairly slowly and keeps moist, which gives us time to paint the two surfaces, but also, time to man-handle the carpet up onto the wall and move it around until we got it pressing tightly up to the ceiling. To help with that process, we stapled a couple of pieces of narrow strips of OSB boards on to the front of the carpet so that we had a good grip to help lift the carpet, but also to keep the carpet stretched out in a straight line as well.
We then temporarily stapled five more strips of OSB, to help hold the carpet tight to the wall and the glue. Fortunately, we had loads of these narrow strips that we had accumulated over the years and so we could use them to press the carpet to the glue. The staples were 35mm long and fired using our compressed air gun. Another thing we did at this stage, is that we avoided gluing the last right in the corners because we needed to be able to trim the carpet carefully right into the corners later on, after the glue had dried.

TV Wall carpet

We then carried on with the next wall, the long wall opposite the door, which was a 2.4metres high by 5metres long piece this time. We proceeded like before but we discovered that this type of carpet, which has a woven backing, instead of the felt-like material the first piece had, we hadn’t put on enough glue to ensure a thorough contact area. This meant that we had to reapply extra glue around the edges, going along the top (near the ceiling) and also around the Utility Channel cutout as well, plus the bottom edge near the floor. We stapled on lots of OSB strips to clamp the carpet down so the glue had a chance to dry stuck together.

We then did the smaller portion of the wall to the left of the doorway, and remembered to put on more glue this time. It was easier to handle the carpet because it was in a smaller piece and we managed to get it up with little trouble. We repeated for the other side of the door and then did the section over the top of the doorway. We even put a piece of carpet on the ramp going down into the room! Now, we turned to the last wall to do, the Window wall. This time, it went up in one piece because we wanted the carpet to be continuous underneath the window sill. We carefully cut the carpet along the bottom edge of the window and then bent the carpet around the corner to do each vertical sides of the window. We took off the excess and glued these flapping side bits into place. Finally, we had a piece of left-over to go along the top edge of the window and that got glued down as well.

Carpet for the window wall glued

Windows wall covered

Trim out the window

Next, we installed ten round lighting units up in the ceiling, plus two odd square ones we had lying around, to populate twelve of the holes , four rows of three lamps. A light switch went into the Utility Channel near the door, and then put eight double sockets distributed around the room as well. We used pieces of 11mm OSB boards to make the covers and got them magnetically attached over the Channel. This is a temporary measure but we will replace with proper Oak covers later on.
We used two 3mm thick by 10mm diameter magnets, superglued together to form a 6mm single unit. Then we put four of these magnets in the four corners of a cover where there was only one mains socket in the cover, six of the magnets for a two set of socket, and eight for the last cover that had two double sockets plus the light switch. We discovered that just having four magnets was not quite strong enough to reliably hold the cover in place, especially after the electric cables were threaded and screwed into the back of each socket as well. Magnets are very good, visually speaking because we can avoid unsightly screws etc. but unfortunately, the initial experience is suggesting that we would have to add a dozen more magnets for those covers that have a mains double socket in them, especially if you tried pulling a plug out and accidentally ripping the whole cover off as well. We will have to explore this further, and maybe come up with a different method of attaching these covers without visible screws.

Temporary Lights

We then made a window seat, again a temporary one so that we had a neat cover over the empty void in the bottom of the window. A useful place to sit on now.

Because we had decided that this room, the Entertainment Room, is going to temporarily be the needlework room, to allows us to sort out things like curtains etc. So, towards this aim, we created a large work table, 8foot by 4foot and standard dining table height of 720mm high. We used one of our 12mm thick MDF boards and glued a circumference of 63mm CLS planks around the edge, with an inch gap. Then, put on four legs.

Table

Then, we created two sets of shelves, each one having six shelves, measuring 300mm deep and 1220mm wide. We managed to use two sheets of our 18mm thick OSB boards and sliced it up into twelves pieces and then slice eight 50mm wide longer strips to serve as legs. We ran the router over all the pieces, to chamfer the edges, to remove splinters and make it smoother. Both were assembled so that each shelf had a bit over 300mm gap between each self. Then, both the shelves and the work table, plus also, the window sill seat, got a coat of varnish, to make sure that all the tiny splinters are glued down and after rubbing with some sand paper, it is all nice and smooth.

Shelves

Next, we created our special sound deadening door. A very heavy door, made up with 30mm thick of cement boards as the core, covered up with 9mm hardwood plywood sheets. To maximise the strength of the whole thing, we found a piece of thick Oak plank, with minimal knots in it, measuring 2.7metres long and 150mm wide. It is 65mm thick. We established one straight edge by using our track saw and then planed it flat on both sides, ending up with a 48mm thick plank. We then, sliced it into two narrower pieces, with a 15degree angle down the middle. The last step in working these pieces of wood, is to trim off a recess on both side, to form a 30mm thick “tongue” which matches the thickness of the cement core so that the plywood covers can overlap both the cement core and the two Oak vertical edges. The cement core was built using three layers of small left-over pieces of 10mm thick boards, arranged so that every piece overlapped each other with plenty of surface. We used an epoxy resin glue to ensure a very strong joint between every piece. Because of the random nature of all the smaller pieces, the resultant “core” is rather misshapen but we knew that we wanted to slice the core down to a precise size later on, including putting a 15degree angle on the narrow top and bottom edges as well. Finally, we assembled the two Oak strips and one of the plywood fronts, used PU construction glue and a dozen screws to anchor the Oak and plywood together. At this point, we mounted the hinges and mounted the partial door into the wall for testing purposes and making sure everything is ok. Now, turning it over, we then used plenty of PU glue all over the back of the plywood and very very carefully lowered our concrete core into the middle. Then, the second plywood board came in on top, again, with lots of PU glue spread out evenly across the cement surface and screwed the plywood down tight on the Oak edges too. We loaded seven large concrete blocks on top to pressurised all the layers together and stop the glue pushing the layers apart.

Glueing Cement board core

Holding layers while they set

Door Outer part

You might be wondering to how heavy this door is??
Well, we got our bathroom scales and HAULED it up onto it .. ..
95kg!!
15stones!!
O boy!

This is why we are having four ball bearings hinges!
They are rated at 120kg for three of them so we thought we better put in that extra one, just to be on the safe side, plus also, the hinges comes as a pair so we didn’t want to have one left lying around.
It is recommended that one puts two hinges at the top of the door, one in the middle and one near the bottom. The double set at the top has to take a good portion of the weight as the door swings out. So, we mounted the hinges to the door frame first, cutting little rectangles of carpet away so that the hinge can go flat solid against the oak strips we have previously inserted into the wall structure. Each hinge has four screws in each half so there will be a total of 32 screws holding up this 100kg door!

Now the next trick was to move the door itself and walk it up several layers of pieces of board, and sit it on the top layer which has two air cushions underneath it. We could then squeeze the air bulbs to pump in air, which in turn slowly lifts up the door so that our hinge screw holes can line up with the holes already in the door, from our earlier quick test we did before we put in the heavy cement core. We got it all screwed in and let go! The door is swinging nicely and it goes home very nicely too.

Door installed

Next, is putting in the latch mechanism and the handles. We had to find a longer square metal bar because our door is 50mm thick, especially with the carpet on it as well. Talking about the carpet, we decided to cover the entire door in cloth and carpet materials, to hide the various construction joints and materials, to end up with a smooth single texture on one side, using two fleece blankets, and three left-over pieces of carpet on the room’s side of the door. The fleece material was wrapped right around the whole door and stapled into place on the carpet side, and then we put on the carpet, to cover that up. But, the carpet had a ragged edge as well, so we went off to find some more Oak and create some thin slightly curved strips which we mitred around the edge of the door, to hide all the ragged edges.

Door Wall Finished

That is one half of the doorway done, the main sound proofing door which opens into the room and is flush up again against the rest of the wall. There will be a second door on the Hall side of the doorway, to provide a second sound barrier to reduce audio leaks. We did some tests (once we had installed some speakers etc.) and the loud music could be heard quietly when one stood near the door but a lot quieter around the corner. Which is not surprising because the main room has 100mm thick concrete blocks and the door only has 50mm total thickness, with only a 30mm concrete core!! Hence why we probably will mount the second door on the hall side!

As mentioned just now, we also installed some loud speakers we had in our old living room, plus also taking the 43inch Television and mounting that up on a wall bracket. It looks rather small in the grand scene of things so hopefully, we will upgrade to an larger model when we can, along with much better quality surround sound speakers too. We installed a Raspberry PI to act as a media streaming device for the television, which will allow us to enjoy music and videos we have got stored in our library.

TV & Speakers

The last thing we did, was to find some old underlay, and some old carpet we inherited from the previous place we were living in. It only covered the first 1.9metres of our 5metres room and that will do for now. It makes that end of the room quite cosy and the sound quality is very pleasant indeed, very soft and warm!

Oh yes, nearly forgot about the little control screen and its buttons that sits just left of the door and about shoulder height. We 3D printed a black plastic surround, with four buttons vertically on the left and right side and a row of five buttons underneath, surrounding the touch sensitive 7inch screen in the middle. This will provide access to various information that is happening in that room, and beyond, but, it will have menus to allow you to configure how you want the temperature to be set at, how the lighting units should be set in various patterns, to suit your moods, and so on. It is the link to the rest of the house, including communication, security and other helpful services like shopping lists etc.

Door Wall Finished

That pretty much concludes the work on our Entertainment Room for the time being. We even put in a fan heater so it can be kept warm so we can go in and sit down at the table to do some needlework, or watch the TV!

1 February 2025
Christmas Break

We have put up our tool belts, spirit level back up on the wall, closed off the glue bottles and hang up our worksuits for a couple of weeks!
It is our real first proper holiday virtually for the whole year so we will enjoy the Christmas and New Year celebrations by having a load of relaxing times and party, party, party .. NOT!
We will resume work on the first full week of 2025, on 6th January!

23 December 2024