Category: Build Progress

We carried on today with the PA Hip LVL Rafter, making internal noggins (four of them, one at each end and two in the middle at the joints of the webbing). Everything then was vacuumed (the whole workshop, template, LVL timber, plywood webbing and everything else too!), but before we put the rafter together, we took the webbing and copied over the shapes of the cut-outs to the next set of webbing for the HI rafter we are going to do next. This rafter is the same in almost all ways as the PA rafter so we just copied over the pattern to save us some time.
Next, we assembled the whole rafter and got our glue machine going and laid down a layer of glue along the LVL timber and noggings and sandwiched the plywood webbing on top, and went down both sides with the squeezer and nailed it tight together. We turned it over and then inserted the polystyrene foam pieces and vacuum it again and finally applied more glue to the this side of the LVL and again sandwiched the second webbing layer with the squeezer and then nailing that side together as well.

While that was drying, we went outside to set the three corners we are doing, cutting to an exact length for each leg so it fitted just nice and tight between the foot-plate and top-plate!!

Also, we put on the new wheels for the second scaffolding tower, after reducing the height down by one section so it can more easily fit under the diagonal rafter beams.

Finally, to finished off the day, we sliced and trimmed the funny cut-away piece on the HI corner, removing a small vertical piece of the cement board, just like we did on the PA corner. Tomorrow, we will go out with our new PA rafter and see if it will fit in according to the plans! We have our fingers crossed ! Grin!

This afternoon, we carried on with sorting out what we need to do to make the PA Hip Rafter. All the surfaces are sanded (both the LVL flanges and plywood webbing) but we discovered that some of our plywood had a fault in the manufacturing process with the glue missing in the middle layer. It was a small section about 1 foot long and about 5 inches deep. We carefully looked at the other plywood strips and found three more. we never noticed this before and it is quite obvious! So we poured some glue inside the crack (forcing it open a bit more with a wedge) and then squashed it flat using large blocks of wood and half a dozen clamps. We did two strips today and will do the other two tomorrow.

The next job was to cut away notches in the webbing at each ends so they can slide into place and keep clear of any obstacles like steel I-Beams and wall’s top-plates etc.
Lastly, we need to vacuum all the pieces .. but we had an Incident!! The vacuum system suffered a major breakage! We accidentally blocked off the nozzle and suddenly there was a loud cracking sound and we turned everything off rather quickly!! We discovered that the wooden side of the box that holds the first major separator chamber has split right along the vertical edge and also the bottom horizontal edge too!! Wow! What sort of level of force would that need to do that kind of damage?!

It was nearly the end of the day anyway, but we sorted out a temporary by-pass connection pipe (to go straight into the second filtration chamber and the motor unit)so we can still use the new vacuum system to clear up the dust before we glue all the pieces tomorrow. Phew!

Today, we continued with preparing the LVL timber flanges for the first of the main corners of the roof, over the Great Room, in the corner where the P wall meets wall A, hence we called this rafter the PA Hip Rafter.
We wanted to be very careful while cutting and slicing out the Bird’s Mouth notch, making sure the length of the top flange is as exact as possible, as because we have One and ONLY ONE of these LVL special timber so making any mistakes would mean buying another one (£40 and weeks of delay)!! We achieved the accuracy requirement, double checking and analysis of how the real world reflects against our computer drawings, by the help of another little template that plugged into the metal bracket up on the steel I-Beam. We could see where we had to remove sections of the webbing so it could hook over and get past the sticking out flanges of the steel I-Beam itself. We recognised that the corner point of the I-Beam needed to be sliced off too (about 15mm using a hacksaw and plenty of muscle!). Then, down on the PA corner, the cement board was sliced away to just allow the LVL 38mm wide timber to come through and also remove an angled section of the top-plate timber so that the Bird’s Mouth on the LVL timber will lock into place. So following this corner, we made another little block of wood with the correct slope sliced out on the bottom so it could sit and line up with the new cut-away section and provide exactly where the LVL timber will go.
All this preparation work allowed us to measure the exact distance along the top flange of the rafter, all the way to the Kerb’s corner up on the I-Beam. This distance turned out to be 5600mm.
This gave us a measure of confidence to commit ourselves to cutting the Bird’s Mouth and marking out the other end using this 560mm number. We wanted the LVL flange to fit neatly up against the Kerb’s corner, so it had to have an internal corner sliced out the end of the beam. We took back outside the LBL timber with the Bird’s Mouth and the markings, got it up into the corner and up onto the bracket and slid it into the template so we knew what height it should be. We double checked the markings to make sure it was looking good, so again we committed ourselves to cutting the excess wood off the end and slicing the funny inwards pointing angled groove and got it fitted just nice and tight!! Phew!
Then back to workshop with our LVL timber again, and laid it down into our rafter template so we could position the bottom flange next to the top flange (the one we have been working on) and line everything up, double checking everything again, and then slicing the bottom flange to exactly the right size too!

This pretty much was our day’s work – Phew! It is slow but we can’t make a mistake or it will costs us money and time and be very annoying too!! Nice and steady for these special diagonal LVL rafters around our roof. Thank goodness there are only 17 of them in total and we have done three of them so far, with the three we are working on now. Monday, we will carry on with the PA rafter and get it fitted into place and prove our methods and increase our confidence to do the other two similar Hip rafters for the other two main corners.

After we finished off doing the wheels for the scaffolding tower, we continued preparing the bits and pieces for constructing the LVL Hip Rafters for the PA, EH and HI corners. We sliced a 26.6° wedge off the ends of 12 strips of the plywood webbing, making sure that the better side was towards the gluing direction (I.e. facing inwards). Then, the next job was to sort out the LVL timbers and labeled them so each one it is now determined for the correct role, three longer pieces for the top flanges and the three other one for the bottom flanges.
Next is to take the two top flanges that are going to have the bird mouths cut into them and start marking out the complicated shape of the cut-away section. We decided to do a practice run on a spare bit of 89mm CLS timber rather than the precious LVL timber. So we sawed the bulk material away and used a mixture of our wiggle saw (officially called an oscillating multi-tool, but what a mouth full!) and hammer & chisel to carve out the concave angled groove so it can sit tight over and on the outer corner of the top plate (see pictures below).

While we were looking at this complicated cut-away (double checking) on the computer, and also inspecting the actual Top-Plates on the walls in the corners of the house to make sure that we didn’t have missing timber which may meant a weaker joint (it turns out that all six affected corners were fine), we had a light-bulb moment! It suddenly it occurred to us that the pointed part of the corners on the top-plate could be removed to make a flat area for the rafter’s birds mouth to sit against flat .. WITHOUT any complicated inward groove! Phew!
So the rest of the afternoon was spent on the computer to update the drawings so that all the six corners around the house will have regular ninety degree birds mouth cut-outs and instead, a measured and angled chunk is removed from each corner on the top-plate with just a good old plain handsaw and Hey Presto .. All will Comes Together Plain and Simple .. Nice and Strong .. Oh Phew .. Smile!
On Saturday, we can proceed with a much relieved state of mind over these LVL Hip Rafters and get on with it much faster! Hooray!

Today, we started on the next three rafters, the corner Hip Rafters that goes in the main corners of the house. They are the Great Room “PA” corner, the Utility Room “EH” corner, and the Bedroom 3 “HI” corner. They should be all the same length from the wall up to the steel I-Beam and their bracket, at 5430 mm. We measured them as follows:

• PA – 5400 mm – short by 30mm
• EH – 5380 mm – short by 50mm
• HI – 5450 mm – over by 20mm

This is not bad considering the nature of our steel I-Beam being plonked down in the middle of the house when we only had short concrete stub walls at the time!
We carried on measuring around on the other bracket to corner distances, as follows:

• IJ – 5780 mm
• LM – also 5780 mm
• NM – 5275 mm
• P11 rafter – 3520 mm

We then brought into our workshop 8 sheets of plywood boards and sliced them up into sixteen pieces of 433 mm wide strips. We then got a piece of the polystyrene foam board and hot melted this down into 2 x 217 mm wide strips, generating 7 strips ready for filling the internal space inside the rafters.

At this point, the rain came hammering down and we couldn’t go outside to fetch the LVL timber we needed, until about an hour later when the rain stopped.
We now have all the parts ready, to make three hip rafters tomorrow while the rain is forecast to hammer down!!

Today, we carried on configuring and adapting various equipment and tools to help us with the task of lifting these roof Rafters up into place. For example, we reinforced the other winch support arm to stiffen up the vertical pole. We did this by welding on two angle iron pieces on the opposite side of the metal pole so that the bending moment is much stronger in the direction of the winch arm hanging over the side of the tower. The other thing we did, was to extend the cable for the control buttons for this same tower. By adding another 10 metres to the four-core electric cable going from the control box and the winch mechanism itself, now allows us to control the winch motor from ground level and have much better control when we are positioning the ends of the rafter on top of the wall and getting it to slide onto a leg too.
We then moved both towers to the next position where the AB LVL diagonal valley Rafter will be going, rotating the towers so their ends are parallel to the wooden beam to make it easy to lift up smoothly up the sides.
The next job was to slice the 41° angled cut off the top end of the rafter (the one fitting into the metal bracket) up on the C Ridge, and then cut out a clearance hole on the webbing at the other end where it fits over and on the top plate of the wall corner.
We humped this 6metres long piece of work outside and got it up with our winches, did a test fit and all it well.
The next job was to get the corner leg fitted, by cutting it down to size (exactly 2381mm high) and doing a quick test fit there too.
After that, we squirted lots of the glue all over the contact areas where the legs fits into, both ends of the rafter and the metal bracket too and then slotted everything into place!

This is the second companion rafter fitted, to go alongside the other DE Valley rafter on both side of the big C Ridge forming the Front Door and Entertainment Room Extension portion of the house. This section of the roof skeleton framework is now done! Hooray!
Tomorrow, we will measure the next three corners (the PA Hip Rafter, EH Hip Rafter and the HI Hip Rafter) which are all the same size rafter (apart from their lengths [which ideally would be the same as well]) before the thunderstorms arrive in the afternoon sometime. Also, we will take in the metal foots of the scaffolding tower and drill holes in them to allow us to fit castor wheels to them for us to pull the tower around so much easier! Phew!

Today, we resumed the challenge of lifting our very long rafter (well there are two of them waiting to go up .. but one at a time – thank you!) and after talking about different types of lifting mechanisms, we decided that the pulley “block & tackle” system wasn’t flexible enough (like for example, when we need to stop hauling, we would need to tie off. but when we need another 6 inches or so, then untie, pull and then tie up again!) so this morning, we abandoned the pulleys in favour of electric winch motors instead. We took the support arm down and adapted them again so we can slide the winches all the way along the arm, back to the vertical pole. We welded a couple of pieces of square 5mm plates on the sides of the support arm so it would lock the winch machines into place and stop them rotating and tripping the safety switch that cuts the motor!!
We went out with these new versions of our lifting mechanisms, installed them on top of the towers and then started lifting our DE rafter beam.
But ..
We didn’t get the tower lined up parallel with where the rafter needed to go so it was too far out and we bent our vertical pole section of our lifting support arm (again!). We took that one down again and straightened it out and tried again but this time, to get the tower lined up better with the rafter right up close to the tower. We were able to lift the rafter all the way this time, at last!
But ..
We discovered that the way the rafter needed to be fitted, our winch was NOT high enough to get the rafter clear of the steel I-Beam to allow the bottom end to slide back into the corner! Oh Blow! Drat! Phew!
Everything goes back down to ground level, disconnect electric, tidy up one winch set and cover it up against the weather and the other set was taken down completely so we could start thinking a new design, using bigger, stiffer, taller metal pole, this time another 1.5 metres taller!!
We found an old heavy duty pole that was an used for an old washing line and used that as our new vertical pole. It was just the right diameter to slide down inside the scaffolding tower’s poles in the corner but we had to bash out the dents made by the locking bolts. While that was being done outside, the new pole was having bits and pieces welded to it (like the old support arm off the original version).
Tomorrow, we will finish off welding of extra bits and pieces to this new pole and then we will try lifting our rafter for the fourth or fifth time – We Forget Now! Smile!

This morning, we sliced off the bevel wedge that needed removing off the top end of the LVL Rafter so it will slide and fit tight into the metal bracket. Then, at the other end, re removed a small section of the webbing so it can fit across the 76mm thick top plate on the walls.
That done, we organised the scaffolding towers so that we could use our block and tackle to lift up the 60kg rafter beam without having to use the electric winch machines and instead use man power on ropes going through two pairs of 2 pulleys blocks to increase by 4 fold the lifting power.
But, Hey Hoy, we had an incident involving a metal collar on our extending arm at the top of the tower and the fact that it snapped apart into two pieces under the twisting action and dynamic loading on the end of the extension arm.

Fortunately, nothing came crashing down as it broke almost at the beginning of the lift operation and also we had tied ropes on each separate part to make sure that things didn’t slip off or come apart. Phew!
So after lunch, we spent an hour or so to adapt our metal poles into a more solid braced design and welded everything together to avoid weak collars and bolts.

Taking our new support lifting arms back out and set it up again, to only find that the whole vertical pole started bending over under the strain this time!! Oh Drat! Gee Wizz!

It looked that it really needed a second leg to support the other end of the extended arm so we fetched our old wooden crane legs, reduced the height of where the horizontal pole fits through the wooden section and tried getting it to marry up and connect to our support arm. But it was leaning over drunken and we couldn’t get it to slide all the way into the metal collar!!

At this point, it started raining so we abandoned this work and went back indoors to carry on with our vacuum unit instead. PHEW!

Today, we assembled the two LVL diagonal Rafters in our template and glued and nailed it all together. These particular rafters are just under 6metres long and they weigh 60 Kg each – phew!

We are waiting for the glue to dry before we do the final slice off the top end where it needs a bevel sliced off the corner so it will slide diagonally into the metal bracket to marry up tight against the C Ridge beam already up there. After that, it is a case of carrying them outside and hauling them up into place, but this time, we will use a four-way pulley system to allow us more control over lifting up the very long rafter and it can be held in place with ordinary rope while we check the ends and position to make sure it fits in well! Wish Us Luck! Grin!

We have been working on sorting out the design and calculations of the first set of LVL diagonal Rafters, namely, the two rafters that comes from the C Ridge, down to the corners of where the Front Extension starts. It is the first time we have tackled this type of diagonal Rafter and it is quite complicated with different angles coming into play from different directions. It is a case of making sure that we understand exactly what is going on and how the real world measurements we got, fit with the drawings on the computer and making adjustments etc.
Finally, today we have got to the point of having a pile of parts (polystyrene foam strips, plywood webbings, internal noggings and the LVL timber) all ready and prepared for assembling tomorrow. Everything is carefully being sanded and cleaned for maximum strength as these diagonal Rafters are going to be expected to be handling quite large loads, rather than the more normal straight rafters that just goes from top to bottom!
The whole LVL rafters, including the corner Posts that we built several months ago, will be glued and nailed together and fit nice and tight – We Hope!