Category: First Floor

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
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
Started Constructing Walls for the Rooms Upstairs

These last two weeks have seen us start work on building the initial framework for the walls for the rooms upstairs. We would like to lay down a “floor-plan” of all our rooms.
But first, we had to move our large pile of our 63mm CLS timber planks! We wanted to gain access to all the space where our “stub” wall will go around the edge of each room, the wall being four feet tall when it meets the sloping ceiling. So we had to move approximately 250 planks of timber, plus also 25 planks of “green” preservative treated timber as well. The green planks will be used for our wet rooms downstairs, where there is lots of water splashing about.
Anyway, it took a couple of hours to move the timber!
Then, we built a template that emulates a fully constructed “four-foot” wall, so that we can glue and screw up a whole sheet of a OSB board in one go, without having to slice it at all. This template is only four inches wide so we can slide it along on the floor, until it “bumps” into the sloping roof. We then would mark the floor with a green spirit pen and move along a couple of metres and do it again. The green colour was used because we had already other black marks on the floor from our previous attempts of laying out a rough plan of our rooms upstairs!

We started near the Gallery and marked out the two “four-foot” walls, one between the Gable wall and the stair case hole, and the other one, on the other side of the room, from the gable to the toilet, which is situated opposite the stairs.

Next, is framing around the stairs hole, positioning a footplate, made using our 63mm CLS timber. This footplate is lined up with the wall frame that is coming up from downstairs so that the wall surface will continue smoothly all the way up to the roof. We glued and screwed this CLS plank down, going all the way along the edge until it reached the steel leg holding up the Skylight. We then sanded the steel leg, using an angle grinder with a sanding pad installed, and polished the steel, removing all the paint and little bit of rust. We then glued a vertical plank of CLS timber on to the steel leg, using PU construction glue and clamping it into place for 24 hours.
Next, we carefully took another length of our CLS timber and glued it upwards to the 11mm OSB boards that coats the underside of the roof. This plank forms the top-plate for our wall. we then cut a series of posts, getting taller and taller, with an angled 32degree cut on top of each one, and nailed them every 600mm (2feet) along this section.
This forms the Hall side of the wall, for the stairs, and will continue across the upstairs, under the Skylight, to meet with the toilet wall.

There is a steel plate that is glued to the floorboard that ties the two steel legs together, all part of the structural framework for securing the whole Skylight against twisting and sheer forces coming from the winds outside. This means that we needed to glue a horizontal piece of timber on top of this steel plate so we undid the original screws, but first, having used the heads to bash “dents” in our CLS timber so we knew where to drill the clearance holes through the wood. We have been using our green laser line generator which is fully automatic, finding a dead vertical line and projecting a horizontal green line as well. We wanted to extend the stair wall so that it keeps the smooth flat surface going across as well. So, we positioned our CLS piece and bashed those screw heads after we had lined it up against the green laser line. Very very useful tool to have, the laser line generator!!
We sanded the metal plate like we did before, then glued the wood down and put in slightly fatter and longer screws so it would grip the steel instead of the wooden floorboards underneath, to tighten the new bottom-plate down tight to the steel and the glue.
Then, we glued another vertical piece of CLS timber on the other side of the steel leg, to finish off that leg beside the staircase.

While the glue was drying and curing, we continued marking where the “four-foot” wall is located around the rest of the rooms, doing the Study room that is over the Entertainment room and Front Door, around the large Office come Work Room to the right side of the house and then positioned our green laser line to go back across the other two steel legs, to finish the fourth side of this Work Room. The next line to mark down is between the back two steel legs that will have wall to front the Shower room and Toilet, plus entrance way into our Storage area at the back of the house.

Now we started gluing and screwing down one layer of CLS planks, to follow these new green marks around the floor. We did the three sides of the Studio come Sitting room (which is also our spare Guest Bedrooms, next to the Gallery), to form a space measuring about 6.2metres across (20feet) and about 4.8metres deep (16feet). This is the space between the “four-foot” walls so that is not walking around head clearance, the actual 6foot clearance space is about 4metres (12feet) across, maybe a bit more.
Then we laid down shorter pieces of CLS timber to form the Toilet, which measures 1280mm (4feet) across by 1800mm (6feet) deep. We put in a double layered wall for sound proofing purposes, and also, to allow a vacuum pipe to come up from below so we can plug in our brush and tube to our central vacuum system, for hoovering the upstairs rooms. The waste sewage pipe is also fully hidden inside the right side wall, plus also it will hold the steel framework that will support a wall mounted toilet bowl. The basin will be located at the back of the room under the sloping ceiling.
The Shower Room came next so first, we glued and screwed down two lines of CLS planks going across and pass the two steel legs, heading towards the front of the building. This wall is the entrance way into the Office come Work room. Now that we got this line of wall done, we can work backwards towards the Toilet and put down the second wall on the other side of the Shower room. This room measures 1100metres (3½ feet)wide and 1800mm (6feet) deep again.
Now we laid down a line of CLS around the circumference of the Office Work room, joining back to the piece going across the steel legs. This wall is also double layered so that the steel legs are hidden away so we don’t have unsightly “boxing” sticking out in our rooms. Nice and Neat!
Finally, the Study room, which is a L shape room, had its line of foot-plates put in as well, joining up to the side of the Office Work room, including a short double skimmed wall as well for more sound proofing. The last line is the one going along the edge of the Stairs and out into the middle of the Skylight. We had to put in a “kink” when we reached the last section going underneath the Skylight, because the wall needs to align to the metal tie bar and the glazing rafter so that the wall surface itself can go up and neatly meet the wooden beam that is supporting the double glazing glass units. So the daylight is divided into the Hall and the Stairs, and for the Study room.
This “kink” will have a gentle 45degree angle put on it, rather than a sharp right angle turn to the wall surface.

We then put on two of the three horizontal utility rails, one for the Air Channel, including putting on the MDF 6mm pieces. Then, we put on the lower half of the Utility Channel and that is where we got to. We didn’t have any fermacell sheets sliced up into narrow 175mm wide strips. So, we are going to do that later.

First floor foot plates

That concludes this little section of work, to basically define all our shapes of all our rooms upstairs. We can now do something else, for a change. And, we have decided to go and build our cold water header tank, that sits behind the Shower room. We want to get on with implementing a lot of our utility services like water and air ventilation, so we can actually start having the chance of having real running water in the Kitchen or Toilet etc. yippeee!

9 April 2024
Sliced up all the Remaining Foam Boards, Tidy up Generally and Moved the CLS Timber Pile

We spent the day doing a whole heap of slicing up the last remaining heap of foam boards and chunks, chopping them down so that they are all a maximum of 300mm so that they are ready to be placed under the floorboards in the Great Room. Like the old saying, sweep the rubbish under the carpet .. well, we are lifting up the floorboards and throwing the rubbish down underneath!! No really, we need to insulate our room against both the cold outside but also against our hot Energy Modules that we have buried under the house. We don’t want to have our rooms heated up with heat rising from 90degree hot water tanks!!
So, we have been shredding and slicing up all the rubbishy bits of foam boards and they will help protect us from the hot energy modules. We even got in the final chunks of insulation that we had outside and also sliced then up too.

Piles of sliced foam (1)

Piles of sliced foam (2)

We now have a huge pile of “stuff” ready and waiting to be “swept” under the floorboards! The other thing that we have done is have a general tidy up of all our tools that we slowly accumulated upstairs, taking away random pieces of wood, cans of PU foam and gave the whole place a good sweep.

The final thing we did was also to move the entire pile of CLS 63mm timber from the middle, underneath the Skylight and moved them all over to the back half of the building.

CLS Pile before Moving

CLS Pile after Moving

We moved 280 pieces of timber, plus a dozen odd lengths! Phew! We now can reach any parts of the Skylight with our new High Platform!

22 September 2023
The First Floor Roof Rafters All Filled With Insulations, All Covered in OSB!

We only needed these last couple of days to finish off covering up the plastic vapour barrier membrane with our 11mm OSB boards. We completed the “J”, then the “K” and then the last two sections, “H” and “I”.

Then, we did the strip along the bottom of the “J”, “K” and “L” with a narrow 135mm wide strips of the same 11mm OSB material, this is to protect the exposed plastic membrane against accidents where something may damage it. This is our main storage area so we need to make sure that the vapour barrier is protected.

All covered in OSB 1

All covered in OSB 2

All covered in OSB 3

All covered in OSB 4

That means that we have done all the rafters that we can access from the First Floor and now we can start work on the Great Room portion of the roof rafters and get them filled up etc.
But first, we have to build a working platform right across the whole Great room, extending our Gallery so we can access the rafters without having to resort to using ladders all the time. It is very much safer and much much quicker to work on a solid level platform.

20 July 2023
C is Half Complete, and Progressing on H, I, J, K, L and M With the Glass Wool and Vapour Barrier Installed

For the last two weeks, we have been making steady progress in inserting the horrible glass wool insulation into the roof rafters, filling them up to the brim, and then covering it up with our plastic vapour barrier too.
This includes constructing the gable wall that sits over the Front Door that will form the end wall for the little Study room, or perhaps a spare bedroom.
We put in a layer of glass wool vertically between the few upright CLS legs, filling it up as we normally do for all our walls, and then we cover all this up with our vapour barrier membrane.
Then the next job was to nailed on a set of horizontal rails, again using the usual 63mm CLS timber. The bottom rail forms the Air Channel that has a 220mm high strip of 6mm thick MDF material fixed between it and the floorboards. Normally, our Air Channels are only 150mm high, but here, on our First Floor, we are having an extra multiple sandwich layers of dense “sound absorbing” plasterboards, a soft “vibration absorbing” foam and topped with another 18mm thick OSB board, all these layers adds up to 70mm thick. We saw this technique at a house building trade show 20 years ago and we thought that it was a clever idea of isolating noises generated upstairs and make it more pleasant for anyone who is trying to sleep or want peace and quiet downstairs.
The next couple of horizontal rails is for the regular Utility Channel, with the usual backing layer of fermacell, bringing together a couple of electrical conduits that we have coming through the wall from the outside wall and eves. We then screwed two long diagonal pieces that follows the slopes of the roof and finally, a smaller one half way up to finish providing support and anchorage to hold up the wall boards later on.

Utility channels and boards on ‘C’ wall

With this done, we proceeded to insert two layers of our newly arrived 150mm thick glass wool insulation, into all our remaining roof rafters that we can access here up on the First Floor. We now have all of “H”, “I”, “J”, “K”, “L” and “M” sections filled up to the brim of the rafters.

Insulation Finished 1

Insulation Finished 2

Insulation Finished 3

Insulation Finished 4

Then, we covered it all up with more of our black plastic sheeting, only just managing to complete that task before we ran out!

Plastic finished 1

Plastic finished 2

Plastic finished 3

Plastic finished 4

And the last few afternoons this week (we had quite a lot of interruption in the mornings), we started the job of cutting and screwing sheets of our protective 11mm thick OSB material. We started backwards and got half the “M” section done, gone around the corner and completed the “L” and got the first row done over on the opposite side on the “J” section.

Starting boards on second half

One of the little side jobs we had to do, was to install a second air duct for the other half of the toilet come shower suite of rooms. We had originally had just one room to provide the shower cubicle and toilet plus basin for the upstairs rooms, but we realised that we could reposition our entrance doorway into the Storage area and split the shower and toilet apart. This meant that we needed another exhaust air vent for the toilet room.

We thought that these two rooms will be more used by our guests so when the shower is in use, the toilet is still available, or vice versa.
So when we resume our next building session, We will finish off putting up the OSB boards and then start working in the Great Room, installing a temporary flooring all over which will allow us have a much easier time to access the roof rafters and get them all filled and covered up. This will also enable us to survey our Skylight windows and calculate exactly what we need to order from our glazing manufacturers, to finish putting up all of the triple glazed windows up in our Skylight and complete the super-insulated shell for the whole building.

8 July 2023
Completed Section A and B of Roof Rafters

Today saw the conclusion of filling and covering up the rafters in section A and B of our roof. These last few weeks had loads of glass wool being inserted into the rafters, in front of the hard PU foam, to finish filling it right up to the front. We used our 50mm air-powered staples to secure the wool in place.

Glasswool insulation in the A & B roofs

This section of the roof, is right over our staircase so we had to be careful, employing a temporary platform to support us and our ladders etc.
One of the tasks we did at this point was to take half dozen of our 63mm CLS planks and proceeded to run the circular saw along the entire length of each planks at different angles. Some were sliced at 32degrees and the remainders were cut at 45degrees. Why these angles? We wanted to provide a solid turning point at the bottom of the rafters, for the plastic coming down the roof, to neatly turn downwards in a more or less vertical direction, to the floorboards which is then sealed using butyl-glue strips.
The angles corresponded to the particular angle of the roof for that section. The A and B section are both have 32degrees and 33degrees respectively so they both had these modified planks nailed upwards into each rafter. We went around all the sections right around the first floor, putting in the appropriate angled plank, to have them ready later on.
Interdentally, we had a moment with our trusty old nail air gun, it seemed to have blown a seal around the trigger section so we had to switch over to our other air gun and use different strips of 90mm nails we had on hand, luckily!! The main gun is being serviced and we are awaiting spare parts to come from China.
So after this interruption, we continued to covered up all the glass wool with DPM plastic to provide a vapour proof barrier to stop the human moisture and other sources of water vapour, from penetrating into the wood-work of our roof structure and forming condensation, which in turn allows the fungi and other biological pathogens to grow and eat our timber!!

First two sections covered on plastic

The next step was to cover and protect the plastic from being punctured by putting up 11mm thick OSB sheets we had already a stockpile of. We bought them many many months ago before all the massive price increases.
We started down on the bottom of the rafters, with a whole sheet and screwed it up using the 50mm screws that offers very good performance and secures the board very tight upwards against the rafters. We put in five screws in each rafter, to make sure that it is well fixed because it is going to have to hold the much heavier Fermacell “plaster” boards later on when we get to that stage.
Then we got another sheet and laid it next to the previous one and that allowed us to finish the row, meeting the valley hip joint between the A and B roof sections. It is a long angled slope.

We then did the same around on the B section, which needed just one board to complete that bottom row. It was very tight working conditions but making use of a couple of 140mm thick concrete blocks which happened to be exactly the correct size to help support the bottom edge of the sheet while we screwed it up!
The next two rows were, as you can imagine, a lot easier, especially when we created three little “hooks” to screw to the previous lower board and that also helped to hold up the large sheet while we also screwed it up too.
The last row is up to the skylight itself and that was a half width piece to finish it off and a 350mm wide strip to finish off the B section.

First OSB covering finished

We now have a much better looking roof, ready for a future stage of work in a few months when we start building the internal framework of all the upstairs rooms. The rest of the A section will be completed when we have populated the roof rafters over in the Great Room because we wanted the OSB boards to flow neatly across into that space in contiguous rows.
We now resume by proceeding in filling the D and E section next ..

31 May 2023
Roof Rafters Accessible from First Floor Has Some Insulation Inserted

This week, we completed the task of inserting at least one layer of PU foam board up into the rafters that we can reach from the First Floor .. the other half of the building, along the back doing sections M, L, K, J and I.

The task we thought we ought to do next is to make a couple of unusual air duct channels, to take the hot air out of the Skylight. We used the rafter space itself to encapsulate the air duct tubing so it is hidden and does not intrude into our living space. We had one down near the Great Room and the second location is right down at the other end of the Skylight where it squeezes through a narrow opening just before the hip section of the glass.

We had to cut our way through the kerb and all its layers of material, removing everything down to the steel RSJ surface, making a rectangular shape hole but with a tapering top surface to guide the air downwards.
We used 6mm MDF sheet material to create the liner for the chute, to go over the steel RSJ beams and bend downwards to the bottom of the rafters, where the air is then transported down using more smooth insulation boards and this travels down before sweeping sideways to join into the main air duct that will be built to run around the whole house.
These MDF pieces were all glued in using our glue grade expanding PU spray foam, putting in lots of clamps to hold them in place while the glue sets.

Skylight-duct-M-1

Skylight-duct-M-2

Skylight-duct-M-3

The size of the first chute near the Great Room is approximately 500mm wide by 100mm high, with a slight squeezing as it travels over the RSJ but having a 50,000 square millimetres capacity is about half the total capacity of our main air ducting that the fan is designed to work with. It is that size because the skylight and the Great Room will be collecting a great deal of sunshine energy during those sunny days and we need to make sure we have the capacity to remove this hot air easily without struggling. It is so much cheaper to design in a high capacity air ventilation system in the first place, combined with our super-insulated roof and walls, would mean that we don’t need to burn large amount of electricity to run refrigerated air conditioning units to cool the house down. Invest the money in the insulation at the beginning, a fixed cost and avoid the running costs later on especially if the world is facing large temperature rises.
Anyway, we did the second chute as well, with a similar design using MDF pieces but only 300mm wide by 100mm high, before spreading out to the full width of the rafter like before. We also put up more layers of foam boards up and down the rafters themselves.

Skylight-Duct-I-1

Skylight-Duct-I-2

Another job we did was to drilled a conduit hole through the kerb at our ‘chimney’, to allow a 40mm conduit to connect to the bottom of the metal arm and vertical pole. The vertical pole has a 40mm conduit going up the inside and poking out the top, ready for the electrical connections to all the devices that will be mounted into and on the chimney when that is built later on.

Chimney-conduit-passing-through-kerb

That is about it for this week, we will finish off those two special ducts, plus one more that is needed for the upstairs toilet and shower room, which also has to come over the steel RSJ but we only need a simple 100mm round hole to let the flexible air ducting through. The other job to finish off is dealing with the last huge pile of PU foam boards which we will slice up and insert in places up in the roof rafters, just to get rid of them.

20 November 2021
Installing Insulation Into Roof

We had a week of slicing and pushing loads of PU insulation foam boards up into the rafters! We carried on with the task we started last week where we wanted to get rid of all the random collection of 2nd grade of expanded polyurethane foam boards we acquired very cheaply, slice it up and put at least one layer in every single rafter we could access from the First Floor. We wanted to take the opportunity of the cooler weather to get this done and also have some measure of success when we needed to heat up the whole house when we will be working through the winter months. We were half way through covering up the gable section above the Front door last week so we got the second layer of 25mm thick boards and got that finished, bringing the total thickness to 50mm. This is only the start and eventually, we want to put in at least 300mm of some form of insulation, finishing off with glass wool for the added fire protection that will afford us.
We then proceeded to start slicing up the next bunch of boards into a collection of 550mm wide pieces and sorted into similar thicknesses. They ranged from a thinly 50mm to a very fat 150mm whoppers, with most of them being in the range of 60mm to 80mm.

Pile-of-sliced-insulation

We started in the roof area near our slicing machine, the “H” section that goes along the north side of the house, that is over Bedroom Three and the Utility Room. Some of the gaps between the rafters were tight and some were loose for the foam pieces, not by much but sometimes it was very difficult to jam in the board so we had to cut a slight angle off the long edge so it reduces the friction a little, enough for us to thump the board into place. We started at the bottom of the rafters but made sure we had a cleared gap of about 200mm, ready to be filled up with more glass wool for that extra fire protection, especially since all the roof rafters all have projecting Eves and we didn’t want any flames the chance of an easy route up our roof.
The top of the rafters terminates either at the Skylight and the steel RSJ or stops with an angle on a diagonal hip or valley beam. The Skylight needed to have a vertical layer of foam board inserted above the RSJs to make it easier when we come along with the layers and layers of foam boards in the rafters so we did that little job all the way around the whole Skylight in one go first. We cut lots of 60mm thick boards into 550mm wide and then carefully sliced at 200mm an angled cut using our jigsaw positioned at the 32degree angle to cut a sloping top.

Pieces-for-skylight-kerb

Anyway, we carried on inserting pieces of foam in along the H section, getting right down into the corner with the I roof and then went back to carry on the other direction to cover up along over the Utility Room and the Side door porch extension. We turned the corner and then went along the E section, around the next corner to do the C section which includes the the main ridge beam going out over the Front door and its extension.

Insulation-in-H

Insulation-in-G

Insulation-in-D

Next was the other side, the B section that goes over the staircase and turn onto the A section that goes over the Kitchen and towards the Great room. The stairs was a bit tricky because of a somewhat large hole in the First Floor but we handled that problem by laying out a dozen pieces of CLS timber and laid four partial sheets of plywood and OSB material so we could stand on it and climb our ladders. There was only two rafters to complete here so it didn’t take too long.
We finished the week doing the A section, right up to the edge of the First Floor and the Gallery but couldn’t go any further. The Great Room will have to be tackled at another time because we will have to build and assemble some form of work platform all around the room so we could work up in the rafters and also put on the finishing plasterboard sheet materials to form the ceiling.
So having completed this A section as far as we could, we could see that we have completed over half of the rafters and we used just over half the stacks of foam boards we got piled up on the Gallery so we should have enough to finish the job if we are lucky.

Insulation-in-A

Insulation-Piles-at-end-of-week

We will carry on doing that next week and should get it finished by the end of the week. Then we can return to building the next room, installing the utility pipes and conduits etc.

13 November 2021
Staircase Designed, Parts Created and Fully Assembled

We started on our next task on Wednesday, to design, create the parts and then build the staircase, all in just four days!
The first job was to get our two remaining pieces of the LVL timber, some 6metres long and sliced a shallow angled cut at the beginning of both planks. This end will be sitting on the concrete on the ground floor and rise up towards the first floor, at an angle of 36degrees. At 4936mm along up the bottom edge from the concrete, we then cut a triangle birds mouth where it will hook on to the first floor and its floorboards, so that the top step will exactly be the same level of the flooring when we get around to building the rest of the flooring layers and carpet etc. These two very long elements are called Stringers. Everything will be mounted to these stringers hence why these pieces of timber are 240mm wide, 45mm thick and laminated like plywood to make a very strong structural framework for the whole stairs.

Ply-wood-for-the-stairs-1

Ply-wood-for-the-stairs-2

The rest of the day was spent in taking four sheets of our newly purchased high grade 18mm hardwood plywood, with 13 layers and good quality veneers and sliced it up into a series of strips, four long strips of 205mm wide and 2.44metres long, then sliced the remainders into exactly 950mm wide. We used our big saw mounted into our workbench. The next set of cuts was done to the 950mm wide pieces to make sixteen 300mm deep planks, these being the “treads” of the stairs and followed by fourteen 225mm high pieces, these being the “risers”. Using various left-over pieces, we made sixteen narrow 27mm wide strips and then glued each one to each Tread piece thus making a thicker edge to each step, deliberately overlapping the front edge so we can trim off the excess and the dried glue to make a smooth finish.

The following day, Thursday, we took our four narrow strips and paired them up and proceeded to mark along one edge exact measured marks, taking from a spreadsheet printout showing the calculated distances from each step to the next one. Then using a right angle framing square, we precisely positioned a diagonal piece of straight wood and clamped it to the framing square so that first side was 270mm long and the second side was 195.4mm. This jig was aligned and slid along the edge of our paired strips to every previously marked positions, to draw the right angle triangle down on the plywood, to which we positioned our next piece of equipment, the track saw to carefully cut out each of these triangles, to end up with a long series of pointed staircase like steps. These four prepared sawtooth like strips were then glued and and nailed to our stringers that will form the basic structure to hold the treads and risers that will form the whole staircase.

Stringers-with-tread-supports-glued-on

The rest of the afternoon was spent setting up the router machine and fence to guide through the 16 treads and 14 risers. The first little job was to use the straight cutter with a top ball bearing, to run all the treads that had the extra bit glued on and cleaned off the dried glue and excess material to make a smooth flat edge ready for the bullnose. The last bit of the day was setting up a 18mm wide straight cutter and position the fence so we can slice a 5mm deep slot for the riser to fit into on the underside of the tread, just behind the bullnose, exactly 25mm in from the front edge and proceeded to get that done.
On the Friday, we carried on with the routing operations, this time, to cut a bullnose on the tread front edge. We did some test pieces with different radius cutters doing a 9mm, 12mm or 18mm radii. The thickness of the front edge is now 36mm (double layers of 18mm plywood) and we found that the 9mm radius was too small and the 18mm is too large so we settled on the 12mm. so the 16 pieces were sent through the router on both sides to generate our bullnose.
In the meantime, the LVL stringers were cleaned up to remove the excess glue that has bubbled out from the step support plywood

Glue-exuding-from-plywood-joints

The last task for the treads were to drill clearance holes along the front edge in the middle of the slot (to join and tighten onto the riser piece) and two more clearance holes on both left and right hand sides to fix the tread down. That finished all the preparation tasks to the 16 Treads.

For the 14 Risers, first we aligned them all together into one neat pile and clamped them all together, making sure they are all squared up. Then we sliced a small notch out of the bottom corners, some 20mm wide and 25mm deep. This notch will allow the risers to fit down below the Tread level and allow a slot to be positioned 25mm from the bottom edge that will support the back of the tread piece. Talking about this slot, that is our next job, setting up the router this time to cut a similar 18mm wide slot and 5mm deep (just like the other slot underneath the tread) but cut horizontally near the bottom of the riser, as mentioned before, 25mm off the bottom edge. Finally, five more clearance holes was drilled along the slot to help draw in the tread and ensure a tight joint for the glue to work at its best performance. Oh yes, two more holes were done, one on each left and right side to secure the riser.

Stair-treads-and-risers

By the end of Friday, we had done some test fittings and there were concerns over the stringers not being straight and a little twisted and bowed and the tread and riser combination were not sitting in neat and square (It might be ‘engineered’ timber but it’s still only wood).
So on Saturday, we verified that our two stringers matched together (bringing them together and inspecting the support steps etc) and also confirmed that the a riser placed in the top most step position was right angle to the first floor stair hole itself. We also got out several large clamps and straps to squeeze together the two stringers together tight to a tread plus riser pair and all is actually looking ok after all. We left on a strap fully tight at the top of the staircase and decided that we would start at the bottom to fix each tread and riser pair in place, for real, using screws but no glue. We used the clamps for each pair to make sure everything is good and tight before screwing in the screws, but we did have to trim a tiny bit off the back edge of some treads to make everything fit snug in the two slots. We continued with this process, going up until we got over half way and decided that everything is coming together good and looking neat and smart so we felt that we could commit ourselves to permanently gluing everything together so we undid the screws out of the treads but left the screws in each riser to help hold the two stringers in alignment.

Stair-under-construction

So we proceeded from the beginning again and glued everything, fitted each step into place and applied all the screws this time, including the five screws in the back of each riser to anchor the tread into the slot. We only had to use the large clamp once or twice again as we went up and finally reach the top by the end of the day.

Looking-up-the-stairs

Looking-down-the-stairs

The-stair-body-completed

The-back-of-the-stairs

We have completed our steps for our staircase! We can now get up and down much easier, we can show our visitors our first floor without asking them to climb a ladder and also we can carry up larger and heavier items to get them out of the way while we are working on the ground floor. Yippee!

We will be adding hand rails and balusters later as part of installing the stair lift.

17 July 2021