Roselea

Category: House

  • Finishing the Skylight in Great Room – Part 2

    We resumed work on the Skylight on Monday after the Christmas break and we got on with filling all the little staple holes all over the fermacell boards with a gypsum-based filler which has extra additives to make it extra sticky and shrink proof. One of the things we thought that would make a better job of sticking this filler into these tiny holes, is to air blast them clean of any crushed fermacell material when the staple was fired in. This will provide a longer term finish.
    We also ran a bead along the joints and also the corners as well. We then ran all over the woodwork and filled in the tiny little nail holes in the beading that holds up the double glazing glass units, filling in knots holes and the various joints along the ridge beam and metal work.
    All these fillings were sanded down and where discovered, refilled any holes that did actually shrink after all. This is a bit strange since the filler boast that it doesn’t shrink so we concluded that the water is being struck out into the dryer fermacell material (which is gypsum and newspaper mix) before the gypsum has the chance to form the lattice work during the curing process. Another job we did was to trim the bottom edge of the vertical sections of the walls and then rounded it gently to soften the edges plus also to protect against being bashed and having little chunks fly off.
    Starting to decorate skylight

    Starting to decorate skylight


    The next job is to paint the wood framework with universal combined primer and undercoat white paint, and a metal white paint for the steel cross tie. We had a little issue with one of the Skylight rafters where a knot hole kept on “leaking” colour when it got painted so we got out our oil-based primer and dabbed that area which did the trick. We repeated the undercoat for the second time all over to make sure that everything has a good strong whiteness.
    We, while waiting for the woodwork to dry between coats, applied a coats of white emulsion on the walls, using a regular bulk white emulsion and then finishing off with a high quality brilliant white paint.
    GR Skylight Decorated! (1)

    GR Skylight Decorated! (1)

    GR Skylight Decorated! (2)

    GR Skylight Decorated! (2)



    At this point, everything that we needed our mobile working platform to reach high up is finished so we moved it away to the other end of the first floor, ready for some future task like building the boxing that will hide the backs of the solar panels and the air ducting etc.
    We can now finish constructing the rest of the gable wall going across the Gallery, putting in the doorway etc and shelving units, blocking off the gap between the two steel posts holding up the Skylight.

  • Finishing the Skylight in Great Room – Part 1

    One of the areas that need to fully completed, including painting the woodwork, steel cross ties and the walls with paint, is our Skylight in our Great Room. Because this section of the Skylight stretches over beyond the Gallery, we had to extend the Gallery temporarily so our mobile working platform was able to be employed so we didn’t have to keep climbing up and down ladders. It was far safer and much quicker to do the various tasks.
    Work platform on Gallery

    Work platform on Gallery


    One of those tasks, was to build a blanking off wall, to extend our Gable wall, all the way up to the Skylight window frames themselves. Our interior Gable wall is aligned to the edge of the First Floor and it is thick enough to hide our large 6inch steel legs that are supporting the Skylight and we have designed the alignment to coincide with the Skylight Windows themselves, and it turned out to be very close to what we wanted. We had to lean backwards, very slightly, our vertical piece of wall, to meet the wooden framework of the window. We could have gone up perfectly vertically but we would have had a small 40mm “shelf”, collecting dust and dirt, hence we went for the gentle slope instead, which also will help reflect more light down to the Gallery and the Great Room.
    Skylight walls (2)

    Skylight walls (2)


    We then turned onto the two sides of the Skylight vertical walls and proceeded to give them a good hard sand, to get rid of years of weathering and make them ready for gluing and stapling up more of our fermacell boards. We had to do these sections in two halves because we got a steel cross tie that is half way up inside the Skylight, which is there to support the ridge beam and rafters of the windows themselves.
    Now, we tackled the last side of the Skylight, the one that comes down to align with our mobile lighting module. We wanted it to come down to our aluminium lighting channel that we got running around on all sides of the lighting module so we had to extend this fourth side further by another 150mm, making a total of 900mm. We also had to add an 18mm spacer, to bring out the surface, to align it with our aluminium channel. This meant that we had two “wings” to build as well, going underneath the edges of the Skylight and meeting up with the slopes of the ceiling. It was quite tricky to get everything measured and cut to the correct shape and size, but we managed it.
    Skylight walls (3)

    Skylight walls (3)

    Skylight walls (1)

    Skylight walls (1)



    The next task was to put a narrow strip of fermacell just above the doorway in our gable wall, going from left to right so that we could then install a flat piece of “ceiling” board under the Skylight two edges, coming perpendicular out from the Gable wall. These will have further lighting units installed, to help luminate the Gallery etc.
    Skylight wings (1)

    Skylight wings (1)

    Skylight wings (2)

    Skylight wings (2)



    One job was to put on a “pretty” cover on the ridge that is holding the windows and we used a piece of oak plank we had left over from doing the guttering. We trimmed it down to a 80mm wide piece and then created a “jigsaw” like joint, to go around the metal post. We chamfered a small 45degree bezel around the three edges and then screwed and glued it up.

    We then, modified our belt sander machine, to provide a method of sanding the finished fermacell surfaces, especially all the edges and joints. We used the existing frame that came with the machine and we added two 3mm thick aluminium bars to sit top and below the sander. The sander is then adjusted so that it is just skimming the surface when the machine is flat on the surface, without digging in at all.

    Surface sanding system (1)

    Surface sanding system (1)


    We put on a very rough sanding belt so it didn’t take too long to tackle the job of removing the steps in the joints, which indeed it didn’t! We went around everywhere in the skylight area quite quickly which is good because we will have to tackle the rest of the sloping ceiling surfaces everywhere.
    Surface sanding system (2)

    Surface sanding system (2)

    Surface sanding system (3)

    Surface sanding system (3)

    Wall after sanding

    Wall after sanding



    That concludes this first part of getting the skylight finished. We will have a Christmas break now and return in the new year for part two.
    Merry Christmas !!

  • Designed and Created Mobile Lighting Gantry

    Scattered over the last few weeks, we have been designing and creating a lighting gantry that stretches along the entire ridge line, up on our ceiling in our Great Room. This flat module is 7metres long and 300mm wide, hanging on six pairs of pulleys, using 3mm thick steel wire rope, replacing the original parachute cord (as previously stated in an earlier blog, because it stretched too much).
    The framework is a set of steel elements, made up of 2 pairs of 40mm heavier duty angle iron forming the basic 6metres rails that will have the ceiling panel screwed to it. Then, a set of seven? short 25mm angle iron pieces are welded between these two main structural elements, tying them securely together, and providing a flat surface to weld the final major piece of metalwork, a tube measuring 40mm high by 20mm wide and being 6.7metres long. We had to extend this tube with an additional 700mm piece, welded onto the end of the 6metre piece. We chose to use this kind of material because it provided a very neat way of attaching our pulleys by cutting a little piece of the tube away, like a door, revealing a cavity where we drilled two holes aligned across the width, to allow a bolt to be inserted and tightened down with a nut. This bolt would hold a ball-race pulley, centred by the use of two little pieces of aluminium round tubing, place on either side of the pulley. The steel rope can then be threaded along inside the rectangular tube, from pulley to pulley, while keeping the rope protected from being snagged up in among electrical cables that will be snaking back and forth between lighting units.
    Lighting Gantry 1

    Lighting Gantry 1

    Gantry construction

    Gantry construction

    Gantry wire & pulley

    Gantry wire & pulley



    Meanwhile, we got a sheet of 12mm plywood that we had on our rack of sheet material, and a sheet of our “plasterboard” material called Fermacell, which is gypsum mixed with recycled newspaper and squashed very precisely into a 10mm thick boards. We sliced both sheets into 320mm wide strips and then proceeded to glue a pair of each together and stacking them up and adding six concrete blocks on top, to make sure the glue is well pressed while it dries and cures.A week or so later, we took these bi-layered strips, now 22mm thick, and very carefully sliced off both of the long edges, an angle cut of 40 degrees off the horizontal (which is 50 degrees to the sheet). All circular saws are vertical cutting machines and they can only tilt over to a maximum of 45degrees off the vertical, but we wanted to go another 5 degrees further, to make a shallow angle slope. So to solve this problem, we tilted our track up by placing it on a long piece of 63mm CLS timber, giving the machine an additional 15degree approximately. This enabled us to tilt the saw to the required 50degrees (off the vertical, which is the same as 40degrees off the horizontal) and run the saw along the aluminium track to slice the new sloping edges.

    We also made sure that all three strips were all 300mm wide.
    The next job was to cut one in half, because they would form the two ends and they both needed the short end edges cut off, one of them needing an even more extreme angle of 32degrees off the horizontal, to match the slope of the ceiling at the left end of the lighting module. The other end terminates up against a more pitched roof, measuring at 45degrees so we could cut that edge by using the circular saw in its “normal” mode.
    Now we have our two ends, we next needed to cut a tongue and groove ends so that we can connect up each strip and join all of them into a single monolithic strip. But, we had to get the two ends up on the metal framework first so that they were touching the two slopes of the ceiling at each ends, so we can measure the middle two strips so that it all fitted together into a neat single strip.

    Gantry hanging

    Gantry hanging


    This “false” ceiling doesn’t quite touch the main ceiling around it, because we wanted to provide illumination down the slopes of the roof, to provide a gentle indirect glow shining off the ceiling and into our room. So we are going to install an aluminium channel with LED lights in it along the edges of the gantry. There will also be a dozen or so round lighting units along the bottom of entire mobile module, to provide direct main lighting when we need it. Also, being mobile, we can lower it down and attach other decorative lighting features like Christmas lights etc.
    Talking about lowering it down, we have built a winch with a long handle so we can unwind the steel rope more easily, in a controlled manner and take the strain of the weight of the whole module. We also sprayed on lubricating PTFE “oil” on the steel rope so it slips through the plastic conduit much better and don’t wear the plastic pipe away. It will not be that often, operating the wince and lowering the lighting module, perhaps once a year at Christmas time.
    In between these times, we put on a safety braking and locking system, to clamp the drum down tight so the lighting module is securely held up and won’t budge.
    Gantry winch (1)

    Gantry winch (1)

    Gantry winch (2)

    Gantry winch (2)



    Eventually, we may replace this hand-operated winch, with an powered one. We will see!

  • Glued and Stapled up a complete layer of Fermacell plasterboard sheets to the Great Room Ceiling

    Over the last couple of weeks, we have been putting the finishing surface on the ceiling in our Great Room. This material is our Fermacell a plasterboard like sheet material, it’s a highly engineered gypsum based product which much harder and flatter. We started at our interior gable wall that we have built to divide off the Great Room from the rest of the First Floor and went around the ceiling in a clockwise direction until we got to the O section of the roof. Here we had to skip over that section and do the N and finally the M section, arriving back on the other half of the gable wall. The, we went back to the O section and completed getting up the fermacell boards.
    Fermacell allover GR

    Fermacell allover GR


    All our joints between sheets, are glued together using PU construction glue, to ensure that we don’t get “crack” lines appearing after a few years through the shaking and wiggling of the timber structure, when blown by the winds outside. We will run the belt sander over all the joints as well, to make sure that it is very smooth, especially after we have pasted on filler on these joints .. and all the staple holes too.
    Oh yes, all our water nozzles have been well glued as well, so we don’t have to rely on a double spanner to unscrew the blanking plate and replacing them with a real spray nozzle.
    Glued in nozzle point

    Glued in nozzle point


    Then, we covered up the first parts of the Gable wall, on either side of the Gallery with more fermacell sheets, so that we can dismantle the working platform in a few weeks and still be able to complete the second half, the middle section because we have the Gallery to work from. This middle section will have a doorway and a collection of shelving units, both above and below the utility channel, with the lower units being extra deep so that there is a natural exposed top surface underneath the utility channel, for putting your cups or books down on.
    We also boarded the inside of the ‘Conservatory’ Dormer.
    GR Dormer boarded

    GR Dormer boarded


    But before we can do that, we needed to work on the Skylight, to get everything finished, including giving it a complete paint job too.

  • Moved 2tons of Fermacell Boards to House

    This morning, while catching a spell of dry and sunny weather, we decided to move in some of our plasterboard like material which is called Fermacell. We are reaching a point where we need to start fixing the final finishing layer all over the “ceiling” in our Great Room so here was the Opportunity.
    Each fermacell sheet measures 2400mm by 1200mm and 10mm thick and every separate sheet weighs 35kg each! We got our large flatbed trolley, pumped up all the tyres, put on some 11mm left-over pieces of OSB to protect the clean fermacell sheets from any dirt and dampness and rolled up to our stack of pallets we got stored outside under lots and lots of tarpaulin.
    We uncovered the front stack which revealed that we have two pallets sitting there, each one having sixty sheets so that was our target. The label says that these sheets were manufactured in February 2022 and that a pallet weighs 2.1tons!!
    It was satisfying that there were many layers of protective plastic covering each pallets, even a heat-shrunk layer as well. So the fermacell was nice and dry.
    So we offloaded 20 sheets, weighing “only” 700kg, thinking that the trolley can take it. we push and pulled the trolley but were struggling to roll it all the way to the front door of our house. It was at this point that we noticed one of the tyres was completely flat!! No wonder it was hard work!!
    (no photo because we didn’t think of it!)
    So we proceeded to unload these sheets stand them upright, leaning against sections of our hallways downstairs. We put some outside our Linen cupboard and also on the opposite wall across the Bathroom doorway as well.
    This freed up the trolley so the next hour was spent repaired the tyre and putting in a new “old” inner tube. We think that the hole where the valve comes through the metal rim of the wheel is the cause of the damage to the inner tube. We cleaned up the hole and put on extra layers of protective rubber patches around the valve and got back a working tyre again. Don’t know how long it will last but long enough for doing this job today!!
    For the rest of moving the sheets, we went back and forth twice more with thirteen sheets and the last run had fourteen sheets. We unloaded them and built up a third pile alongside the Entertainment Room.
    Fermacell stacked downstairs

    Fermacell stacked downstairs


    We rewrapped the remaining pallets, leaving behind the wooden pallet to help protect the rest and pulled our tarpaulin back over again, putting back the OSB sheet on top of the plastic, to stop claws from birds from punching holes!
    Empty Pallete

    Empty Pallete


    These sixty sheets will go a long way to cover the ceiling, plus also a lot of the walls in our Great Room so that will keep us busy for a while!

  • Great Room Ceiling Finally Filled and Covered

    Over the last two weeks, we have been getting on in finishing off filling the roof rafters up in our Great Room. It is a simple case of inserting a mixture of 150mm and 200mm thick glass wool to finish filling up the space in the rafters, in front of the hard PU insulation. Some of them were well filled so we could only get the 150mm thick wool in, but most of it had the 200mm put in. One thing to remember about these glass wool these days, the label says 200mm thick but even after leaving it unrolled and laid out flat for more than a day, it only expands to 150mm thick. We just can’t see how these manufacturers can claim that it will expand to the full thickness as stated on the labels. So we have learnt over the last year or so, to automatically downgrade the thickness and work with that.

    Anyway, we went around all the rafters we got left to do in the Great Room, and then proceeded to cover it up with our usual black plastic vapour barrier.

    Last of the plastic lining 1

    Last of the plastic lining 1

    Last of the plastic lining 2

    Last of the plastic lining 2

    Last of the plastic lining 3

    Last of the plastic lining 3



    Then this week, we protected this plastic layer with our 11mm OSB boards. We had 42 sheets left in our stock and we ended up with four sheets left-over. Not bad guess for ordering hundreds of sheet way back last year!
    We had to make sure that we got the nozzles for our fire suppression system to poke through by marking the blank ends with a gel paint and then drilling a 25mm hole to get them through. We had seventeen of them to do!
    We also made sure that all the diagonal join lines were reinforced, to make sure that each panel is nice and secure, plus also nice and straight too. This is going to be our show room and the most visible room in the whole house.
    Last of the OSB Linig installed (1)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (1)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (2)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (2)


    To help us put up these sheets, we made a concrete block “stands” so we could push two of these stands up against the wall, at the bottom of the rafters and we adjusted the height so the OSB board would land just in the right place, to start building up the rows of sheets up the rafters.
    Board Support Stand

    Board Support Stand


    Now that we have finished the last major piece of work to the shell of our house, we are now fully insulated in all directions and at the moment, we do not need to heat up the house because there is enough solar energy coming in our Skylight to keep the whole house relatively warm at around 15°C which is just pleasant for working in and not get sweaty. We have a min-max thermometer and it is reporting that the down stairs only varies between 14°C nighttime and 15°C daytime, even if the overnight temperature drops to 5°C !!

  • First Level of Testing Great room Fire Suppression – Passes with Flying Colours

    We spent this morning giving our newly installed Fire Suppression system a check over against any leaks, by connecting up our compressed air supply, on each half of the Great Room’s pipework and nozzles. We mounted a pressure gauge on as well, and put in 7bars of compressed air into the system. We waited a few minutes, watching the gauge. We noticed that it was going down after a few minutes so we went around with a bottle of soapy water, to dab on every single joint and see if any bubbles grew. One of our nozzles was not tight enough so we tweaked it just a fraction with a pair of spanners and got it tight so no more bubbles came out. Two or three of the T-junctions had tiny little leaks so they got the same little tweaks too. After this process was done, the pipes was pressurised again and we then waited a good half an hour without any loss.
    We repeated the same test cycle on the other half.
    We now have two circuits of microbore pipes with nineteen nozzles, all sealed and this first level of testing coming up good. We will do a second level of tests, by using “live” water next time, but after we have installed the actual spray heads themselves and we will record the results and report back soon.

  • Installed Water Microbore Pipes and Nineteen Nozzles – Part 2

    Over the last couple of days, we installed water pipes inside the roof of the Great Room, drilling 15mm holes through each rafters, located about a metre up the slope from the walls and threading the 10mm diameter microbore plastic pipes. We have two separate runs both start downstairs underneath the floor at the end of the Hall as it enters into the Great Room. One pipe goes off towards the back of the building, inside the wall that separates Bedroom One and the Great Room and then goes up until it meets the roof rafters where it is threaded through the holes in each rafter going half way around the Great Room. The other pipe goes off in the opposite direction, through the Kitchen / Great Room wall and then goes up to meet the roof rafters and also threaded through the roof rafters as well. We have decided to locate eleven spray nozzles on the first run of water pipe and a further eight nozzles on the second run.
    Nozzles all connected (1)

    Nozzles all connected (1)

    Nozzles all connected (2)

    Nozzles all connected (2)

    Nozzles all connected (3)

    Nozzles all connected (3)

    Nozzles all connected (4)

    Nozzles all connected (4)


    Each location then has a T-junction adapter and short lengths of 10mm copper pipe that has an quarter-inch female adapter on the end so that we can screw in a spray nozzles at the final stage after we have decorated the ceiling surfaces etc.
    A Low nozzles

    A Low nozzles

    A High nozzle

    A High nozzle



    There will be two more nozzles located right up to the under side of the Skylight so we can spray a mist of water directly over the Gallery as well. These will be installed later on when we have built the bottom part of the Skylight ceiling modules. We have also discovered another high pressure pump, this time it is a battery powered pistol shaped water pressure washer kit but it turned out to offer even higher pressure and faster flow rates. This handy neat little machine can generate over two megapascals of water pressure (this is about 20 bars or 300psi!) and this would be ideal to drive many more nozzles like we have here in the Great Room plus also produce a finer spray of water droplets and reach even further around the room. Connecting to it will be a bit convoluted but overall a very neat piece of kit!

    One of the final things that will do, is to perform a pressure check with compressed air first and then with water, and make sure all our joints and nozzles are good and tight. Once we are happy with that, we then can proceed to finishing off filling in the roof rafters with glass wool and sealing the roof with vapour barrier and 11mm OSB wooden sheets etc.

  • Installed Various Lighting Conduits Inside the Roof Rafters

    This week, we have been installing a set of conduits for routing electric lighting cables to various hidden locations all over the ceiling in the Great Room. We wanted to make sure that we can install additional lighting units without having to rip holes in our beautiful ceilings. One such location is the Dormer that will backs onto our Conservatory which we have left open, exposing the original roof rafters and we thought that it would look great it it had some lighting hidden behind the rafters so the Dormer would glow with a gentle illuminations. We threaded through the walls a series of 20mm diameter plastic conduit, coming from the lighting channel running around the whole room at the top of the walls, and bends to behind the exposed rafters, with additional conduits so that the middle three rafters are all connected together.
    Conduits between domer rafters

    Conduits between domer rafters


    We have also put in a twin set of conduits that takes an pair of electrical wires and a thin rope that connects to our flat ceiling lighting module that runs down the middle of the ceiling, right up at the top of the ridge line and pass the end of the Skylight.
    This “mobile” module will be nearly 7metres long and 300mm wide, constructed using steel angle iron to form the basic framework, to attach a series of pulleys, six of them evenly spread out along the length. The rope travels down the conduit from the Triangle Void above Bedroom1, behind the large upstairs work room, where we will have a winch to unwind the rope and we can lowers the lighting module all the way down to the ground floor. The rope comes out at the top of the roof and drops down to the first pulley, goes horizontally to the second pulley, then goes back up to the ridge line where the rope is threaded through the next two pulleys mounted up there. It then goes back down again to pulley number three and four, when the rope returns back to the ridge to the final two pulleys before the rope comes back down for the final time to loop around the fifth and sixth pulleys on the lighting module itself, where eventually, the rope goes back up to the end of the Skylight and get tied off. This gives a pulley ratio of Six to One so if the lighting module weighs 60kg, which is likely with all the metalwork, the wooden board and the finishing plasterboard glued on the underside, with all the lamp units, seasonal decorations etc. then the weight on the rope back at the winch, will be only 10kg approximately. We bought 3mm thin rope, designed for parachutes and it has a breaking strain of nearly 200kg so it should be quite safe for years and years!
    Center Light conduits start here

    Center Light conduits start here

    Power runs up to center

    Power runs up to center

    and lift rope runs to the end

    and lift rope runs to the end



    We will build the mobile lighting module later on when we have finished filling in the roof rafters and got them all covered up.

  • Surface of the Ceiling is Levelled Up and the Dormer has been Filled Up

    We spent three days levelling up all the “ceilings” of the Great Room. We wanted to make sure that the overall surface of each plane of the sloping roof is nice and flat, without any major wobbles. To achieve this, we mounted our green laser line generator on the side of each section of the roof rafters and adjusted the laser line until it is on balanced all even from one edge to the other edge of the roof.
    Using laser to align rafters

    Using laser to align rafters

    Measuring Rafter alignment

    Measuring Rafter alignment


    Then, we stapled various different thicknesses of wooden shims, depending on where the green laser line is in relation to each spot on every single rafter. We had a collection of 1.5mm plywood, 3.5mm hardboard, 6mm MDF, 9mm plywood, 11mm OSB and even some 12mm plywood pieces, all stapled using our air staplers and using 50mm long staples. We sometimes used combination so that we levelled up every rafter so that all of them matches up in one flat plane.
    Spacers to align rafters (1)

    Spacers to align rafters (1)

    Spacers to align rafters (2)

    Spacers to align rafters (2)



    We progressed right around on all four individual roof surfaces we got in the Great Room, especially the “O” section where we had to cope with one of the rafters having a steel band with lots of hex headed screws in as well. For this roof plane, we had to put in an entire strip of 11mm OSB board, with various thicknesses of shims so that we can mount our 11mm sheet right across the ceiling surface and miss the metal band and its screw heads.

    In the meantime, we then got on with filling in the space in the Dormer section with glass wool and then covering it up with our usual black plastic vapour barrier and protecting the plastic with our 11mm OSB sheet material too.

    Dormer boarded out

    Dormer boarded out


    This section is now ready for the layer of Fermacell plasterboard sheets in a few weeks.