Roselea

Category: Roof

  • Covering of Section I and J Roof is Progressing

    This week, we continued with the task of nailing up rows and rows of battens on top of the breathable plastic membrane on the I and J section of the roof.

    Covering of Section I and J Roof is Progressing

    Battens-nearly-finished-on-J

    Covering of Section I and J Roof is Progressing

    Battens-nearly-finished-on-I



    We also had to do the chimney mounting pole where it came through the roof boards. The breathable membrane had to have a slit cut into it, to slide over the metal pole and then lay in a square rubber piece that had a small square hole cut in the middle and stretched over the square pole too. The rubber went under the membrane above the pole and over the top of the membrane below the pole, to ensure that any water that had slipped past the slates would run off without entering into the house.
    Covering of Section I and J Roof is Progressing

    Sealing-base-of-chimney-support


    Some of our days were interrupted by rain and other commitments but we managed to get a long morning of work in, here and there, before the forecasted rain arrived, or around our other commitments.
    Both the I and J sections are both complete, all tile battens are up, all spaced apart 112mm and ready for the Slates to go on.
    Covering of Section I and J Roof is Progressing

    Battens-finished-on-I

    Covering of Section I and J Roof is Progressing

    Battens-finished-on-J



    But we had to fiddle with the valley trough modules to build up a 7 metre line up the inner corner of the roof, and interface the top end into the layers of rubber and breathable plastic membrane and slates so that any rainwater will be collected by the trough and not leak on to the roof boards (which of course is protected with another backup plastic membrane too).
    We are also talking about using Lead sheets to provide a very malleable material to shape around the complex angles at these points on the roof, for example, the three way intersection of the K roof and the Ridge line coming out from the house.
    Finally, we put up the support battens on the kerb, 100mm high pieces, screwed with stainless steel screws, spaced apart 150mm (half a slate so each slate can have two nails in it), to hold the flashing rubber membrane to seal the junction between the slope of the roof and the kerb. These battens also reinforces the security of holding our breathable membrane into place and not get ripped during strong winds.

    The last job started on Saturday, was designing and making various tools to help with the process of shaping the slates, a box container underneath the guillotine tool, to hold the sharp pieces of rubbish (and not scatter across the roof surface and make a mess in among the wooden battens and membrane). We will finish that on Monday and also make a tool to make the task of placing alignment marks up the tile battens much easier. These marks are spaced apart 204mm, the width of a slate plus one hook .

  • A Quick Three Rafters Installed Before Rain Arrives and Half of K Rafters Created

    In between rain showers, when the sun came out this morning, we got outside to firstly bring in six sheets of our 12mm plywood from our main stack (after these six sheets, we have 119 left). Then we got the final rafter installed right up in the far left back corner of the building (P2) and then went around the corner to do two of the O rafters (O9 and O8) before the rain came.

    Rafters-on-Corner-of-O-and-P

    Rafters-on-Corner-of-O-and-P


    We retired back to the workshop to slice up the six sheet of the plywood, to make 18 webbing strips to complete the final set of the “K” rafters. These then were measured and sliced to length with their 45 degree angled ends and wall notches cut out of them. That concluded the preparation stage and we then had time to make six out of the ten we have got to do.
    On Saturday, we will see what the weather is doing and either go outside to carry on installing more “O” rafters or carry on building the final four “K” rafters. We will see!!

  • N and O Have Been Bevelled, and K Now Being Prepared

    With the wet weather outside, we stayed dry in the workshop and carried on with the task of slicing angled bevel ends on the fourteen rafters we have already made, eight for the “N” section and six for the “O” section. Plus the one we did yesterday for the odd P2 rafter, we now have done a total of fifteen, all ready to be put up into the roof and get the Great Room all done.
    For our afternoon session, we started the job of preparing all the parts to make the final set of twelve “K” rafters. We brought in another five lengths of the 89mm CLS timber and along with the three (and a bit) lengths of the 63mm CLS timber we already had in the workshop, we then proceeded to chop them up into all the individual parts. Twelve of the 89mm wide ones to make the top flange with had the bird’s mouth cut into it, and ten parts of the 63mm wide ones for the bottom flange, all having the 45degrees angle ends.
    That concluded the day’s work and tomorrow, with the dryer weather, we will bring in six sheets of plywood and get them sliced up into eighteen more 400mm wide strips to make the webbing to go towards making the final 10 full-sized rafters.

  • Four More Rafters Are Up and Bevel Slicing Troubles!

    This morning, after a slight delay, we got outside and reassembled our platform on our tower and got up four more rafters to almost finish off the “P” section of the roof.

    Rafters-P18-to-P21-Installed

    Rafters-P18-to-P21-Installed


    That brought us up to lunch and the job for the rest of the day was to slice the bevelled ends to all the other rafters we have already made in the workshop.
    But .. ..
    We were slicing the first rafter of the 12 we got to do when the Bevel Slicing Machine started vibrating quite badly and when we looked at it we found that the blade was moving in and out of the gearbox. Oh Boy, Does this mean the gears have broken under the stress of slicing these very large items?
    So we took apart the saw and got inside to the gearbox and discovered that nothing was broken after all! it seems that one of the ball race had slipped and this made the axle move in and out and caused the saw blade to vibrate and bind in the saw cut.
    We realised that there should be a metal “washer” disc covering the ball race to stop it moving so we got a piece of metal, cut it into the circle shape, drilled three holes to fix it down and put a large hole in the middle for the axle to come through.
    Bearing-fixing-ring

    Bearing-fixing-ring


    We greased the gearbox and put everything back together and the quick tests passed with flying colours. We then finished off the rafter (P2) we were doing and that was the end of the day!
    That was close! We didn’t have to go out and buy another circular saw unit and tomorrow, we will continue to slice the rest of the rafters and get them outside to complete “N” and “O” sections.

  • Measured “K” Section and Created Last Two Rafters for “N”

    This afternoon, after the morning was occupied with other tasks, we got outside to firstly, rescue our fallen scaffolding tower, to push it back upright again. We did take off the wooden platform first to make the “top” end much lighter and it turned out to be quite simple and easy to push it back by hand.
    This allowed us the room to move the taller tower along to the “K” Ridge / angled parts to measure the final, yes the very final section of the roof, the “K” section which is over the back of the house and Bedroom Two. This set of numbers will go into our spreadsheet as usual and that will give us our final calculated set of numbers for the timber flanges and plywood webbing strips.
    Then, we returned to the workshop to assemble and create the last two rafters to complete the set for the “N” section over the Great Room.
    And finally, we did a quick service of our giant air compressor, to clean out the air filter and release the drain valve underneath the tank to let out the water. It has been several years since the last time and there seems to be about 600ml to 700ml of water! This water comes out of the air and there isn’t that much in a volume of air so we must have compressed rather a lot of it .. Wow!
    Tomorrow, we will either go outside and install more rafters to finish off the “P” section or if it is raining, we will cut the bevel ends on the “N” and “O” set of freshly made rafters and then carry on with preparing the parts for completing the final 12 (10 full sized plus 2 little top-flange only rafters) in the workshop.

  • Pretty Plywood Arrives and Five More Rafters Created

    This morning, our 75 sheets of pretty plywood arrived. The lorry managed to get down our Loke, and we placed our flat bed trolley alongside. We then pulled off the plywood, sheet by sheet. This allowed the delivery bloke to get off to his next port of call.

    Plywood-unloaded-onto-the-trolley

    Plywood-unloaded-onto-the-trolley

    We then moved half the pile by taking 3 sheets at a time and walked about 15 metres to our new storage tent. Eventually, we were able to move the trolley itself, with much slipping and sliding on the snow, and got the remaining sheets unloaded.

    Plywood-stored-away

    Plywood-stored-away

    This plywood is much nicer than the last lot (well we bought it as pretty)

    Plywood-has-a-decent-numer-of-plys

    Plywood-has-a-decent-numer-of-plys

    Nice-grain-on-Plywood

    Nice-grain-on-Plywood


    After lunch, we resumed in the lovely and warm workshop and created five more rafters.

    N-O-Rafters-made-so-far

    N-O-Rafters-made-so-far

    That’s was enough for Shaun’s back so tomorrow we will finish off the last two rafters and get ready for doing the “K” section by measuring the final set of rafters! Hurray!

  • Created Five More Rafters for Roof

    This afternoon, we resumed work on creating the last couple of dozen of rafters for the roof. We did Five more today before Shaun’s back had enough and didn’t want to overdo things.
    There are seven more to do in this current batch, which will finish off the roof area over the Great Room and leaves ten more rafters in the “K” section over the Bedroom Two area.

    Tomorrow, we have the delivery of our “nice” plywood coming from Diss (only about 30 miles away) and we hope it will make it with the snow arriving from Russia!! In the meantime, we will carry on with a few more rafters.

  • Assembling of “O” and “N” Rafters begins

    This morning, we switched over to our latest and last angled cuts, the 45degrees angles, for the webbing. These were for the “O” set of rafters, all six of them, plus two top-flange only ones too. All these rafters have sticking out eves so they have the bird’s mouth notches and also this end of the rafters are fitting onto the walls which means they needed the clearance notches done too.
    After lunch, we took the old P2 rafter (the mistake) and chopped off about 200mm off the end to turn it into a N9 rafter instead.

    Assembling of

    Rafter-offcut


    You can see the internal structure of one of our rafter, with the insulation in and the layers plus also how acute the bevel cuts has to be too!
    Then sorting out the pile of webbing, and organising the order of which combination of rafters will go into the template and at the same time, remove the piece of wood from the bird’s mouths that have been half cut up to this point.
    Finally, after cleaning the whole workshop and bringing in 23 strips of the insulation to fill the 14 rafters we are doing, we were ready to start the manufacturing assembling step of producing rafters.
    But with Shaun on light duty at the moment, we did only one session with two rafters in our template and got them all glued and nailed up. Tomorrow, in the afternoon, we will do a couple more sessions, limited by Shaun’s back and get the rest done on Thursday.

  • “N” and “O” Rafters Being Prepared

    Today, while it was a damp horrible day (and also Shaun is restricted to light duties!), we worked in our workshop to cut and prepare the material pieces to build more rafters. We made more noggins (both straight ones and diagonal 45 degrees angled ones), using up lots of odd left-over length of timber we have lying around and made enough to complete all the remaining rafters to build (both “O” and “K” sections).
    Then, we chopped up a series of CLS timber pieces to have ready the top and bottom flanges for the “O” rafters (we had already made a similar set for the “N” rafters last week!). Finally, we paired up all our remaining plywood webbing and sliced the 40 degrees angles that are for the “N” rafters.
    Tomorrow, we will do the “O” plywood webbing which have a 45 degrees angled ends so we will need to modify our templates and get those webbings sliced too. Hopefully, we will also get to create these rafters too and allow them to dry overnight before we take them outside, if we get a lucky break in the weather and installed them up and finish off the roof over the Great Room – Hurray!

  • The Final “P” Rafters Goes Up!

    With a very lovely sun shining down upon us, we proceeded to install the final set of “P” rafters up into the roof framework. The four rafters that goes up into the very far corner (left back corner of the Great Room) and the first two rafters of five that goes into the front left corner of the building.

    The Final

    Rafters-P1P3-and-P4


    But we discovered something wrong with the length and angle of the rafters (P4, P3 and P2). We did P4 first and realised that the angle of the Bevel cuts were incorrect, much too steep compared against the diagonal LVL hip rafter going down into the corner. We had to put in extra spacers to help fill in the gap and provide suitable structural connection. Then P3 rafter was too short by about 120mm in length and Disaster Number One, we seem to have a situation! We have a mismeasurement! When we originally measured this corner, we measured P4 and P2 and put the data into our spreadsheet and that where we got the numbers from to build these rafters. But we did something wrong somewhere and soon, we found it! the length of P2 was in error. We made the P2 rafter 1040mm long via the bottom flange but we realised that the distance from the LVL rafter down to the wall leg was actually 1400mm!! We Found It! A keyboard data entry error or perhaps a lithography error (writing into notepad!) or something! It is really the first time we have made a big mistake with a measurement during this roof phase or indeed other phases of this building project. So we abandoned P2 and finished installing P3 by inserting a large block of wood 62mm thick to fill in the gap and glue plus screws to hold everything together.
    The Final

    Spacer-for-P3

    The Final

    Rafters-P16-and-P17


    We then went onto doing the front left set of rafters and this time, we managed to get up two more rafters (P16 and P17) before the next Disaster Number Two occurred!! See Tower Crashes Down! and this put an end to our day’s work. This was about 4:30pm!