Category: Roof

Built a Temporary Working Platform

We spent the last three days in building a temporary working platform, right across the Great Room so we can access the rafters and get them filled up with insulation, cover them up but also gain access to the entire Skylight so we can measure and order the triple glazing units while we have this platform up. We will also put up the finishing surface, the Fermacell “plasterboard” sheets and paint it all brilliant white, including in and around the Skylight that is over the Great Room too. We want to design and build a lighting panel that will have the capability of being lowered for maintenance, adds or remove lights etc as well.
All this is difficult to do without this temporary platform so we proceeded by putting up our green laser line generator and then screw up a ring of CLS timber support rails around the edges of the room, so that we can then put a series of nine joists, separated by exactly 4feet, or 1220mm. We also put on an extra cross beam positioned at the end of the Gallery so that we can support these joist that lies beyond the Gallery. Then, we created a couple dozens of legs, along with a footpad to spread the load from the leg, and got them located every 4feet along each joist too. We wanted to make sure that our platform is good and strong and as sturdy as possible because we will be working with heavy pieces of equipment like a board lifter.

A forrest of legs 1

A forrest of legs 2

A forrest of legs 3

Next, we now brought up a whole load of 18mm thick OSB boards from our store room (Bedroom Two!) and shoved them one at a time, up onto the framework. We started next to the end of the Gallery and put in five whole sheets, in the eight foot direction, starting from the “A” wall and almost reaching the “O” wall, with only a few inches short. This shows that our Great Room is five sheets of eight feet each, a total of forty feet!
We carefully screwed plenty of screws to fix all the edges and for the second row, we sliced up an old sheet in half so we could offset the whole sheets to overlap half way. and finally, we put in a third row of another five sheets and again, there is only a small gap to the long “P” wall.
The gaps left and right of the Gallery were then filled in. the Kitchen side had a 1900mm board cut and fixed in, while the larger other side had two more whole sheets put in. This left a 240mm gap which we found lots of left-over pieces where we could slice them down and fit them into this gap.

Great Room ‘First Floor’ 1

Great Room ‘First Floor’ 2

Great Room ‘First Floor’ 3

We now have an accessible working level, connected to the First Floor, with a small six inch step down (it makes it easier to get at the bottoms of the rafters) and we can get on in doing the last section of the roof to get populated with insulation etc. And, by the way, the width of the room is four whole boards plus a bit, so that is four times 4feet which is 16feet!! This is what is called a large space, in fact, it’s a Great Room !!

An because everything is screwed in place all the wood and OSB can be used for building the First floor walls later on so nothing will be wasted!

22 July 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
Roof Sections D and E plus Alcove F and G Are All Complete

This week, we resumed our work of inserting glass wool insulation into the roof rafters for the next main sections of the upstairs roof rafters, namely the “D” and “E” section.

Glasswool in D & E

But, before we put up the black vapour barrier plastic sheeting, we went into the Alcove portion in the corner of the roof, where we have a small gable wall extending up from the Side Door and Porch. This is the F section and a tiny sloping piece, the G section, coming back to the levels of the main rafters. We had already inserted the hard PU foam boards into these three areas and they needed to be covered up with a protective OSB sheets next. For the vertical gable part, which also had an air ventilation port, ready for the fume cupboard for our workroom. We cut triangular pieces using 18mm thick OSB boards and managed to slide them into place, but only after we had to slice them into smaller pieces!
We then did the same for the two sloping sides, but using the thinner 11mm OSB boards instead. these pieces were fairly complex, especially the left hand side (the “G” section) because the pieces needed to come all the way out to the front of the rafters so that it protects the vapour barrier plastic. But we made it! Finally, we cut and shaped several more pieces of the 11mm OSB, to fit and cover the “shelf” that ran along at the floorboard level, at the back of the Alcove.
We now could proceed by filling the last few rafters and the aforementioned shelf with more glass wool and then covered everything up in lots of the DPM plastic, our two main roof sections, “D” and “E”, all the surfaces in the Alcove, the “F” and “G” sections

Plastic on D & E

Then covered all that lot up with more 11mm OSB boards, including all the ready-made pieces we previously created.
We now have completed this rather complicated corner of the roof and we can carry on in filling the rest of the rafters with a little bit more ease. We go back and finish off the “C” section, the large gable wall above the Entertainment and Front door wall.

D & E Covered in OSB

Side Porch area completed

17 June 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
Shredded the First Load of Foam Rubbish!

This week, we used our new shredder machine to tackle the mountain of rubbish we have been collecting over the last couple of weeks !!
We started this task but we soon discovered that we were filling up our ordinary black bin bags so quickly that we were spending more time in changing over the bags than the actual shredding process. So, we went out to buy those super large wheelie bin liners but none were available in our local shops so we had to order it overnight.

The only problem was they are made with a very very thin plastic and when we put one bag on the dust extractor, the pressure from the air coming in was strong enough to start stretching the plastic and blow a hole !! We started slapping tape over the holes but more would start elsewhere…
Oh boy!
But we had a light bulb moment and put on two bags at once, one inside another. That solved the problem. We even had to put on an extra cable tie on the bottom seam because it would sometimes blow that joint as well!!
In the photo below, you can see to how fine the shredded material is. This is great because when we pour it all under our Great Room floorboards, we will achieve even better insulation affect and help to keep the large Energy Module from heating up the Great Room.

Here is a short video of us using the machine. We put on ear muffs, eye shields and most importantly, good quality dust masks as well. (Warning it will be a bit loud…)

We would blast ourselves clean with compressed air at the end of each session (lunch time and end of day) so we didn’t bring the mess into our living quarters!!

The original roll of wheelie bags had only 20 on it and so we quickly filled up nine “containers” so we had to resort back to the ordinary bin bags again. We eventually got it all done!

We then moved all the collected shredded material in their bags and took them downstairs to our Entertainment Room, to keep them out of the way and keep them safe from accidental damage and spilling very fine material all over the place.

We now can carry on filling up the next section of rafters, doing J, K, L and M in our next week of work starting in May. Next week, we resume our work on the electronic side of things where we can collect data from our batteries, the solar panels and the weather prediction, to provide a more intelligent charging of our batteries during the night.

20 April 2023
Progressing with Filling the Roof Rafters with Insulation

We are making steady progress on filling our roof rafters up with the first load of PU foam insulation boards.

We have now completed the I section, the H section, the G and F porch section as well as finishing off section E. Together with the previous sections D, C and B. We have used about half the quantity of the foam bits and pieces we bought and we still have a fair number of pieces upstairs, waiting to be used up.
We estimate that we have completed just short of half way. So, it will be a race to whether we will have enough to complete the job when we get to the Great Room. This is not really a problem because we had originally designed for our roof rafters, which are 400mm deep, to have glass wool put in. This would give us an U factor of 0.1W per square metre per °C difference. For much of our roof, we will be even better than that, coming in at around 0.075 W in some spots.
To give you some idea of what that means, our roof is about 300 square metres in total so if you multiply those two numbers together, you would get about 25W of heat loss through our roof for 1 degree difference. So if we run our house at 25°C, nice and cosy, and the chilly outside is hovering around 5°C, then there would be a difference of 20°C so multiply that number with the other number we got .. 25W times 20°C will give 500W of heat loss for the entire roof area of our house, on that chilly day! One small fan heater on low power would be enough to keep us warm!!

We have reached a point where we need to tidy up the large rubbish pile that we have created (as well as 2 bags of bits accumulated over the last year)

So we now need to build a shredding machine to reduce the rubbish to small lumps, ready to be poured under our floorboards in our Great Room.
So read our next blog for a report on building another quick’n’easy piece of DIY equipment!!

15 April 2023
Loading Up the Rafters With Insulation

We finally restarted our building work on our house again, after several months of rescuing our Financial Crisis caused by the soaring runaway energy prices. We had the delivery of our second-hand PU foam boards way back last year and we have now started making use of it.

We decided to tackle the section of the roof rafters upstairs over the front door region of the house. This is section B, C and D. Section C is actually a gable internal end to the roof as the rest of the hip roof is the overhanging porch on the front of our house.

This meant that we had to build an additional internal wooden framework to form the backbone of the wall for that room, and then we proceeded to fill it up with 300mm thick of PU foam boards pieces. Then, the sloping rafters next to this gable end were also filled up with more PU foam bits and pieces.

It was during this task that we were wondering to how much material we got outside and whether we were using it up too quickly to make it last long enough to accommodate the rest of the whole roof including making sure we had enough to do the Great Room which so far, haven’t had any insulation inserted yet. On conclusion, we decided to be careful and from now on, only put in one layer of PU foam boards in all the remaining rafters until we have done the Great Room and we can know to how much left-over we got. We then can go back and fill in another thinner layer in certain places to fill them up a bit more and use up the last of the foam boards pieces.

Another aspect that we are having to be careful, is making use of any larger single piece of boards because we need to make sure we can make single “triangular” fillers for the rafters that contains either a valley or a hip. It would be quite tricky to try to insert small pieces, pushing them upwards against gravity and holding them there while the glue sets. Very awkward so hence why we are putting to one side any larger single pieces.

This stage of our building work will be a long job, not at least because we are also doing our computer work alongside at the same time so we will only write a blog report every so often as we finish major sections of the rafters, like for example, We have done as far as possible for the moment, the B, C and D sections and we have even done some of the E section as well. We will just carry on and drop a quick update now and again.

18 March 2023
Adding Extra Insulation to our Roof on our Temporary Living Quarters

We were interrupted in doing this task by a bout of Covid and waiting for the weather, but we finally got to install an extra layer of insulation foam boards to the roof of our temporary living quarters. We are suffering from the huge rises in electricity prices and we needed to do something about it and save money.
So we decided to make use of our recent supply of recycled PU foam board pieces and construct 90mm thick panels. We took a heap of random sized pieces, only making sure that they were at least 1200mm wide and put them through the slicing machine to make 90mm wide pieces. We then stacked them into a frame and stuck them together with a little bit of PU spray glue. We stacked them up to a height of 1750mm which covers the majority of the roof surface, leaving a small gap down the ridge line, which will be filled in with other 90mm pieces later on.

Sliced-insulation-glued-into-a-sheet

We proceeded to make sixteen of these panels over the course of several days.

Constructed-sheets-ready-for-install

One of the early jobs we did before we got Covid, was to install a series of 89mm CLS timber pieces up on the roof so that we had somewhere to fit down the roofing felt and also retain the foam panels in. These CLS pieces were screwed down with 150mm screws, all the way around the edge.

Temp-Living-extra-insulation-framing

The next task was to slice up some 11mm OSB board to generate fourteen 100mm wide strips and four 75mm ones, all them being 1780mm long. These pieces will be used to clamp down the insulation panels. Eventually, we will laid down a covering of protective roofing felt, so we decided that these OSB strips needed to have their edges chamfered so we put each one through our router. The four smaller strips had a quarter round shaped on one edge and a 45degree slope cut into the other edge. The same 45degrees chamfer was done on both edges of the other fourteen strips.

Then, after ordering a box of 180mm long screws and clout nails for the roofing felt and grabbing a lovely clear day today, we managed to get all sixteen panels up onto the roof, starting at the far end and proceeded to fit each one, sometimes needing to trim them down a little bit and clamping the edges down using the strips of 11mm OSB we made earlier. We had to drive the long screw into the roof, to seek out the old 50mm roof rafter inside the structure, and making sure we found it so we had a solid fixing.
Because the old roof had regular slight hollows, we used lots of spray PU foam to fill this little gap between the new insulation panels and the old roof surface, in order to support the new panels, especially when we walk over the new roof whilst applying the roofing felt.

Foam-under-the-sheet-to-fix-and-support-tehm

We managed to get the entire roof covers by about 4pm and the last job to do was to cover this new covering with a tarpaulin, to make sure that the majority of the rain will be deflected away and keep it reasonably dry. The weather is very wet at the moment and we need to wait until we have a full dry day to get the final roofing felt glued and nail down.

All-boards-installed

Now we wait …
We finally got the roof felt on a week later! It was the first dry day when we did not have other commitments, it turned a to be a very drear day with fog all day.
The felt was rolled onto the roof and nailed around the perimiter and along the OSB fixing strips as well as gluing it to the roof at the overlaps and gluing the overlaps to them selves.

Covering-the-insulation

All-covered

28 November 2022
Installing Third String of Solar Panel up Inside Skylight

We started the new week by tackling the next phase of installing our green solar capture schemes, this time, the third string of panels, basically almost square shaped ones, measuring 1200mm by 900mm, small enough to fit up inside our eleven Skylight windows. Each of these windows which we had originally designed 10 years ago, measures 1040mm wide by 1200mm high. We had always intended to have solar electric cells put in these windows. We had originally inteneded to make our own solar panel from individual cells, but we realised that we could buy fully constructed panels for a reasonable price not much more than the raw parts, plus also we would not have to run the risk of not being able to make long lasting and reliable finished modules either.
The first job was to measure all eleven windows and most of them were 1040mm wide, but one or two were slightly bigger and one or two were even a little bit smaller (measuring 1034mm wide). Then, we thoroughly washed the glass (actually polycarbonate plastic) with warm soapy water with a floor mop! We also washed down the framework too so it is ready for the glue to stick down the CLS timber we are going to apply.
We then cut twenty-two lengths of 63mm, measuring 1195mm long CLS timber, with a 15degree angled ends and drilled two clearance holes through the wider direction in each piece. We applied a line of glue and proceeded to screw each piece using 100mm 6mm thick screws. This CLS timber will provide the anchorage for holding the actual solar panel themselves in place.

Skylight-solar-panel-frame

The CLS timber will almost fill up the gap and block the sunshine from getting through to the insulation boards that will sit behind each solar panel, leaving a small gap that we will allow the air to circulate in and around the panel to keep it cool and ensure that we evaporate any condensation of water that may form on the glass. Each of the eleven window with its solar panel, will have fresh air piped in from our main air conditioning system so we can provide some cooling energy to the panel themselves, especially during the hot Summers, which will improve the efficiency of the silicon wafers converting the solar energy into electricity.

We then put small pieces of double sticky foam on all four corners of each solar panel modules, sticking 100mm long pieces onto the metal frame and this will provide a reasonable air gap between the panel and the glass surface, and also we drilled three holes through the metal framework on both sides of each panel sideways, so we can screw the panel in place, using our mushroom headed stainless screws, up in the Skylight window and press up against the plastic surface. We even stuck on two small pads of 6mm MDF material so we ensure another air gap at the top of the panel, again to allow the air to circulate etc.

Most-skylight-panel-fitted

Next task was to plumb in a conduit from inside our Tech Cupboard, up into the ceiling, through the floorboard, up the steel leg and terminate right up inside the Skylight near the top.
This will provide the path for our five pairs of 2.5mm square millimetre copper wires, coming from the eleven Solar Panels, grouped into five sets. We decided that we will have a sequence of one panel on a pair of wires, then followed by a group of four panels joined together in series and connected to another pair of wires. After that one, is another single panel on a third pair of wires, followed again by another group of four panels on the fourth pair of wires and finally the last single panel on a fifth pair of wires. All the wires were fed up from inside the Tech Cupboard and went off to each of these set of panels.

Skylight-solar-cables-in-Tech-cupboard

We did it that way so we could configure different combinations of connecting the panels together, to provide the maximum conversion of solar to different target battery voltages. We are wanting to charge our 12Volt battery but also want to charge our 50Volt packs too. in fact, for the time being, we would like to take all the output of all eleven solar panels if it is possible and convert all the energy into our 50Volt packs and maximise the benefit of avoiding having to pay these ridiculous grid electricity prices.

Now we needed to make a front panel to mount the solar charging equipment, the switches and the fuses too. We found a piece of plywood left-over piece from when we were doing the staircase, a lovely quality of 18mm plywood, measuring 345mm wide. We sliced off a length of 1070mm long so it can fit right across the Tech Cupboard, mounted in a vertical direction and facing outwards, and sitting on top of the Battery Cabinet. This front panel will have a distribution fuse box starting on the left end, to provide low-voltage (both 50V and 12V) fused protection for various pieces of equipment in our Tech Cupboard like network hubs and fileservers etc. Then are the two solar charger modules next on the front panels and finally another distribution box that will have two isolation switches and more fused connections coming from the solar panels themselves. We drilled a load of access holes to allow the various wires through to join into these modules. We also sliced two rectangular narrow slots behind the two solar chargers, to allow fresh air to blow on the cooling fins that runs top to bottom on the back of the units.

We also took the lid of the Battery Cabinet, which we hadn’t processed yet, and cut that down to size to fit in between the walls and the steel leg. We decided that we needed to also slice the whole lid in half, down the length so that we had a more permanent section at the back and still have the front half removable for any future adjustments or modifications inside the Battery Cabinet itself. Our new front panel will sit on the back shelf piece some 50mm inwards and is screwed upwards to join the two pieces together.

Then, we painted all three pieces in our black paint to match the rest of the Cabinet.

Solar-Equipment-panel

While the paint dries, we got on in making covers to put over the new Solar Panels up in our Skylight so that we both keep the dust out, but also, to provide a sealed chamber so we can pump in fresh cool air at the bottom of the window and suck the warmer waste air out at the top. These covers are made using 6mm MDF sheets, cut down to just fit inside the Skylight rafters, the height being 1210mm long and the width being set to 1030mm as a minimum so it can fit in all the skylight windows. Two 50mm air holes were drilled into the left bottom corner and then diagonally at the top right corner and also we drilled two 20mm holes in the lower middle point to allow the electric cables to come through from the Solar Panel. We found that it is a tight squeeze to get these covers in place so we decided to slice every board in half and it was so much easier to tackle the problem of installing these covers. Each had three screws put in on each edge. Finally, we covered up the holes with aluminium tape and also sealed the bottom and top edges with a line of spray foam so we keep the dust away from the solar panels.

Skylight-solar-cover-panels-fitted

Finally, we wired up all the equipment that now have been mounted to our freshly painted front panel, connecting the five individual groups of the solar panels into the switch bank and then wired in the isolation switches from the solar chargers themselves. We then installed this front panel on top of the Battery Cabinet and screwed it into place and connected it to the 50Volt bus bar, plus also all the cables coming down from the Skylight were connected into the top side of the bank of switches. We now have a working third string of solar panels!

Solar-Eqipment-fitted

Skylight-solar-charger-working

Today, we collected 4kWh worth of energy but we do need to go outside and climb up onto the roof, to clean the Skylight windows as they have several years of accumulated grime. We will do a test of cleaning half the windows and then flip between the two halves and find out how much difference it might make to our Solar power collected.

That pretty much concludes everything to do with our Solar, the electrical version for now, we got a thermal one to tackle sometime in the future. We will now get on with installing extra insulation into our temporary living quarters, to help reduce our electricity burden!

18 October 2022