Category: Porch

the Porch sections of the roof.

Metal Posts Installed, Platform Modules Rearranged and Guttering Completed for E

Monday, we had a little quick job of making some extra shelving for our living quarters, made out of pieces of plywood lying around

New-shelves-for-Mum

Then we got on with installing the last two metal aluminium legs for the Front Porch and its roof. We managed to hoist up the beam running underneath the roof edge, using our car hydraulic jack to lift it up 10mm on the outer corner and then a more distance (30mm) in the middle. All three legs are now bolted down into the concrete foundation pads and the plain steel concrete bolts were covered in bitumen sealant to protect them from damp sand in the long run. The top of the legs were screwed into the wooden beam using stainless steel coach screws.

3-metal-poch-legs

Porch-leg-concrete-bolts-masticed

The final job of Monday was to clean out the man-hole chamber that got damaged several months ago by a delivery van driver. We used our vacuum cleaner to suck up the sand and then wrapped a strip of rubber membrane around the top of the chamber to cover up the broken edge to stop further sand and soil to leak in. we will do a proper repair later on when we get the driveway laid.

Manhole-repaired-2

Manhole-repaired-1

Tuesday morning was spent going around the eves cleaning the excess brown glue away from the rafters coming down to the back of the fascia, doing about half of the circuit before lunch.
After lunch, we resumed our task of moving the platform modules to their new position.
Wednesday was spent all day adjusting the platform modules including moving the lift shaft into its final position (where it will serve us right to the end of completing the whole roof).
Thursday was another half workforce day, so the second set of the aluminium bracing support were made, this time for the Side Porch. These arms are angled at 53° from the wall surface about 6 feet off the ground and reaches out all the way to the corner of the framework beam.

We wanted to avoid having straight vertical posts supporting the porch so we can move vehicles around on our driveway without the fear of bumping into a leg and causing complicated damage to the overhanging porch and the roof. The angle was derived by calculation the stress and strain numbers on the 50mm square tube and the 53° position turned out to be the surprising optimum angle! Late afternoon, we installed one of the new arms on the E-F corner, all screwed using four stainless steel 80mm by 6mm hex head coach screws at each mounting plate.

Angled-porch-support-EF

Friday, we put up the second arm, similar to the first arm and it was screwed with more stainless steel hex head coach screws.

Angled-porch-support-FG

We had designed the porch with just two supports but discovered that we hadn’t fully appreciated in how flexible a 6metre beam would be and not having a third middle support point meant that we are likely to have a dip in our gutters especially after we have loaded the slates on to the roof! So we spent the day installing a middle horizontal additional support beam. We had to cut out a rectangular hole in the middle of the existing beam to allow a 89mm CLS timber to be inserted and a similar hole in the wall in between the Utility room’s window and door. That was the middle layer so two lengths were glued and clamped on top and underneath to stiffen it up. Behind the wall, we also put in a third layer underneath the two existing layers (of the top plate) and that was glued and clamped as well.

New-midspan-top-brace-on-F-porch

The last piece of structural piece of work to be executed was to provide a vertical post behind the cement board so we could screw the metal arm into place later on. This post forms the third side of the triangle that forms a combined structural element to hold up the middle of the Side Porch roof and gutters. The post is made up of three 95mm by 45mm regularised timber pieces, two of them glued together to produce a square core element and the third piece glued and screwed overlapping the front surfaces including the top and bottom timber layers of the original wall.

New-wall-post

Top-new-wall-post

On Saturday, we repaired the temporary Loke fence where some sections had torn the plastic webbing. One of the wooden posts proved to be fragile and rotten at ground level so we replaced that post with a new round post. Then using the left-over length of the fencing, replaced the torn sections and threaded a rope weaving in and out of the top line of the webbing to provide a stronger support for the plastic fence against strong winds.

Loke-edge-fence-renewed

The excess glue was cleared away off our new middle support beam and sanded it down hard to reduce the blobs of bubbled glue along the joins.

Finally, we finished setting up the platform modules with all the safety side strips and installing the motor into the lift shaft.

Scaffold-platforms-and-Lift-moved

We are ready to resume work next week on the roof now and get the Side Porch prepared for tiling and allow us to complete the Front Porch, at last!

7 September 2019
Membrane Installed on Section A and B with Half of Wooden Battens Plus Work on Oak Timber for Windows

This report is for the last two weeks of work, we had some of the days on other commitments, but we mostly worked on our roof with some in our workshop processing more oak during the wet days.
The first task was to put in our Rubber liner into the gutters, in section “A”, “B”, “C” and “D”,. It was a bit hit and miss in finding clear weather but we managed to complete this task over two afternoons.

The next task was to complete the Hips and Ridge lines, building up the layers to form the edge of the main slate surface and allow for our flashing slates to protect these edges.

Then we concentrated on putting up the breathable membrane on just the “A” and “B” sections, to allow us, later on, to get on with the job of putting up slates (which will, in turn, allow us to do another rearrangement of our working platforms so we can reach the remaining of the “E” section and go around the corner onto the “F” Side Door Porch).
The “A” roof is the largest section and it needs 55 rows of tile battens, each one being at least 10 metres long each. By the end of the 2 weeks, we have got that done with half the battens installed, but at least, we now have two sections rainwater proof.

Roof-A-half-battened

Roof-B-half-battened

When it was raining or strongly forecast to be (which amounted to about 4 days in total), we got on with the operation of planing our Oak timber to make the decorative Octagon shaped ‘pillar’ that stands on each side of each window. We had sliced wider planks in half with a 45degree cut and we had thought that we weren’t going to get very thick finished pieces because there seems to be lots of patches of “dips” and “bulges”. We did actually reject about ten planks anyway and got replacement ones from storage. We learnt a valuable lesson about Oak timber (well any timber!) and how random and natural they are!
We ended up with 54 finished, all 20mm thick after planing . Half are the slightly wider ones for the front facing piece and another 27 smaller ones for the angled piece going into the window frame.

Oak-window-octagon-parts-planed

After the gutter rubber was installed we noticed that water collected in the front porch gutter i.e. the ‘C’ gutter, It was over 20mm deep before starting to flow away. This shows that the temporary legs we installed when we built the porch are not supporting the roof properly. We need to install proper support before loading hundreds of kilos of slates on the roof! We need strong legs which will stand up to being bashed by materials moving around, so we decided to use metal posts. As the posts go into the ground we wanted rust proof ones, we started looking at stainless steel and even got as far as trying to order some but the supplier did not deliver to our location. Whilst searching for other suppliers we looked at aluminium (which is as strong as Stainless steel) and found it was half the price of stainless so we bought Aluminium instead. The post will be 50mm square hollow tubes with 4mm thick walls with 6mm thick plates at the top and bottom. The final task of this period of work, was to dig three holes at the spots where the metal posts will go. The holes were dug down 450mm to the standard frost level point and concrete was poured in to form solid pads about 450mm square and 150mm thick. The metal posts will then stand on these pads and stretch up to connect to the framework forming the porch, about 3.2metres high.

1st-Hole-for-prch-post

2nd-Hole-for-prch-post

3rd-Hole-for-prch-post

Aluminium-ready-for-porch-posts

Next week, we will carry on installing all the other half of the wooden battens for “A” and “B” roof sections while we wait for the concrete to cure and strengthen and start putting up Slates, firstly to finish off the last little bit of the “P” and around onto to “A”.

17 August 2019
Conservatory Dormer Roof Framework Now Complete

Taking advantage of the better weather today, we went to finish off the task of installing a couple of sheets of cement boards to complete the gable triangular section of the wall.

Cement-boards-on-Q-Gable

Then we tidied away the remaining spare cement sheets and stored them in our sheet material storage tent. We have six sheets left for future jobs like the rain filtration unit.
After lunch, we sliced and cut two long diagonal 95mm by 45mm thick timber rafters to conclude the framework for this dormer roof structure that will connect to our Conservatory (which will be built in a couple of years). There was quite a complex joint to make to connect to the sloping valley rafters sticking out of the building(as the picture reveals below)

Joint-on-end-of-Q-facia

Then these two final pieces were carefully fitted, making slight adjustments until all was good and tight, at which point, they were glued and screwed together. The excess valley beams were sliced flushed afterwards.

Q-Framing-complete

This concludes the building of the framework of the whole roof and the next job is to produce the Oak Facia boards that goes all the way around the edge of the roof.

10 April 2018
Framework All Completed for Conservatory Roof Interface Dormer

Today, we proceeded to cut six rafters to fill in the sloping sides of the dormer roof structure, and then four vertical posts to fill in the gable flat extension of the wall going up.

Q-Roof-framing-complete-1

Q-Roof-framing-complete-2

On Monday, we will put up two cement boards on the gable wall to get that covered up and then we will need to add the last rafters on the front which will be the actual interface to the conservatory

The we can start looking at the Facia boards and the guttering.

7 April 2018
Conservatory Roof Dormer Framework Building Up

This morning, we carried on with the manufacturing and installing of framework pieces to build up the “Dormer” roof section ready for the Conservatory. The two long valley rafters were finished and got installed up on the “P” section of the roof.
We had to file away the edge of the cement board so these diagonal beams can reach pass and over to where the guttering will be.
Next, we cut the horizontal ridge beam which had a complex joint to connect to the two diagonal valley rafters

Q-Ridge-end-joint-detail

And a vertical post from the main wall of the building. All was glued and screwed into place.

Q-Valley-rafters-and-Ridge-installed

It was a short day today but tomorrow, we will continue with this job by making a set of rafters that will come down from the Ridge beam and sit on top of the valley beams!

6 April 2018
Side Porch Completed and Conservatory “Dormer” Now Under Construction

After a delayed start, we got the final three “F” rafters cut and installed up into the Side Porch Roof structure.

Side-porch-framing-complete

Then we dismantled the scaffolding tower to move it to the far side of the house where we will have our Conservatory. This will join to the house with a ‘seamless’ transition, so the house roof needs to have a dormer formed where they join which will extend out to the main house gutter line. We are calling this section of the roof the “Q”, connecting onto the “P” roof!
After a very late lunch, we ripped sawn down the length of two 95mm by 45mm timber to produce a sloping edge with a 40degrees angle. These will be the Valley rafters on either side of the dormer roof framework.
And finally, to finish off the day, we took a couple of short pieces off the ends of the newly created valley rafter and glued and screwed them in between two rafters to help support the dangling end of the valley as it comes off the roof to join onto the back of the facia board.

Q-roof-framing-started-with-two-filler-pieces

Tomorrow, we will carry on creating more pieces to form the “Q” framework, with a flat gable end which will be covered up with cement boards as usual, but with an extra sticking out portion which will interface onto the glass roof of the Conservatory (built much later on!!).

5 April 2018
Side Porch Almost Finished With Rafters Installed

We resumed our work on creating the two diagonal Hip Rafters, putting in the bird mouth and slicing the bevel ends and getting both up and installed.

Side-porch-Hip-Rafters-installed

Then we measured the position for the four side rafters (two on each side for the E and G sections), cut in the 32degrees angled bird mouth using our standard template and then slicing another shallow wedge off the top ends. These were also taken outside, glued and screwed up into place!
And finally, we started on the “F” set of rafters (F1 to F7), doing the middle F4 first and then measuring either side of this central piece so we can get the exact spacing correct (being 611mm centre to centre) and proceeded to cut 45degrees bird’s mouth this time (after adjusting our template accordingly). We managed to complete F5 to F7 along with F4.

Side-porch-nearly-finished-1

Side-porch-nearly-finished-2

All is looking quite neat and tomorrow, we will complete the other three rafters (F1 to F3) and after that, switch over to making the Conservatory “dormer” framework which is the last piece of work to do to the roof before we start working with our Oak timber and manufacture the Facia board around the edge of the roof.

4 April 2018
Side Porch Gable Wall Covered With Cement Boards and Two Diagonal Hip Rafters Created

This morning with patchy sunshine but quite warm, we went and glued and screwed up a collection of cement boards to cover up the gable wall framework we installed last week for the Side Door Porch. The 12mm thick sheets, two of them, had a groove routed along the long edge and then cut in half so we could handle them by ourselves, as they are very heavy, about 50kg per full sized sheet so even half length, they are still 25kg!!
We put four of them up in a line, on the existing tongue edge of the cement boards lower down, and sliced off the over-lapping sticking out bits.

Side-porch-Gable-boarded

This afternoon, we got our Hip Rafters that we had made a couple of weeks ago, and planed the two sloping angles along the top edge. We did this using our mobile electric planer which took about an hour to do. Then we sliced the top end off to form the angled vertical end and got out our Bevel Slicing Machine to take off a very thin 58 degree wedge. The drawing indicated that the length from the top down to the bird’s mouth (2970mm) and we cut the little notch. Then going outside, we cut a little flat notch bits off the outer corners of the sticking out framework parts of the Porch. We stopped as it was past our end of work day time but also we had a delivery to interrupt us too!! We will carry on tomorrow!

3 April 2018
Basic Gable Framework All Mounted

We carried on with the creation of the basic framework to form the Gable end to extend the wall up over the Side Door and Utility Room window.
The first bit was the extension to the E10, E11 and E12 rafters, which we had made yesterday and they got installed this morning, all glued and screwed into place.

E-extensions-on-side-porch-complete

Then we tackled the next job of slicing down the whole 3m length of a timber, a 40 degree slope cut to form a special valley beam that goes flat on the “H” rafters, from the top of the F Ridge where it meets the EH rafter and all the way down to the bottom where the G3 rafters meets the edge of the porch top plate.
We had to use our Bevel Slicing machine as we needed a quite a deep saw cut and none of the standard circular saws can cut that much in one go at the 40degrees angle we wanted. It was a slow job with frequent pauses to allow the motor to cool down and in fact, we stopped for lunch as well!

Slicing-slope-of-valley-beam

After lunch, we finished off the slicing down the length of the valley beam and then we cut the required angled ends (on both ends) to connect properly and tightly. It took several tries to get all the correct angles into place and then we did our usual glue and screw this valley beam up onto the roof.

GH-Valley-beam-installed

The next job was to make the twin set of rafters to go down from the F ridge beam to the new valley beam and that got cut and sliced with more complex angles to marry to the valley beam correctly!!
And finally, we made six vertical posts to fill in the two triangular sections along the front using 63mm wide CLS timber.

Dormer-part-of-side-porch-framed-1

Dormer-part-of-side-porch-framed-2

This concludes our work on building this piece of roof framework and now we are ready to install several cement boards to build up the wall covering to form the triangular gable section over the Side Door. After that, we can build the structure of the roof going outwards to form the overhanging roof of this Porch.

31 March 2018
Side Door Porch Going Up

Today we started work on our second porch, the one over the side door situated in our Utility Room. We took our technical drawing, two lengths of our new fatter 95mm by 45mm timber and created several pieces to build up the framework to form the basic roof shape.

F-ridge-and-supports-installed

The horizontal ridge sits on a vertical leg and braced by two diagonal struts, with a slight clearance at the bottom to allow the extra thick cement boards to fit. This was glued and screwed together in horrible cold rainy weather – yukk!
After that, we fetched two more lengths of timber and proceeded to slice one of these into three pieces to form the “E” rafters (E10, E11 and E12) which continues up the roof slope following from the original main rafters E10, E11 and E12 and join up to the horizontal Ridge beam. We didn’t put these up as it was still raining and rather wet on our wood work so that will be tomorrow’s job if it is dry!!

30 March 2018