Roselea

Category: Skylights

The 16metres by 2.5metres window to the Sky!

  • Half Day on Building Kerb Framework

    We carried on with building up the Kerb Framework around the Skylight today, finishing off putting on the top planks of timber, the 89mm CLS pieces around on the narrower sections.
    Then, after a nice interruption by some family visitors arriving coming to see our work etc, we then started putting in the final layers of the polystyrene foam boards and covering the whole lot up with the 18mm OSB boards to make a strong outer skin to the Kerb and provide a good solid structure to fix the roof rafters, the various roofing components like the copper flashing to etc.
    We completed one section down at the Great Room end of the Skylight.

    First-part-of-kerb-finished

    First-part-of-kerb-finished


    Tomorrow, we will carry on up the two long sides, inserting the 38mm thick foam boards and gluing and screwing down the 18mm OSB covers.

  • Polystyrene Foam Inserted and Long Top Planks Put On

    Today, we worked on the Kerb framework of the Skylight, starting early at 9am and worked until 4pm when the rain (as predicted) came in quite hard. We got a bit wet at the end there – grin!
    First of all, we cut up the thin 30mm thick polystyrene foam pieces and slid them into the gaps along the wider steel I-Beams sections as this is enclosed and can only be done before putting the timber piece on the top of the framework.

    Insulation-inserted-in-gaps

    Insulation-inserted-in-gaps


    Then, we put on the 69mm wide pieces of timber along these sections, gluing and screwing the plank down and squeezing in the plywood coverings to make it all flat and neat.
    We worked our way around the wider steel I-Beams and then carried on onto the narrower I-Beams which has a vertical timber piece as the top plate. It is a 89mm CLS timber and we managed to do one side of the steel I-Beam (on the Loke side) before the rain came.
    Top-pieces-added

    Top-pieces-added


    Tomorrow, we will carry on around the end with these 89mm CLS timber and back up the other side plus the final piece at the end over in the Great Room. After that lot, we then can put on the outer 18mm OSB boards to cover up all the framework and present a neat clean facia, ready for our roof rafters to press up against it etc.

  • Sliced Up Polystyrene Boards

    Then this afternoon, while the rain came sprinkling down, we were in the workshop slicing up lots and lots of polystyrene foam boards into narrow strips of various thickness, in order to fill up the gap inside the Kerb framework of the Skylight.
    We used up lots of old left-over pieces to make the following items:

    • 9 x 277 mm high by 38mm thick strips
    • 6 x 327 mm high by 38mm strips
    • 6 x 327 mm high by 30mm thick strips.

    All strips 2.4m long.

    Sliced-up-insulation

    Sliced-up-insulation


    We had to widen our Hot-Wire cutting machine to accommodate the wider pieces, as we had not originally envisioned making these sizes of insulation strips. That took about an hour to disassemble and reassemble the machine onto a wider base board!! But we managed to slice all what we needed before the end of the day!

    Tomorrow, we will get back out there and start putting these strips in place up on the Kerb framework, hopefully weather permitting!

  • The Kerb Framework Gets First Collection of Timber Posts Installed

    Today, we went around with two tubs of short timber pieces, one full of simple 63mm CLS timber pieces and the other full of glued together T shaped timber pieces. We started at one end of the Skylight region up on the steel I-Beams and using our template to guide these short pieces so they end up against the plywood boards already up there. Each piece was glued, positioned where each rafter will be and also aligned vertically and then screwed onto the plywood.

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-1

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-1

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-2

    Tie-pieces-glued-in-place-2



    We couldn’t quite do all of them as we are still waiting for the Chimney Support Arm to be ready and installed before we can finish off that particular section of the I-Beams, and also we got to go around each corner to put some more in to help bridge and join the two edges together at each corner too, plus at the point where the steel I-Beams changes from 100mm width to 160mm width.

  • Alignment Template Created for Skylight

    And finally, we created a simple alignment tool to help us when we come to install the little pieces of timber for the Skylight framework module. We needed something to “transfer” the position of the slots in the rafter support timber on the outside of the steel I-Beams so we can get the position of the internal little posts correct. This is important as when we put up the rafters, we want to nail the ends to a good solid post inside the Kerb going up to the Skylight.

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-1

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-1

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-2

    Template-to-align-kerb-uprights-2



    The template sits on the lower flange in the slot, and projects upwards and over to the top to where the plywood is and ready to receive the post with the glue ready to be stuck against the plywood and timber platform. Anything to make our work easier, especially that we are on top of the scaffolding tower and also on a ladder as well!! Grin!
    So tomorrow, we may be starting the assembling of the Skylight framework at last!

  • Finished Off Putting Up Plywood Panels on I-Beams Before Thunderstorms arrived!

    This morning, we went around and finished off mounting the plywood coverings on the Steel I-Beams before the thunderstorm arrives. We did dash in for 15 minutes at around 11:30am but that was only a small fringe effect of a thunderstorm heading elsewhere!!

    We concluded this morning with putting up the seven panels and we have only one more to do when we have created the steel support arm for the chimney.

    Nearly-all-the-plywood-attached-to-kerb

    Nearly-all-the-plywood-attached-to-kerb

    It all went up fairly well in the end and now we can look forward to doing the next stage of building up the Skylight by installing the timber framework on top of the steel I-Beams, and flush against the plywood boards. But first, we are making the chimney support arm this afternoon during the thunderstorms!

  • Inner Plywood Covering Up On I-Beams Starts

    It was a gloriously hot day today and the thunderstorm weather front we were originally planning around wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow so we dashed out there and started the task of putting up all the plywood coverings on the inner surface of the I-Beams, going up to where the Skylight glazing section will be mounted.

    There are a total of twenty-two plywood sections to be installed and we managed to do fourteen of them today.

    5-Boards-at-one-end

    5-Boards-at-one-end

    and-9-at-the-other-end

    and-9-at-the-other-end


    Most of the time, each piece went up quite nicely, applying the special modified silicone sealant/glue on the two lines of support timber already situated on the I-Beams, and screwing down hard the plywood to ensure the glue is firmly squashed flat to maximise strength of the joint.

    We changed our choice of glue for this operation as we knew that there were some locations along the I-Beams where there was a small gap between the steel edge and the support timber pieces and we wanted to make sure that the glue would not break apart inside the glue itself. We bought 4 different tubes of glues yesterday morning, when we stuck together a whole heap of timber and plywood pieces together with all the different glues including our original one .

    Glues-being-tested

    Glues-being-tested

    Glue-Test-pieces

    Glue-Test-pieces


    This morning, we found that the silane modified silicone (Stixall) one proved to be the strongest by far but it costs three times as much as the original one we were using! We just wanted to make sure that the Skylight stayed stuck together long term up on the top of our roof!!

    Tomorrow, because of the forecast of thunderstorm coming into our region for the whole day tomorrow, we are planning to work in the workshop and make the steel support arm for our (fake) chimney!

  • Sliced Up Polystyrene Foam and Inserted in the I-Beams

    Today, we got out our Hot-Wire Cutting Machine to slice up two sheets of our 120mm thick polystyrene foam and also a scrap sheet we had lying around for years, a 100mm thick piece. We first sliced using a single wire on the machine to slice the sheets in the vertical orientation to make 245mm wide strips, ending up with a pile of seven + two strips in total.

    Next, we then had the hot wire positioned much lower down at a distance of 45mm and then push through the machine the 120mm thick strips to produce two new pieces, one being 45mm thick (of course!) and the left over piece being 75mm thick which is just perfect to fill the inner flange of the heavy duty I-Beams. Finally, we added a second hot wire at the 90mm distance and ran through the two remaining 100mm thick strips to produce two equal pieces 45mm thick and a thin sliver of waste.

    Now, taking all the foam strips (a total of 7 thick ones and 11 thin ones) outside with an old bread knife and tubes of the MS special glue and loaded up the scaffolding tower. We then worked our way around the inner circuit of the I-Beams, placing the thin ones in the 100mm wide I-Beams and the thicker strips inside the 160mm wide I-Beams. We used the glue to smear some on the vertical webbing behind the foam strips to make sure they will stay put for the short while before the whole thing is covered up with sheets of plywood later on this week.

    Inside-of-Beams-Insulated

    Inside-of-Beams-Insulated

    It was a good day of work, before tomorrow which may find the day being washed out with thunderstorms, we will carry on in the workshop to make our steel chimney support arm! Good timing that! Grin!

  • Production of Bits and Pieces for the Skylight Continues

    Today, we carried on in our workshop to prepare and create all the bits and pieces we will need for our Skylight framework. We sliced up the plywood strips we made yesterday (744 mm wide by 2400 mm long) into 10 unique sized pieces ranging from 1165 mm to 2385 mm lengths, a total of 20 pieces. We labelled them A to J in pairs of two, and the two large end pieces labelled as “3” and “6”.

    Then, we cut a series of square notches on some of the boards which are needed to avoid the steel tie cross bars, so everything is now a jigsaw and will (hopefully) fit all together smoothly and tight like a glove!

    They are now lying on our trolley and covered up with tarpaulin.

    20-Strip-of-Ply-for-inside-of-Kerb

    20-Strip-of-Ply-for-inside-of-Kerb

    Then, we took the two piles of 327mm lengths of timber pieces, one is 63mm wide by 38mm and the other piece is 31mm by 38mm wide. We glued these together to form a T shaped composite piece. We made 52 of this T shape and 4 L shaped ones.

    Kerb-Piece-glued-together

    Kerb-Piece-glued-together

    And finally, to close off the day and while waiting for the glue to set, we set up four trestle legs outside on the driveway, and sliced down the middle of 4 lengths of 89mm CLS timber to make 69mm wide pieces. But we had trouble with the circular saw machine and it produced wider and angled pieces so on Saturday, we will put them through our planer / thickener machine to square them back up again and get the size back to 69mm too!

    It is a very fiddly list of parts for our Skylight and we haven’t finished yet, for example, we need various thickness of Foam insulation to fill in the void inside the framework etc. – phew!

  • All Day in Workshop Slicing and Chopping Timber

    Today, to avoid the rain and wet afternoon, we worked in our workshop, slicing and chopping lots of timber. But first, we made a quick solid sound barrier for our doorway that leads into the kitchen at the back of the workshop. We made it using a spare 12mm thick cement board and cut it down to a size (800mm wide by 2080mm high) to fit the door hole. We then taped on strips of an old towel to soften the edges and to plug the gap to reduce the noise being generated into in the workshop. Mum really appreciated this!

    Then, we went to our timber storage and collected 15 lengths of the 63mm CLS timber and brought them inside. Setting up the saw table to rip down 4 lengths making 31mm wide pieces which are needed to fill in as a spacer in the framework design of the Skylight.

    Next, we got out the chop saw and proceeded to chop up all the remaining timber lengths as follows:

    • 56 lots of 327 mm long pieces (63mm CLS)
    • 72 lots of 277 mm long pieces (63mm CLS)
    • and 56 lots of the 327 mm long pieces of the newly made 31mm wide timber.
    Four-trugs-of-framing-pieces

    Four-trugs-of-framing-pieces

    After lunch, we went back to our storage and loaded onto our trolley, 20 sheets of the 12mm thick plywood and 5 sheets of 18mm OSB boards. We then reset our work table back to the big circular saw and then sliced these sheets as follows:

    • 15 strips of 366mm wide of the 18mm OSB
    • And 20 strips of 745mm wide of the 12mm plywood
    15-Strips-of-OSB-for-outside-of-kerb

    15-Strips-of-OSB-for-outside-of-kerb

    20-Sheets-of-plywood-for-inside-of-kerb

    20-Sheets-of-plywood-for-inside-of-kerb


    Tomorrow, we will slice the 12mm plywood pieces into a collection of different sizes that each will fit between the steel tie bars (these stretch across from one side of the I-Beams to the other), with cutouts to fit around the ties and then we glue and nail the 327mm pairs of timber pieces into a T shape composite piece. After that, we will go out and up to the top of the Steel framework and start assembling all these pieces together to form the Skylight framework.