Category: Slates

It was a week of lovely dry weather. We started the week  by tidying the workshop and completing the making of the Ladder Support stainless steel brackets and setting out strings to get the hip flashing straight (The roofs wobble a bit).

We tackled the next job of putting on the metal Mesh Protector over the guttering where we went along the K section, round the corner into L. Then from one valley (L-M) to the other valley corner (M-N) .. ..

But before the mesh went down in around the bottom of the valleys, we had to nail into place the glass-fibre trough modules, the first section at least. But we discovered when we came to do the M-N valley that the angle was all wrong. We tried to be too clever when we laid down the counter battens to support the trough, but our lack of experience, and lack of double checking the theory, we shifted the position sideways so that the valley line would be centred to the gutter and downpipe channel! This was Wrong! it made the intersection  of the slates different heights… So we spent the morning doing some open surgery on our roof, peeling back the layers of breathable membranes, moved the wooden battens and realigned it.


The new angle of the trough now means that the two roof surfaces of the slates coming in towards the valley point are both at the same height and meeting point and makes (will do) a neat line down the valley.
We resumed the interrupted task of covering up the gutters with the metal mesh and finished three quarters along the N section just before the N-O outside corner. We haven’t done the O gutter with its rubber liner yet.


We had one day of interruptions with a meeting in the morning and putting up the sun shield on our temporary living quarters but we resumed the work, this time, making a rain protective “Hat” for all our Hips and Ridges around the house, we have twelve Hips and five Ridges in total! This is part of providing a flashing system using slates and a layer of rubber membrane and this “hat”. We decided to go with this design because we needed to minimise the effect of the wobbly edges when they come together on the Hips and Ridges, which will be covered up the exposed cut slates of the roof surfaces, with a line of straight slates running up the Hips and along the Ridges. The hat will be a vertical piece of 19mm (¾”), strip with a rounded top (made from an OSB sheet). This is then covered over with a 150mm wide woven glass-fibre ribbon which will get coated in the dark grey resin. This combined object is sitting on top of a 400mm wide strip of rubber membrane.
We stapled down each of the layers, then using short iron wire pieces, fixed to the underside of the bull nosed strips, was bent to provide a stiff anchorage method of holding the hat upright position against the various angles of the roof surfaces coming together.


The whole thing then got coated with two applications of a flexible roofing resin before applying a top coat finish. Looking at the results, we think we ought to put on another coat of the finishing resin to make sure we haven’t left any pin holes behind to let rain water in.


Finally, on the last corner of the back of the building, the O-P outside corner, we sliced off the layers of plywood that made up the hip support, put on a layer of heavy glass-fibre matting and then coated the whole thing with black top coat finish. All rubbed down and smooth, ready for going along the P section towards the Conservatory.

This means now that we can insert the last strip of rubber liner for the gutter along the O section and put on the breathable membrane and battens to have this section of O roof ready for slating too.
Next week, we can resume the job of putting up thousands of Slates for the K slope (and L, and M, and N, and O too!), and doing the flashing slates a the same time as we climb up the roof. We are Getting There!!

The work this week was to cover the next three sections of the roof surface with the breathable membrane and protect the wooden Oak guttering with the required rubber material.
The rubber membrane was the first to go into the gutters, doing our usual order of gluing down the bottom surface first (using the wet rubber solution), followed by the much slower use of two layers of contact glue on the ends of each rubber strip. We had to paint the glue on and dry the exposed surfaces using a hair dryer to speed this process up and then carefully smoothly iron the rubber into place (using our hands and fingers). We finished all three gutters on Monday.

The subsequent days were spent laying on the dark grey breathable plastic membrane, row by row, around the three roof surfaces, fixing each section with vertical counter battens and a few lines of tile battens to act as a ladder for us to climb up and down easily.

One of the other jobs that had to be done was to finish off building up the hip and ridge layers of plywood strips to provide the fixings for the flashing slates, on the OP hip angle and the O Ridge line.

Then we could complete the breathable membrane coverage on the N roof with a half width strip going over the ridge line and then doing the final strip of membrane on the M roof, a very long piece over 11metres (35feet) long and then a small 300mm wide strip to provide the complete protection up onto the kerb of the Skylight.




This week sees the completion of fully waterproofing sections of the roof along the back the building that is served three downpipes, so we are now collecting approximately 130 square metres (about 1/3 of the total) of rain water from the roof when any rain falls out of the sky!! This amounts to 130litres of rainwater for every 1mm of rain fall recorded!

Next week’s set of tasks is to finish off the stainless steel brackets for holding the ladder support wire (then we can clear up the tools in the workshop), make a flexible fibre-glass plastic hip and ridge “hat” strips and then carry on putting up more slates on the K section!

Another week is done, apart from two days of interruptions (due to a day of rain and two half days of other commitments), we had a good week of work. We completed our second section of roof, prepared the next one ready for the slates and finishing off the last stretch of Guttering.
First job of the week was to put on the breathable membrane layers up on the K roof, overlapping the rubber strip already done from last week, putting down vertical counter battens every 610mm apart and then nail on all the horizontal tile battens at the usual spacing of 112mm up the slope. We did this job in two separate stages, the first one being just enough so we could climb up and get over to the J roof so we could complete the task of installing the slates.

Thus, we duly did finish off putting on the slates on the J section of the roof, a total of about 400 of them. We had also put on the metal mesh over the gutter going around the corner (from J to K).


The forecast was for more rain, light random showers, so we got on with putting up the second stage of tile battens on the K roof and got that done, including all the hip flashing battens too.

The other job that was completed, earlier in the week, was completing the guttering along the O section and also a little bit on to the P section too, which now concludes all the roof elements along the back of the building.

Next week, if the weather holds good, we may install more rubber and breathable membrane layers on the rest of the roof surfaces along the back, L, M and O, and put up the first set of counter battens and a few tile battens to act like a ladder. If the weather is bad, then we will be working in the workshop to make fibre-glass flexi-plastic objects to protect our Hips and Ridges against the rainwater when we put on the flashing slates.

P.S. We have been asked to include a diagram to remind people of the position of where we are working…

Another week is done and we are progressing on the roof putting Slates on the J roof segment and Guttering on the next four sections from L to O.
We came back from our trip down south and resumed work on Tuesday by completing the valley line of slates and did a further three more lines up the diagonal before we got too close to the hip corner joining the L segment of the roof. We couldn’t continue because we wouldn’t been able to climb up over the hip to get to the higher rows of slates without having the next set of tile battens nailed up (to act as the ladder!).

So for the next couple of days, we got on with installing more of the Oak timber guttering, continuing from the corner of K and L, completing L and going around along M and N plus also the last section O we got along the back of the building (and have scaffolding platforms installed).


We quickly put up more of the hip support layers of plywood strips on the N and O corner and cut off the overhanging pieces to make a neat squared off ends. The other corner K and L was also cut and made neat too. This means that the task of fibre-glassing with black resin was done on all four corners (two outside hip coroners and two inside downpipe channels valley corners) in one session.


The last piece of work of the week, was starting to install the rubber liners inside the gutters whereas we laid in the 9 metre long rubber membrane for the K section. We decided to try a different order of doing things and this time, we applied the wet rubber latex solution on the base of the oak gutters first, laid the rubber down and then tackled each ends separately. The ends were also done differently, doing each flat surface in turn with the contact adhesive and getting a much better result with a very neat flat finish.

On the next week, we will continue putting in more rubber liners for the gutters for L, M, N and O (the O section, we will have to do the outside hip corner O P (we left it undone thinking we could do that later when we move around to do P) but we realised that we do need to have half of it installed so we can lay the rubber in the O segment and also have all the sections of the back of the building completed and be able to move all our scaffolding platforms in one go and move to tackle the next portion of the building’s roof) Then we will start laying down the breathable membrane all the way along and so on.

Here is a summary of our work for the last 10 days ..
Using glass fibre and black resin, we sealed the complex downpipe channel three way intersection plus the two outer corners too. We did this to avoid the complicated task of laying the rubber membrane lining the gutters to go around the odd shapes of the corners and joining together the two incoming gutters (off the I and J sections of the roof). Then we glued in two separate straight strips of the rubber membrane, along the bulk of the gutters and sealed the ends onto the glass-fibre surfaces with contact adhesive.

The first strip of the breathable membrane we put on the roof is for the valley as this is always the lowest point for any water to run downhill so we laid down a metre wide strip with stainless steel staples.

Next things we had to analyse and test, was the valley trough (a moulded fibre-glass constructed object) that needs to fit underneath the slates, to catch all the rain water flowing down the slope into the valley. It is a deliberate method of allowing the water to “leak” pass the end of the slates and collect together and be diverted in a channel. For this reason, the battens needed to be spaced apart so it is fully supporting the trough on the bottom, and then supporting the two outer edges on the wider tile batten.
We made a test assembly on another valley on the roof first and worked out that three 38mm wide battens can be placed together (with a gap of 38mm between the inner single batten and the two outer battens) on each side of the valley, with a gap measuring 130mm wide between them. Then a 50mm battens is placed on top of the 2 outer battens to hold the edge of the trough.

Using our research, we proceeded to screw full length battens (4.5metres long) into place, on top of the breathable membrane already there, going up the I-J valley and then we doubled back on ourselves putting 90mm nails into the underlying rafters to provide a strong secured fixing.
It now follows that we can start on the task of mounting all the tile battens on to the roof. The breathable membrane goes on first, going flat on to the roof boards, starting the first line, overlapping the lower rubber membrane and running over the Hip and Valley ends. The membrane was held into place with the vertical lines of battens, in short segments that stop just before the top edge (To allow the next piece of membrane to overlap). Then the horizontal tile battens were nailed into place at regular spacing of 112mm apart, so that a slate will sit across three rows of battens and hook onto the hanging nail off the third line.

We managed to get about 20 rows on the I roof and about 16 rows on the J roof sections, just about half way up the slope.


On Monday, in the afternoon, we will resume this task of more wooden battens and probably have it all complete by Tuesday.

We are learning the techniques and methods needed on this section of roofing, and will be getting better and quicker at it as we progress!