Roselea

Blog

  • Utility Rail facia

    We sliced up a sheet of 18mm Plywood we had in our stack of sheet wood, it is rather dirty and got loads of screws holes but we thought we could use it and varnish it with Ebony black to hide most of the marks! we then routed a smooth rounded edge and drilled pilot holes and countersunk them ready for screwing up.

    We needed to do this now as our new sheet rack is so large that it will block the utility rail completely.

    Utility rail facia

    Utility rail facia

    Utility rail facia

    Utility rail facia

    The concept of the utility rail seems to be looking reasonable so far and when we have painted them black as well it might work rather nicely. We will see.

  • Ripped Out old shelves and walls coverings

    we spend the day ripping out the old shelves and the flimsy wall coverings. We got a fire going in our incinerator to get rid of the hardboard and other trimmings collected over the months.

    Burning old wood

    Burning old wood

  • Sheet Material Rack

    Today we made a set of shelves 8feet by 4feet to hold all the left over sheet materials. It consist of 7 separate shelves starting 600mm off the floor and each shelf separated by 150mm to allow a reasonable number of sheets on each shelf. It is not designed to take all our sheet materials when they are delivered, just a few. Each shelf is constructed using 18mm OSB as the primary structure but with reinforcement cross bars using our 63mm by 38mm timber. We tried to make it as strong as possible as when it is fully populated, there could be many hundreds of kilos loaded on it!

    Sheet material storage

    Sheet material storage

  • Shelves

    Today we sliced up 10 sheets of 18mm OSB boards into a whole collection of shelves! We planned to have 600mm deep shelves for our boxes on the right side next to the sheet material racks, along the middle wall a load of 400mm deep shelves (5 layers from floor to ceiling) with a narrow 200mm deep shelf at the top just under the Light Channel. And finally on the left side of the room we will have the workbench in the corner with 800mm shelves underneath and a series of 200mm followed by two 400mm selves above.

    Workshop Shelves

    Workshop Shelves

    Workshop Shelves

    Workshop Shelves

    Workshop Shelves

    Workshop Shelves

    We have finished putting up all the shelves onto brackets , screwed them into place and surformed and sanded the edges to take off the worse of the sharpness and splinters!

    We can now start moving our tools and boxes of “stuff”!

  • Light Levels – final conclusions

    we did some more illumination tests

    and discovered that the reading is now 325lux, a drop of about 5lux after we have painted the ceiling with the Absolute White. We concluded that the finish was a matt surface and not the silk as before so we guess that Dulux was comparing the advantages of Absolute White against other Matt finish paints!

    But having said all that, we also concluded that the ceiling is less harsh to look at now and gives a more satisfying glow!

    We think this is well worth the drop in the brightness level of 2%!!

  • Utility Rail backing strip

    We put in the 100mm wide strips into the back of the Utility Rail to cover up the glass wool. We will use shoulder dresser hooks or in other words L shaped hooks!, to provide anchoring points to keep separate the different types of cables running inside the Utility Rail. The regulations require that the mains electricity cables must be kept separated from low voltage cables like network, audio and such things like that. We would use the L shaped hooks to lay the cable across and if necessary we could put a thin board of some kind to provide a little shelf!

    ~images

  • Paint Glorious Paint!

    The final coat for the ceiling was put on this morning! The special flavour paint came yesterday and we collected it from Jewson, called Dulux Absolute White! It is stated to have even more whiteness than brilliant white! According to the dulux’s web site, it can achieve 90% reflectivity against 80% for brilliant white! We will see tonight, the results we get when we redo the light tests.

  • We Have Lights!

    All ten tubes are up and installed right around the Light Channel in the large front room of the Garage. Each T5 tube produces about 5000 lumens as stated on the manufacturer’s data sheet and consumes about 60watts using high frequency electronic ballasts. This gives an efficiency rating of 83 lumens per watt which is about double the required rating in the building regulations.

    So in total there would be a maximum of about 50,000 lumens! The size of the room is 8.2metres (26.5 feet) wide by 5.75metres deep (18.5 feet) and the ceiling is 2.5metres sloping up to 2.6metres (over 8feet), which is a large room!

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    Garage Lights Finished

    After dark, we did our light tests again and the light level this time is 330lux on exactly the same spot as yesterday but we discovered that even with us in the room, it changes the readings quite markedly so yesterday reading must be taken with a pinch of salt and probably a bit on the low side. Today’s readings were achieved using the built in feature of the light meter of recording the maximum value while we all left the room entirely.

    Taking further measurements around the room at a fixed height of 1metre, the brightest (440lux) spot was in the corner next to the internal wall furthest from the small door, and the dimmest (200lux) was at the middle of the front wall.

    Dimming the tubes down to their minimum level produces a low gloom measuring only 7 lux! But there is enough light for walking around but not to read by. Nice to relax in and watch TV etc.

    There wasn’t any flicker at all at any brightness level.

  • 4 out of 10 Tubes done!

    The electric cables (mains and control lines) are in place inside the Light Channel. Four of the 10 tubes are installed. A light switch is wired in beside the internal doorway and we can dim and turn on and off the lights! So far so good!

    We have placed the light level meter in the middle of the room and it is reading 122lux at the moment. We will test again tomorrow night when the remaining 6 tubes are installed.

  • Paint 6!

    The final touch up on the metal uprights is done! At last! It is looking as if the rust problem is solved! Hurray!