We have a thick layer of snow over everything! It is minus four degrees Celsius (-4oC)!!
Snow and Ice
(the garage)
Snow and Ice
(down the garden)
The concrete floor slab has a thick layer of crunchy ice which is uneven and a little slippery!
So no Play today! Oops I mean Work!
Our building control inspector came today to take a look at our Garage. He was checking the structural and quality of work! His words were “I am very happy with your work!” “Very happy indeed!”
That is good to know that we are going in the right direction!
Phew!
We got half the iBeams up! That is 11 of them. They are nailed into place. They are fitting very nicely!
We are still having to walk each iBeam out of the garage, turning it around and then propping it up on the middle wall, climb the ladders and hauling it up to the top of the world! Fortunately each iBeam only weighs 20kg each but still it is hot work!
Hopefully the weather will not be too bad tomorrow! Then we can finish the other 11 iBeams!
The morning was spent trimming all 22 iBeams to exact lengths! We got out our chop saw on the bench and along with two extension benches proceeded to very carefully get the angle of the cut just right, at 1.3degrees which is the slope of the roof! Once the saw was set up and tested with samples, we carried each beam to the saw for one end and then spin it around to cut the other end! Well it wasn’t that easy, walking the whole iBeam out of the garage, turning it around and then walking it back in again! And remember each beam is 9metres (29feet) long!! We walked miles today!
We also glued and stapled strips of fluffy geo-textile over the holes drilled yesterday in the first i-beam to act as a filter for the incoming air.
The iBeams have been brought out of storage today! The first job was to nail on a whole load of small OSB pieces at both ends of the beams in order to provide a solid fixing surface for the metal brackets to tie down the rafters onto the walls!
The other job was to drill 21 holes in the webbing (as they call it, the thin material in between the top and bottom flanges) to let the fresh air in for our air conditioning system. It turned out that we have 22 holes!
Now to get critical and cut them to exact lengths! Tomorrow’s job!
42 square pieces of stainless steel mesh was cut and stapled over all the holes previously drilled a couple of days ago. The metal mesh will reduce the possibility of animal life getting into our roof cavity and getting stuck!
The mesh covering the holes for the air conditioning system (on the left side of the garage) were additionally stuck down with a ring of construction bulk glue to ensure a complete seal. The iBeam immediately next to these holes now has similar holes more or less lining up. These will have a microfiber cloth (using a heavy weight geotextile material) stapled and glued to provide a secondary filter layer to further reduce large dust particles and micro insects from getting through and into our fresh air supply!
Our middle wall inside the Garage is assembled and is UP! This wall is ready for the iBeams (roof rafters) to be thrown up, sit on the supports and fixed down!
The sub-dividing wall between the garden room and the garage front part is made of two layers, in total 30 posts spaced 300mm (a foot) apart alternating from side to side. The reinforced top and bottoms beams have the extra 18mm OSB strips inserted, works quite well especially allowing us to position each post hard up against it and offering good support for the nailing gun!
The two side walls came together very nicely and there was only a small leaning over offset of about 8mm so we pulled it vertically and tied it down waiting for the boards to be fixed on to lock it all up. In fact the roof boards will provide the racking in all directions! Front to Back, Left to Right and North to West too!!
Well that’s the major load bearing wall finished, let’s roll on the moment in a day or so, when the roof goes on!
Yesterday and today we bolted down the two side walls, there are over twenty thunderbolts in each wall! We pulled out a string to make sure the walls are straight and Stephen went along with the SDS drill to cut the holes and I came after screwing down the bolts!
Today we drilled air holes for both the roof ventilation and the air conditioning “source”.
The side wall has 21 114mm holes to allow fresh air to enter which will be drawn down into our earth tubes for cooling before entering into the house. Well this will be what will happen when we have built the house! Each hole will have a covering of stainless steel mesh to protect against insects and larger creatures and another layer of fluffy geotextile to filter larger dust particles and stop those sub millimetre bugs and creepy crawlies! The 21 holes adds up to over 210000 square millimetres which is double what we need but with the extra barriers of the two filters (mesh and geotextile) we need to make sure the pressure and speed of the air supply is not too badly affected.
We also drilled another 21 holes along the front of the garage to allow air to circulate in under the roof boards to make sure it never gets damp and rot. This is all in the building regs! These holes will just have the stainless steel mesh covering them.
You will not be able to to see these holes in the long run as there will be another cladding layer using the pretty Cedar wood!
Finally we have started building the middle internal wall that divides the garage from the garden room. We reinforced the sole plates and to improve the tie down structural strength by inserting 170mm high 18mm thick OSB strips in between the two halves of the wall. This is needed as there could be a potentially large “up” force in high winds blowing across the roof or blowing into an open garage door or doors causing a significant upward force inside the garage! This is why all the roof rafter themselves needs to be tied down using metal angled brackets. Our structural engineers had calculated all the numbers and this is what we have to do!
We have bolted the sole plate down and it is now all very solid and ready for the rest of the wall to be constructed tomorrow!
(close up of reinforcements of sole plates)
The front wall of the garage is now completed! All the 18mm OSB boards is up and trimmed around each of the door entrances.
Also we have cut out the seven windows on the two side walls!
We have the basic box of the garage built, all that is left to do is build the middle wall and put on the roof!
The front of the garage is getting there! The central pillar is up and bolted down!
Now the huge single piece timber called GluLam has been hoisted into place!
It is 8315mm (27feet 3inches) long, 270mm (11inches) high and 90mm (3 1/2 inches) thick, made from 6 layers of 45mm x 90mm planks of planed timber, all glued and highly pressurised together!
(close up of GluLam Timber)
Now for the cladding boards!