I waved the router around and cut the windows out in the back walls! Because the router bit has a ball bearing wheel exactly the same size as the diameter of the cutting blade then it is very easy to slice the extra material away without the worry of going too far and making holes!! I could do this and I did!
See picture below!
We are using our old chop saw setup which includes three 4foot benches to hold and guide the timber into and out of the chop saw. It is getting old and the benches suffered for being outside in all weather for a couple of years! We are planning to make a new setup inside the Garage when it is built. But in the meantime it is doing a grand job of chopping up our timbers into regular lengths for building the walls.
Our building control inspector came today to take a look at our back wall. We assured him that the cement boards is the final layer with the DPM plastic material sandwiched in as well!
I got the impression that he was expecting the wall to be upright! But he is happy. He will come again when we have got the roof on and tied down! He can then see the structure of the posts and windows etc.
We also talked about the electrics and what form of approval he wanted to see when the electrics are installed.
Stephen has designed a glue dispensing machine using an old pressure spray bottle. He made an adaptor using thermal plastic (you can soften this plastic in hot water and mould it into anything you like) with a high pressure compressed air connector. We then connected a length of garden hose to the outlet and a quarter turn valve to control the flow. With further moulded plastic modules shaped into a broad nozzle to the width of various timber (38mm is the most common) and drill a couple of little holes to allow the glue to come out in a constant stream!
It is working in tests but we haven’t tried it for real yet!!
We have constructed the back wall of our garage. It is still lying flat on the floor slab at the moment as we are still waiting for the delivery of the cement boards! All the joints and the OSB panels were glued and nailed together in a few hours (about 5 all together). We hope to reduce this on future walls when we employ our new glue dispensing machine! We have calculated that this wall will weigh about 300kg (660lbs) and we are planning to slide it up to the top of the mass wall up wooden slopes using the old fashioned block and tackle method. We have ordered a roll of rope and twin pulleys blocks to give us a 4 to 1 ratio pulling power!
We just hope that the cement boards will come soon! Or there will be lots of grinding teeth noises!
When we finished the wall construction @ 19:15
we realised we couldn’t close the shed door! So we had to push hard to slew the door round enough… Then we covered it in plastic to keep our hard work dry.
Our big framing nail gun has stopped working! The trigger works and we can hear air coming in but the piston is not moving with the usual loud thump and of course the bang as the trigger is released to fire the nail!!
Stephen took it all apart and greased and oiled the various moving parts but it took two tries of fiddling around to get it working again! We are not sure why it is working again! But we are not complaining or least not yet!
That took a couple of hours in the morning!
The lintel over the windows of the back wall of the garage was constructed in one continuous 8.5metre piece. It was made up of two vertical 90mm by 38mm CLS timber with an 11mm OSB board sandwiched in the middle and topped with another 90mm by 38mm timber lying flat. All was glued and screwed together as per instructions in our Structural Engineer’s report.
We also made the same sandwich construction of two 89mm by 38mm CLS and 11mm OSB to make the corner posts (4 of them) to allow maximum connective forces when we join the walls together.
The air nailing gun is not working!! oh drat! o bugger!
We fell back to good old Turbo Gold screws!
The back wall of the garage is very close to the fence and will need to be made in one piece and stood up as the will be no access to the back. The close proximity to the fence also means the wall will have to have a fire proof exterior.
Simple we thought, just use fibre cement boards to cover the OSB! But when we asked Jewson for some they could only offer strips 125mm wide for soffits! Jewson checked their suppliers and came up blank (other than tile backing boards).
Internet to the rescue! There appear to be dozens of different sheets available, now to find a supplier willing to ship only 10 sheets… we found a supplier who will send any number you want for a fixed delivery charge. Sheets were £14.50 each and delivery £55! Now we hope the will deliver fairly quickly…
With the nights drawing in and the clock going back on Sunday we decided to put up some floodlights! A quick shopping trip gave us 4 x 400W lights which we have put on poles attached to the sheds and wired together to a switch inside. They give a good level of light to work by and cost less than £20 all together.
The structural surface of the garage roof is made from 18mm OSB sheets. The rafters run from front to back and the OSB will run side to side. All edges of the OSB should be fixed so as to keep the roof flat. This is done by having the short edges start and stop on rafters and the long edge being tongue and grooved (t&g) into the next sheet. When we got prices for commercially made t&g we were shocked that it was 50% more than plain boards (£18 vs. £12). This is over £180 for the garage alone! The same thing will be done on the main house and would cost £600 extra!
Something had to be done, so in our usual style we decided to DIY… Investigating tools gave us three options :- locked mitre, finger and comb joints. But I could not decide which would be best in OSB so I decided to try all three!
We made sample joints using the cutters and are waiting for the glue to set… We will destructivly test the joints to determine which is best, but after the comb joint is the easyest to make. You can see examples of the joints below in order.
And here are pictures of the cutters
