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Whole of P and Q Roof Sections All Prepared, Flashing Layers Assembled and Ready to Slate!

With a lovely prospect of good weather ahead of us, we got on putting up the final rows, about 13 of them, of the tile battens to finish off preparing them for the slates. But before the slates could go on, there were plenty of other tasks to be performed. The next job was to nail up the flashing battens along the two hips and two ridges, using a string to guide us and keep us on the straight and narrow.
The other job we did was to put up the Skylight kerb flashing strip made of the aluminium metal sheets, with the rubber membrane to actually provide the diversion of the rain water.
After that, the metal mesh went on the gutters, fixed down as usual with the thin oak strips to clamp down the edge of the mesh and rubber membrane on the gutter.
Skipping over a 4 hour job in helping a friend out with a plumbing crisis, we continued in preparing the roof sections, this time in doing the special bull-nose upright flashing strips on the two hips and again the two ridges too. This was made up of the shaped wooden strips with the woven glass-fibre ribbon wrapped over the top of the bull nose, all sitting on the rubber membrane that will provide the protection against the rain water. We put on three coats of resin, the last layer being a grey flexible top-coat to finish it off nicely.

O-P1-roofs-ready-to-slate

Q-roof-ready-to-slate

This concludes the preparation work for these sections of the roof (the “N”, “O”, “P” and “Q”) and we can start slating .. .. but the last day of the week, the Saturday, was lost to rain but we worked inside in the workshop instead.

6 July 2019
P and Q All Covered in Membrane and Almost Complete with Tile Battens

We had a very disrupted week of work, losing three and a half days, due to other commitments and meetings. It is just one of those things that happens now and again.
We at least, got all the breathable membrane up on Monday and Tuesday so the “P” and “Q” sections of the roof are both now protected against rainwater, held down with a few vertical battens and some horizontal tile battens.

Membrane-on-P1-Q1

Membrane-on-Q2-P2

The final day, Saturday, we did a solid day of work of putting up all the rest of the counter battens, and got most of the tile battens nailed up too. We had to make a slight adjustment to some of the horizontal battens near the ridge line of the Q (the Conservatory) roof where the two “P” half sections meets together, there was a little 20mm mismatch to the lines of the battens so we “corrected” four lines of battens just below on the right hand side so there wasn’t a sudden “jump” in the line of the Slates.

Most-Tile-battens-on-P1

Most-tile-battens-on-P2-Q2

Next week, we hope that we will get in a full week of work and make solid progress on finishing the “N”, “O” and some of the “P” and “Q” roof sections, putting on thousands of Slates etc.!

29 June 2019
Continuing with P-Q roof and P-A Corner plus Progress on Oak Window Sills and Headers

On Monday this week, taking advantage of the good weather, we proceeded to glass-fibre and resin the two complex junctions and the corner we installed last week. The two Downpipe Channels on either side of the Conservatory, designated P-Q1 and P-Q2, and the outer corner for the P and A roofs, the P-A corner.
These were rubbed down and smoothed off, removing bubbled up left-over glue etc. Next, the glass-fibre matting was cut up to fit the various surfaces and angles and then painted into place with the base resin layer. After rubbing that lot down smooth, the final top-coat black resin layer was applied and left to set overnight.

Q1-downpipe-finished

Q2-Downpipe-finished

PA-corner-finished

The other little job was to complete building up the layers of the plywood strips for the P-A Hip line, up to the kerb.
Upon the next day, in the afternoon (the morning was spent doing an emergency repair in a friend’s bathroom shower unit), we tidied up the fibreglass-fibre coated junctions and also reconnected the drain pipes to the Downpipe Channels too, all before the rain arrived later on.

After that small job, we returned to the workshop to continue with the job of cutting the slope into the other set of Oak timber pieces, this time for the Headers (the top of the windows). We planed the 14 pieces including our prototype piece.

Headers-sloped

Then everything was cleaned up and put away, we had finished with the planer for the time being and generally swept up the workshop.
The next several days, while we waited for the wet weather to go pass, we shaped the ends (both ends) of both the Sill and Headers so they will fit into the 13 window holes already in the house. We built two jigs to guide our circular saw to cut the various lines in a couple of directions, and produce the first step to make these complex shapes.

End-shaping-jigs

Sawing-end-of-sill-with-jigs

The saw cuts were manually finished off using an old-fashioned carpenters saw because it is made of a thicker metal to help slide into the pre-made slots. We also made use of the jigsaw to help.

Small-window-sill-ends-cut

Sills-and-Headers-with-ends-cut

The remainder of the week, Friday and Saturday, we got on with the task of applying the breathable and rubber membranes to the P and Q roofs and building up the counter and tile battens.
The first job was to install the rubber strips into the gutters, on the P roof (both the 1st and 2nd sections, either side of the conservatory) and used the double layer contact glue to stick down the rubber ends to the glass-fibre black surfaces. Then we glued remainder of the rubber that goes up the slope using the rubber glue, again allowing the two surfaces to dry a bit before carefully rolling the rubber membrane up the roof. We wanted to ensure that we don’t get rainwater slipping behind the rubber and into the gutters but on the wrong side (o boy!) as it will take a few days to get the whole P roof all covered in the breathable membrane and the chances are that we will get more rain!!

P1-Gutter-lining-glued-in

P2-Gutter-lining-glued

The last job of Friday, was to stick on the three layers plywood strips along the ridge line of the Q roof and also the outer edge too, all ready for the flashing slates (with its rubber under-skirt) to be applied.

For our last day of the week, we then got the two sets of valley counter battens that will support the glass-fibre trough installed, sitting on top of a metre wide breathable membrane. The two came together at the top, along with the ridge line. We put on excess lengths of battens, just in case we need it all when we sort out the complex arrangement of the main slates and the flashing slates meeting together and maintaining waterproofing etc.
The last task was to lay down the first row of the breathable membrane along the bottom, overlapping the rubber by 100mm and going over the hip and valley ends. This was secured down with the counter battens at each rafter position. We got the P1 section covered as well as both sides of the Q done too.

P1-start-of-membrane-and-battens

Q2-Valley-and-start-of-membrane

22 June 2019
Gutters and Downpipe Channels Installed for all P and Q and the first Third of A.

The last two days of the week (Friday and Saturday) were nice days so we got on with installing the two Downpipe Channel modules for the P-Q valley that forms part of the extension part of the building for the Conservatory coming in the future.

Then we got all the guttering done, for all the P (first section and second section either side of the Q conservatory) and the first third of the A section along the front of the house.

Finally, we got the layers of the plywood strips installed for the p-A Hip corner of the roof so we could fibre glass all the complicated junctions and corners.

Gutter-on-P1

Gutter-and-hip-on-P2-and-start-of-A

So on Monday (weather permitting) we can fibre-glass these junctions and have them all sealed, ready for the rubber membrane to go on along the two P small sections.

15 June 2019
Making Oak Window Frames Started

Because of the changeable and very wet weather we had this week, we decided to switch over to our backup plan and work on our Windows and sort out the Oak Timber for the framework.
We got 13 windows (9 large, 3 medium and 1 small), each having a Sill and a Header plus a octagon shaped “pillar” vertically on each side, made from three different Oak timber sizes. For this week, we worked on the Sill and Header pieces, using 50mm thick Oak timber planks. We pulled out from storage all those planks that were wider than 160mm. The Sills will need to be 175mm deep and the Headers 145mm deep.

30-pieces-of-Oak-for-window-sills-and-headers

We found 30 planks in all and we have rejected four of them for being too warped or twisted down the length. We may have to use one or two of these rejects if we find ourselves running out.
The next job was to slice a straight edge to establish a base line to work from. We had to use a standard mobile circular saw to get a deep enough blade depth as our Oak timber were, in some cases, deeper than 50mm. The track saw we had, which would have been ideal for this job, could only cut about 48mm thick.

One-edge-straitened

The next task was to pass all the pieces through the big circular saw module in our workbench. We selected 12 pieces for the wider 178mm set and another 12 for the smaller 153mm set plus one left over which we cut in half (for our single narrow window), one each for the two sets. Initially, we had to cut very slowly as the equipment was prone to overheating and the safety protection breaker kept tripping. Also the blade was getting hot too and leaving scorch marks on the Oak. We decided to change the blade to a branded and pleasantly discovered that it started cutting much more cleanly, a little bit faster and no heating at all!! Just shows you that one should really change the original blade that came with the machine to a more professional branded blade!!

After all that fuss, we got our planer equipment out, plus our two extension tables and proceeded to plane one flat side of all the 26 planks plus two spare “test” pieces for prototyping the complicated shapes later on.
After careful analysis at this half way point, we then earmarked which plank would go for the Large windows (9 of these), another 3 for the medium windows and the odd one for the narrow window. We also flipped around each piece to find the best edge for the nicest visual presentation too.
The next stage of operation is to convert the planer machine into thickener mode (we put away the long two extension tables) and got out four roller support stands and using a long straight aluminium bar to adjust the heights of the rollers (we had to do this every time we adjusted the thickener to plane off more material) and got all 28 pieces planed down to a general 46mm thickness. The finished surfaces were not perfect because we knew that much of the “bad” parts will disappear when we cut the slope in, and also there are sections that will be cut away to develop the outer wings of the sill and headers.

Ready-for-slope-cutting

The final job for this week (day 4 of wet rainy weather, we measured that we had 23mm of rain in that time!!) was to build a angled support jig that will guide our oak planks through the planer and cut the slope on them.

Planing-the-slope-on-the-sills

We managed to do all the wider 173mm Sill timber pieces.

Sills-finished-planing-1

Sills-finished-planing-2

We stopped here because the weather changed for the better and we could get on with outside tasks.
When we get wet weather again, we will continue with the job of cutting the slope into the narrower set (the headers) and then cut the fancy shaped ends and round off the edges etc.

15 June 2019
Gable Roof Extended, Two Downpipe Channels Created and Resumed Preparing the P Section of Roof

On Monday, we extended the existing Gable section of the roof that will form part of the Conservatory. Using the new stud walls built last week, we put up a 420mm extension to the ridge beam to make a sum total of 910mm (3feet). This new ridge was sandwiched between two layers of our structural 12mm plywood, glued and screwed together with a second full single length of 95mm by 45mm treated timber underneath to reinforce the extension.

Extension-of-Q-ridge

Then a couple of CLS 63mm timber pieces were fixed to the long diagonal rafters to provide support for the new roof boards and two fresh lengths of 4by2 timber cut to form the outer rafters of the new extended roof.
The narrow strip was covered with more 12mm plywood segments and it is now ready for the next stage of counter battens and the breathable membrane to be put up.

Extended-Q-roof

Tuesday through to Saturday morning was spent working on two new Downpipe Channels to connect to the gutters and to the future Conservatory. We carefully measured each position of each channel module (PQ-1 and PQ-2) and then pulled out a couple of planks of Oak timber, 27mm thick but one plank being 150mm wide and the other being 250mm wide. We also had a couple of left-over pieces already planed from a previous job. These forms the two sides and the wider bottom pieces of the channel module.
All was planed and cut to width.

Start-of-Q-Downpipe-Channels

The next job was to put on the tongue & groove edges to join the pieces together and using a PU glue, formed a very strong joint and a much more robust module. The two sides were shaped in a particular fashion so they will slide in and under the overhanging roof boards of the “Q” conservatory roof.

Q-Downpipe-Channels-Glued

Another gluing job was to stick on two layers of 12mm plywood squares (150mm across) and stick them under the modules in the position where the plastic drain pipe will come through. After they had set, we drilled a 114mm diameter hole through all the layers (22mm of Oak and the two layers of the 12mm plywood) and then glued in short lengths of drain pipe.

Q-Downpipe-Channels-with-Pipes-fitted

While that was drying and curing, we went outside to resume work on putting up Slates on the narrow diagonal strip to finish off on the “N” section of the roof. We got half way up by the end of the day.

N-Nearly-done

On the following day, we carried on working on the downpipe channels by cleaning up all the edges, especially the newly installed plastic pipe sticking through the bottom of the channels and then applied a coat of polyester resin and glass-fibre matting to fully waterproof these channels and provide a smooth surface for the rainwater to flow into the pipework. And finally on Saturday morning, we applied the black coloured top coat layer of resin to provide the slick surface and colour.

Q-Downpipe-Channels-ready-for-fitting

While that was hardening, we brought in all the thin OSB strips that has a “bull-nose” on one edge. We discovered from the first time we used these strips to form a flashing waterproof barrier for the Hip and Ridge lines, that the resin soaked into the open grain of the material so we spent a hour or so applying Polyfilla to all of them to bulk fill these gaps.

Bullnose-Strips-filled

We are in the middle of some very changeable and windy weather at the moment so we hope we can still proceed with our work. We have been lucky so far this year in general. Next week, we will install the new downpipe channels, put on the guttering and then start laying on the strips of roofing membranes all along “P” and the “Q” roof sections.

8 June 2019
Rearranged Working Platform Modules to Support Work on Roof Section O and P and A

For the rest of the week, from Wednesday lunch time to Saturday (with some interruptions), we got all the platform modules moved around to the next section of the house to work on. These modules have been up for about a year now, but at last we have moved them to now cover the roof sections, O, P and A plus a bit of N we haven’t quite finished yet.
There are 11 modules originally, we made another one and brought into service our old mobile platform (which is similar to two modules). They are all 8feet by 4feet in size and we butted them up together, going around corners and anchoring them together and to the house too, to make it very stable. Sometimes, we had to space some modules apart and we filled in the gap with more CLS timber and plywood boards.
Another safety feature was to mount a kick edging strip right around the outer edge of the total platform walkways and working area.

Platform-on-NO

Platforms-on-P-A

Finally, we moved our hoist system around to the beginning, near the Loke side of the house, and got it connected to the platform.

Materials-hoist-moved-to-he-front

Next week, we will start work on extending out the Gable roof section of the conservatory and have that ready for the continuation of slating the roof.

1 June 2019
Stud Walls Built to help Extend Conservatory

We resumed work on building up the stubby stud walls, on the newly formed concrete block work and foundations, in order to help support the upcoming extension to the Gable Roof sticking out the “P” section of the roof (over the Great Room).
The new stud walls are 900mm wide and we used our nominal 2″ by 4″ preservative treated timber to put together a framework that bolted onto the 140mm wide concrete blocks and reaching up to the eves. It is attached up the full height to a post added to the inside of the main house.

Framework-for-Q-walls

Attached-to-extra-post-inside

We put on two layers of sheet material on the outside, the first one being 12mm plywood which we glued and nailed directly onto the framework and then the second layer was a sheet of 12mm thick cement board to provide the weather proofing and we glued around the edges with more PU glue and then nailed with plenty of nails to provide a strong solid racking to support and brace the main building and conservatory both.

Completed-Q-walls

We finished by lunch time Wednesday and the next job is to make the downpipe channels using our Oak timber to form the interface to our guttering system, but before then we have to move all the scaffold platform modules.

29 May 2019
Section O Battened Up, Gutters Cleaned, Platforms All Tidied Up and Conservatory Stud Walls Started!

Monday, we got on with the task of putting on the three strips of the breathable membrane across the O section, all held down by vertical counter battens.

O-mostly-Battened

Then by Tuesday lunch time, we got all the horizontal tile battens nailed into place too.
The remaining of the day was spent tidying up everything off the working platforms because we will have to move and adjust all our platform modules to go along the “P” section of the roof and around to the front of the building along the “A” section too.
The reason we are doing this now, before we have completed the task of putting up the Slates on the last bit of N and all of O, is because we need to make our “bull-nose” fibre-glass and rubber flashing protection covers that goes along both diagonal hips (the N-O and O-P hips) plus also along the ridge line between the N and P rooves and we haven’t got the “P” section done at all. We need at least the breathable membrane strips in place so it can overlap at each boundary before the flashing battens can be put into place.
This is why we are having to stop at this point and start work on the P roof.
But .. ..
On Wednesday, we realised that before we dismantled the platform modules, we took the opportunity of cleaning up the gutters, both inside and outside! There are loose nails, slate fragments and lots of wood splinters lying in the gutters, and also the joints still has the hardened glue sticking out in various places. So the morning was spent scraping and sanding the glue and smoothing the joints with chisels and sanding machines and then using a pressure washer, and a cloth filter plugged into the top of the downpipes at the back of the gutter channels, we blasted all the bits and pieces along.

Debris-from-gutters

More-debris-and-Filter-unit

In the afternoon, we also saw that we could finish off the metal mesh coverings over the gutters and screw down the oak “caps” to lock the mesh and rubber down. We also put in twice as many stainless steel dome head screws as previously to provide a stronger pressure and keep the cap tight down in more places.

O-Battened-and-gutter-mesh-installed

And here’s the time lapse…

Sooo that means we are ready to move the platforms around .. NOT!!
Another realisation is to do with the design of the valley troughs (the fibre-glass modules) and the minimum required space and clearance its needed to do its job properly. Actually, we had realised this several weeks ago so we have been thinking on this problem to how to adjust the Conservatory gable end around on the “P” section of the roof.

Conservatory-gable

We came to the conclusion that we needed to extend outwards the gable end another 300mm. Also it was felt that we really ought to build out the perpendicular stub walls that forms the start of the Conservatory and will fully support the sticking out section of roof, especially loaded with the extra Slates.
So Thursday and Friday, we dug out two trenches on both sides of the position of the Conservatory’s walls, removed the plastic rainwater pipes and the sand was compacted using a thumper and levelled off.

Conservatory-Hole-dug-for-foundation

We constructed rectangular frames to hold the concrete that will form the foundations. Then we put in three reinforcing bars in each framework (holes through the narrow wooden end and holes in the concrete blocks of the main wall). This will both help strengthen the foundation but also provide a connection point when we come to do the rest of the Conservatory later on. These foundations are only 1500mm and 1700mm long strips as we couldn’t go any further without going into our massive mountain of sand and soil we got piled up at the top of the garden!

Conservatory-Foundation-shuttering

So the last task on Friday morning was to mix nine builders buckets of sharp gravel and three bucket of cement and pour in the concrete to set over night.

Conservatory-Foundation-Finished

On Saturday, we pulled out 21 concrete blocks from our swimming lane storage yard, split four of them in half and got everything ready, including sieving three buckets of soft sand from our own natural sand dune we got in our garden ! We then prepared the foundations for the walls stripping the form work and marking them for the right angle from the wall.

Conservatory-Foundation-stripped

One wall is just a simple staircase arrangement of the blocks, starting with three and an half along the bottom (hence why the foundation needed to be 1700mm long) and the fourth and final row is just two blocks wide. This is what we want regarding how far out we need the stud walls, a distance of 900mm. The new wall is attached to the old one with a stainless steel strip bolted to the old wall which has ‘L’ brackets to embed in the mortar of the new wall.

Conservatory-Front-wall-start

The other blocks had to be laid down slightly differently because there is the Conservatory doorway positioned here, so we needed the two final rows to be both two block wide and then the usual staircase effect there after with the bottom line being just three blocks long (and the foundation only 150mm long).

Conservatory-back-wall-start

The last job of the day (and week!) was to mix more high strength concrete and pour them into the hollow columns inside the concrete blocks themselves. Oh yes, we also moved the extracted sandy soil back around the new walls and levelled the ground back up again.
Did you notice the walls are higher than those of the house? This is to get the sill of conservatory the same height as the house windows…

So next week, weather permitting, we will build up the wooden framework of the stud walls and connect them to the roof above and then we can start moving the platform modules – hurrah!

25 May 2019
M Section All Done and N Half Way There

On Monday, we resumed work on the M section of the roof. The first job was to cut, trim and seal the fibre-glass trough module to fit the top of the valley and while the resin was curing, put up more slates. After lunch, the modified third piece of the valley trough was fitted and we then finished off the small triangular patch to complete the whole of the M section. This piece of roof has over 1800 slates on it. this now means we have covered approximately 30% of the whole roof.

M-Complete

For the final couple of hours left on Monday, we swapped our tools over to begin nailing up the tile battens up on the next section, the N part.

N-partial-battening

Tuesday saw the completion of the tile battens nailed into place and then we started on putting on the slates.
But we spotted something very odd in our gutters.

N-Gutter-Bulging-rubber

The rubber liner had “swollen” up in a bubble and when we had lifted up the metal mesh, realised that it was water underneath the rubber membrane, sitting on the oak. We had never noticed it before and we had to wonder where and how the water got into and behind all the layers of the breathable membrane up on the roof. Did this mean a hole somewhere? Did this mean a sealed joint wasn’t holding? Well, we got the vacuum cleaner out to sucked out the water and made sure that no more was lurking elsewhere.
Then we got out our garden hose and emulated a very heavy rain shower by spraying water from the top of the ridge line and all the way down the hip, to make sure that all the breathable membrane was fully covered in running water. We then waited over lunch for any developments.
After lunch, the verdict was no signs of any more water bubbling up behind the rubber. We can only put down this experience to a moment when we was putting up the membrane in the first place several weeks ago (by reviewing our photo gallery) and there is a possibility that one night, there was a short sharp shower and managed to allow a small amount (about 100millilitres) of rain water to slip behind the top line of membrane up the top of the roof, where the ridge line wasn’t covered until the following day.

We will have to keep an eye on this but nothing materialised during our water test and beside, as soon as we have put on all the slates, it will be fully waterproof anyway.
We put back the metal mesh over the gutters again and resumed the job of putting on the slates, starting at the valley end and working up the diagonal. We have also learnt our lesson about providing a fixed reference marks for the left end of all the rows by projecting up a vertical line and then measuring back from this one reference line, to all the starting points on the left end of each tile batten.

N-slating-started

Wednesday and Thursday were taken up with Stephen’s Birthday and meetings but on Friday we got back to putting up more slates and continuing up the valley.

N-Slating-valley-slated

We managed to get the complicated valley all done and covered most of the N section with slates by Saturday afternoon. We had to stop because we ran out of room and we couldn’t get up and over on to the N section to complete the last few rows.

N-Mostly-slated

So for the remaining of the afternoon, we got on with the task of putting the rubber liner inside the gutter on the next section, the “O” section, and put up one central counter batten. This central batten was special because we couldn’t just nail it into place as the underlining structure, at this particular point, has a thick steel plate that reinforces the rafters. This means that nails straight down cannot penetrate into the rafter and secure the counter batten into place. instead, we used glue plus nails and positioned the batten slightly offset to one side. We fired extra-long nails at a slanting angle to hit and grip wooden rafter, bypassing the steel plate on the front of the rafter.

O-gutter-lined

Next week, we will put up the breathable membrane, secured down by more vertical counter battens and then put all the horizontal tile battens right across the O section and we can climb this to complete the N roof, and also put another 500 slates on the O roof.

And here’s this week time lapse…

18 May 2019