Roselea

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  • Four Jig Modules Created for Screw Holes in Fascia Boards

    Today we calculated and created a design for a jig to help us drill two clearance holes through the Fascia boards, positioned in such a way that the two stainless steel screws will drive into the ends of our rafters and pull tight the boards good and tight.

    Four Jig Modules Created for Screw Holes in Fascia Boards

    Facia-fixing-screws-Jigs


    There are four of them to match the different slopes of the roof sections around the house. The 32 degree and the 33 degree versions are created in one jig as the differences are very small. These jigs will allow us to repeat this task of drilling these clearance holes with precision and be consistent on all 196 “ends” that we have in total!
    The diagonal Hip rafters will have a similar jig but not for drilling the hole directly, only to draw the position of the rafter as it joins on to the 45 degree corners. There are only ten of these corners to worry about so we will deal with each one in turn as they come along and drill the holes by eye instead.

  • Last Set of Fascia With Slope Sliced, Tools Prepared and First Test Fitting

    Yesterday afternoon and today, we carried on with the task of getting our Fascia Boards up on our eves. Yesterday, we had the last four and half planks that needed a steep 60° angle sliced along the top edge. We made a homemade jig with various pieces of plywood and CLS timbers to help support and hold each Oak plank in place and run our Bevel Slicing machine down the length.

    We now have five piles of Fascia planks with all the different angled slopes put in, ready for installing.
    Then, starting at the beginning, the PA corner of the roof (the Great Room at the front of the house), we chopped a 22.5 degrees angled mitre so it can join onto the 45degree corner plates. We went outside to put up string between our “L” brackets and temporarily clamp some more of these brackets so we can put up a Fascia board. This would let us position each Fascia board in relative ease and get things connected nice and smooth.
    Today, we initially did some preparation work on some tools so we ready to chop and slice the rest of the Fascia boards for each section of the roof. We were adjusting the workbench modules so our large chop saw was balanced and level. It was a bit fiddly but we managed to get there at last!
    After that, we sorted out our new biscuit jointer machine and worked out how we are going to cut a slot on the ends of the Fascia boards so the biscuit will be able to help us align each board and be a neat flat transition from plank to plank.

    Last Set of Fascia With Slope Sliced, Tools Prepared and First Test Fitting

    Fisrt-two-facia-boards-test-fitted


    We did another test fitting with our biscuits inserted and it is looking not bad at all. we marked the slopes of each roof, the angle and things, on our little corner Fascia bit and hand saw off the extra bits.
    Last Set of Fascia With Slope Sliced, Tools Prepared and First Test Fitting

    The-corner-piece-cut-to-shape


    Tomorrow, we will make some template jigs to help us position exactly where we will need to drill clearance holes through the Fascia boards so the stainless steel screws can be driven into the ends of the Eves (the rafters). We are waiting for some stainless steel tiny brad nails and some specialised highly waterproof PVA glue before we can proceed with putting up for real our first piece of Fascia board!

  • Slicing Slopes on Top of Fascia Boards

    Missing our morning’s work session to other duties, we resumed after lunch on the task of slicing a slope on the top edge of our Fascia boards to match the angle of each section of the roof. We had 41 x 2 metre planks ready for the rip sawing, divided up into the following set:

    • 12 x 32° slope
    • 5 x 33° pieces
    • 8.5 x 40° planks
    • 11 x 45° pieces
    • and 4.5 x 60° slope.

    Using our table saw, we proceeded to do all but the last one as the table saw cannot do more than 45 degrees.

    Slicing Slopes on Top of Fascia Boards

    Facia-boards-tops-angled-to-match-roof


    Tomorrow, we will finish off the last 4.5 planks by using our Bevel Slicing machine we still got lying around and slice the very steep 60 degree angle on those remaining Fascia boards.

  • Completed Setting Up of Brackets for Fascia Boards

    Today, under a superb blue sky and brilliant, very hot sunshine, we continued the task of fixing up support brackets to hold up our Fascia Boards at the exact positions.
    It was very interesting to appreciate how the liquid level tool is influenced by all sorts of environmental factors. It took at least half an hour for it to settle down and acclimatise to things like air temperature affecting the tubing (making it softer and increasing the internal volume), the liquid expanding because it was getting warmer and the different heights of the barriers we had to go over!

    But once we got a handle on its idiosyncratic behaviour, we had full confidence to carry on in doing the task of getting up these “L” shaped wooden brackets, positioned at the 12.550 meter point and we kept on double checking backwards, especially when we had to go out a different window or door.
    We arrived back to the beginning, around on the front of the building just past the front door porch and we measured the very first one we did on Saturday and hey presto, it was the same height!! Yippee!

    L-Brackets-installed-on-end-of-each-set-of-rafters

    L-Brackets-installed-on-end-of-each-set-of-rafters


    The other little job we did while we had this liquid level device out and working well, we duplicated our reference point we have been using (which is situated on our number 5 steel leg) and went all around the whole internal walls (and the other six steel legs too) copying the reference mark. We now can be reassured that if we accidentally block off our main reference mark, we will have lots of other ones to take comfort from accurate duplicated reference marks.

  • Proceeded With New Liquid Level Device to Get Ready for Fascia Boards

    Today, we unpacked our new liquid level device and spent several hours getting it sorted (putting liquid in the 25 metre clear hose, without any bubbles takes time and patience!!), we proceeded to start work on setting the height of our Fascia boards. We are using “L” shaped wooden brackets made earlier and using this new liquid level to position a pair on all the sections of the roof to the precise Height of 2.55 metres above ground level.
    It was very interesting in how this very old technology (the Romans probably invented the technique!) is still useful and how sensitive it is to the slightest changes in where the 25 metre hose pipe was positioned and what obstacles it had to climb over (like windows or doorways).
    It was a case of running back and forth between the reference point on our “5” steel leg which had one end of the level mounted up at the exact 2.55 metre point and the other end going across and out to the edge of the roof.

    Water-Level-on-steel-post-@-2

    Water-Level-on-steel-post-@-2

    Water-Level-on-post-details

    Water-Level-on-post-details

    Water-Level-on-eve-end

    Water-Level-on-eve-end



    We managed to get six of the fifteen sections we are setting up done, and on Monday, we will continue with the task, until we have done all the way around. We wanted to get ready the whole job of where to position and mount up the Fascia boards, before we actually start putting any up at all. We will (we hope!) see that we arrive back to the start and find everything is nicely aligned up!

  • Final Black Finishing Coat of Glass Fibre Resin Applied to Downpipe Channels

    This morning, we finished off sanding and cleaning up the work we did yesterday on the Downpipe Channels, by removing excess glass fibre here and there and preparing them all for the final “top coat” resin layer.

    Downpipe-channels-finished-with-Black-resin

    Downpipe-channels-finished-with-Black-resin


    The deep black resin is a special formulated resin with a bit of wax added. This causes the surface of the resin to “pull” itself into a very smooth finish which is ideal to make the rain water flow as quickly as possible.
    The next job is to use our new liquid level device and set out our “L” wooden brackets all around the whole building to get the Fascia boards to be aligned at the same height everywhere!

  • Glass Fibre Resin Coating for Downpipe Channels

    Yesterday and today, we have been preparing and starting the process of putting on a fibre glass resin surface on the insides of the Downpipe Channels. Yesterday, we filled in all the right angle joints with filler to make a smooth curved transition so the glass fibre can fit more easily.

    Downpipe-Channels-inner-corders-radiused

    Downpipe-Channels-inner-corders-radiused


    This morning, we rubbed all the filler to take off any sharp bits and then started the glass fibre coating. The first layer was a medium grade glass fibre mesh to provide the core strength to bind and reinforce the resin, and this was followed by a second layer, just on the bottom base board, is a tissue glass fibre to smooth out the ripples.
    Downpipe-channels-glass-fibered

    Downpipe-channels-glass-fibered

    We then waited for the resin to set a bit then trimmed all the excess fibreglass off and sanded thing smooth.

    Downpipe-channels-glass-fiber-trimmed-and-sanded

    Downpipe-channels-glass-fiber-trimmed-and-sanded


    Tomorrow, we will give the whole thing a final layer using a special “top-coat” resin, in a solid black colour, this will give us our glossy smooth finish inside our guttering to encourage the rain water to flow nicely down to the plastic pipe and beyond.

  • Setting Things in Place for Fascia Boards

    A bit of a catch up blog entry for the last few days of work which has been a bit interrupted…

    We cut the 10 pieces of fascia for the outside diagonal corners ready to attach to the end cut previously.

    Outside-corner-pieces-for-facia

    Outside-corner-pieces-for-facia

    We then made a heap of ‘L’ shaped plywood pieces so that we can measure the position of the bottom of the fascia using our laser level and then clamp a ‘L’ Bracket in place to rest the fascia on. We then started by putting up 4 brackets on the E & F eves.

    Later we returned to the job and we double checked these ones previously set to make sure that they were still in the right place. We wanted to make sure we could repeat the measurements and get the same results. And No We Cannot!

    Further analysis seems to show that the laser can only find the same level within three to four millimetres each time we placed it down in a slightly different place. This would be ok for the more general site surveying tasks and even positioning certain building elements in and around the structure but when our Fascia will do a complete circuit around the whole house, travelling some seventy-seven metres in total, we were not confident that the laser will bring the two ends together within a few millimetres. We didn’t want to take that risk.
    So a change of plan and we have ordered an old fashioned liquid levelling system using a long hose pipe and clear plastic tubes at each end and we will set one end at our reference point and move the other end right around the perimeter and fix our “L” wooden brackets everywhere first before putting up a single Fascia board. We will have to make a load more of these brackets but that is a small cost to achieve a consistent and clean result.

  • Last Three Downpipe Channel’s Made, Corner Eves Cut and Fascia Boards Acquire Bevelled Edges

    This blog is a rather long catch-up report of the last few days of work. On Saturday, we made the Sixth Downpipe Channel, this time for the one connecting up the “G” section of the roof next to our Side Door. It is a straight one, all aligned up with the edge of the “G” Fascia but it will still have an extra 45 degrees added on to provide an enlarged collection area to catch the rainwater running down the valley slope of the roof.
    Then, in the morning of Monday, we had a go at installing a rubber membrane inside one of our Downpipe Channel but it proved to be very awkward and we couldn’t get the rubber to fit smoothly down inside on the base of the channel and down into the plastic pipe too. We had to abandoned this idea and switch over to applying fibre glass and poly-ester resin to paint the the inside surfaces in our channels to make them fully water proof and not let the wood rot (We have ordered the materials needed and will finish them when the stuff comes) .
    So instead, we carried on making two more “temporary” downpipe channels, for the point where our Conservatory will be when we get to build that part of the building later on. These temporary channels are just made from plywood pieces and not oak. That was completed by early afternoon on Monday and we spent the rest of the day doing some Charity work making thin wooden Basket weaving bases for a local VI  Craft club in Yarmouth.

    Temporary-downpipe-channels-for-PQ

    Temporary-downpipe-channels-for-PQ


    Yesterday and today, we tackled the job of trimming the ten external “outside” corners of our house and its roof. These corners have long sticking out LVL diagonal rafters and we needed to trim these off at the point when they meet the Fascia board which is coming around the corner at a 45degrees angle. We made a template to allow us to hook it up onto the ends of the two lines of eves (coming off the two sections of the roof that meets at these corners) and marking where to chop off the excess amount.
    Trimmed-corner-of-EF

    Trimmed-corner-of-EF

    And finally, this afternoon, we gave all our Fascia boards (41 of them + a wide one too) a double 45degree angled bevel edging so this forms an “interesting” bottom edge of the Fascia when it is all up.

    Chamfered-edge-of-facia

    Chamfered-edge-of-facia

    The next job is to analyse all our Fascia segments, working out how long each one is, what angle of saw cut we would need and matching that requirement with our 41 ready-made lengths we have. We will need to be careful not to waste too much wood as we don’t have an endless supply – grin!!

  • Fifth Downpipe Channel With Pipe Inserted

    A short session only for today. We drilled the large 110mm hole in the Downpipe Channel we made yesterday and fitted the plastic pipe into position. Everything was glued and now curing.
    Tomorrow, we will see how well the rubber has glued together but also we are considering making an mould so we can fold the rubber membrane up around the outside of the mould which will be much easier to do.