Roselea

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  • Designed and Created Mobile Lighting Gantry

    Scattered over the last few weeks, we have been designing and creating a lighting gantry that stretches along the entire ridge line, up on our ceiling in our Great Room. This flat module is 7metres long and 300mm wide, hanging on six pairs of pulleys, using 3mm thick steel wire rope, replacing the original parachute cord (as previously stated in an earlier blog, because it stretched too much).
    The framework is a set of steel elements, made up of 2 pairs of 40mm heavier duty angle iron forming the basic 6metres rails that will have the ceiling panel screwed to it. Then, a set of seven? short 25mm angle iron pieces are welded between these two main structural elements, tying them securely together, and providing a flat surface to weld the final major piece of metalwork, a tube measuring 40mm high by 20mm wide and being 6.7metres long. We had to extend this tube with an additional 700mm piece, welded onto the end of the 6metre piece. We chose to use this kind of material because it provided a very neat way of attaching our pulleys by cutting a little piece of the tube away, like a door, revealing a cavity where we drilled two holes aligned across the width, to allow a bolt to be inserted and tightened down with a nut. This bolt would hold a ball-race pulley, centred by the use of two little pieces of aluminium round tubing, place on either side of the pulley. The steel rope can then be threaded along inside the rectangular tube, from pulley to pulley, while keeping the rope protected from being snagged up in among electrical cables that will be snaking back and forth between lighting units.
    Lighting Gantry 1

    Lighting Gantry 1

    Gantry construction

    Gantry construction

    Gantry wire & pulley

    Gantry wire & pulley



    Meanwhile, we got a sheet of 12mm plywood that we had on our rack of sheet material, and a sheet of our “plasterboard” material called Fermacell, which is gypsum mixed with recycled newspaper and squashed very precisely into a 10mm thick boards. We sliced both sheets into 320mm wide strips and then proceeded to glue a pair of each together and stacking them up and adding six concrete blocks on top, to make sure the glue is well pressed while it dries and cures.A week or so later, we took these bi-layered strips, now 22mm thick, and very carefully sliced off both of the long edges, an angle cut of 40 degrees off the horizontal (which is 50 degrees to the sheet). All circular saws are vertical cutting machines and they can only tilt over to a maximum of 45degrees off the vertical, but we wanted to go another 5 degrees further, to make a shallow angle slope. So to solve this problem, we tilted our track up by placing it on a long piece of 63mm CLS timber, giving the machine an additional 15degree approximately. This enabled us to tilt the saw to the required 50degrees (off the vertical, which is the same as 40degrees off the horizontal) and run the saw along the aluminium track to slice the new sloping edges.

    We also made sure that all three strips were all 300mm wide.
    The next job was to cut one in half, because they would form the two ends and they both needed the short end edges cut off, one of them needing an even more extreme angle of 32degrees off the horizontal, to match the slope of the ceiling at the left end of the lighting module. The other end terminates up against a more pitched roof, measuring at 45degrees so we could cut that edge by using the circular saw in its “normal” mode.
    Now we have our two ends, we next needed to cut a tongue and groove ends so that we can connect up each strip and join all of them into a single monolithic strip. But, we had to get the two ends up on the metal framework first so that they were touching the two slopes of the ceiling at each ends, so we can measure the middle two strips so that it all fitted together into a neat single strip.

    Gantry hanging

    Gantry hanging


    This “false” ceiling doesn’t quite touch the main ceiling around it, because we wanted to provide illumination down the slopes of the roof, to provide a gentle indirect glow shining off the ceiling and into our room. So we are going to install an aluminium channel with LED lights in it along the edges of the gantry. There will also be a dozen or so round lighting units along the bottom of entire mobile module, to provide direct main lighting when we need it. Also, being mobile, we can lower it down and attach other decorative lighting features like Christmas lights etc.
    Talking about lowering it down, we have built a winch with a long handle so we can unwind the steel rope more easily, in a controlled manner and take the strain of the weight of the whole module. We also sprayed on lubricating PTFE “oil” on the steel rope so it slips through the plastic conduit much better and don’t wear the plastic pipe away. It will not be that often, operating the wince and lowering the lighting module, perhaps once a year at Christmas time.
    In between these times, we put on a safety braking and locking system, to clamp the drum down tight so the lighting module is securely held up and won’t budge.
    Gantry winch (1)

    Gantry winch (1)

    Gantry winch (2)

    Gantry winch (2)



    Eventually, we may replace this hand-operated winch, with an powered one. We will see!

  • Upgrade and Repair of our Storage Heater

    We are facing another winter here in our temporary living quarters, so therefore we needed to service and upgrade our homemade storage heater.
    This report was rather late in being created and published- November 2024!!Our first attempts of heating the bricks up was not robust as the heating wire suffered from metal fatigue, caused by the wires glowing red hot one moment and then cooling down during the day. This is what we discovered when we dismantled several of the trays. The wire was broken in one location or another.
    So we went looking on the web and discovered some commercial heating elements that are designed to fit in a domestic storage heater out there somewhere, we didn?t care about that, as these would provide a much stronger replacement than our bare wires. So, we took apart the two layers of bricks, chip off the cement and pulled away the heap of heating wires. We then turned the bricks over so that the hollow part is open upwards and we grinded a series of slots to fit the new heating element in so that the second layer of bricks can come back down flat again.

    We connected the spade terminals to the existing wiring and push the spade plugs on to the elements. We reassembled the stack of trays. One thing to note, is that we only replaced eight of the ten trays as the supplier were only selling these elements in packs of four and we didn?t want to take the risk of buying another pack and have two spares. We were not confident enough to know whether it will work or not. Another limitation was the power requirements as each element is more powerful than our original setup, therefore we could only connect one tray to one relay and we had only eight relays in total. So, the bottom two trays were two of the old design and we left them in the stack to act as ballast.

    We reassembled the rock wool layers, stretched the wire mesh over the wool and put the front cover back on again. We rewired the relays up on the control board so that the mains is switching just one tray instead of a pair it was doing before.

    We fired up and everything is running. We then set the temperature to a deliberately low 200°C and waited overnight. The five trays all heated up nicely!! So, we turned up the temperature to 300°C on the following night. All is ok again. We did 400°C and still ok! And finally, we settled on 500°C and lovely!

    You may have noticed that we were only heating up five trays and the reason for this was that our micro-controller chip didn?t have enough output control pins to drive the other three trays.

    We have our storage heater back again for this Winter!
    We are warm again using cheaper Economy 7 prices!!
    Phew!

  • Moved 2tons of Fermacell Boards to House

    This morning, while catching a spell of dry and sunny weather, we decided to move in some of our plasterboard like material which is called Fermacell. We are reaching a point where we need to start fixing the final finishing layer all over the “ceiling” in our Great Room so here was the Opportunity.
    Each fermacell sheet measures 2400mm by 1200mm and 10mm thick and every separate sheet weighs 35kg each! We got our large flatbed trolley, pumped up all the tyres, put on some 11mm left-over pieces of OSB to protect the clean fermacell sheets from any dirt and dampness and rolled up to our stack of pallets we got stored outside under lots and lots of tarpaulin.
    We uncovered the front stack which revealed that we have two pallets sitting there, each one having sixty sheets so that was our target. The label says that these sheets were manufactured in February 2022 and that a pallet weighs 2.1tons!!
    It was satisfying that there were many layers of protective plastic covering each pallets, even a heat-shrunk layer as well. So the fermacell was nice and dry.
    So we offloaded 20 sheets, weighing “only” 700kg, thinking that the trolley can take it. we push and pulled the trolley but were struggling to roll it all the way to the front door of our house. It was at this point that we noticed one of the tyres was completely flat!! No wonder it was hard work!!
    (no photo because we didn’t think of it!)
    So we proceeded to unload these sheets stand them upright, leaning against sections of our hallways downstairs. We put some outside our Linen cupboard and also on the opposite wall across the Bathroom doorway as well.
    This freed up the trolley so the next hour was spent repaired the tyre and putting in a new “old” inner tube. We think that the hole where the valve comes through the metal rim of the wheel is the cause of the damage to the inner tube. We cleaned up the hole and put on extra layers of protective rubber patches around the valve and got back a working tyre again. Don’t know how long it will last but long enough for doing this job today!!
    For the rest of moving the sheets, we went back and forth twice more with thirteen sheets and the last run had fourteen sheets. We unloaded them and built up a third pile alongside the Entertainment Room.
    Fermacell stacked downstairs

    Fermacell stacked downstairs


    We rewrapped the remaining pallets, leaving behind the wooden pallet to help protect the rest and pulled our tarpaulin back over again, putting back the OSB sheet on top of the plastic, to stop claws from birds from punching holes!
    Empty Pallete

    Empty Pallete


    These sixty sheets will go a long way to cover the ceiling, plus also a lot of the walls in our Great Room so that will keep us busy for a while!

  • Great Room Ceiling Finally Filled and Covered

    Over the last two weeks, we have been getting on in finishing off filling the roof rafters up in our Great Room. It is a simple case of inserting a mixture of 150mm and 200mm thick glass wool to finish filling up the space in the rafters, in front of the hard PU insulation. Some of them were well filled so we could only get the 150mm thick wool in, but most of it had the 200mm put in. One thing to remember about these glass wool these days, the label says 200mm thick but even after leaving it unrolled and laid out flat for more than a day, it only expands to 150mm thick. We just can’t see how these manufacturers can claim that it will expand to the full thickness as stated on the labels. So we have learnt over the last year or so, to automatically downgrade the thickness and work with that.

    Anyway, we went around all the rafters we got left to do in the Great Room, and then proceeded to cover it up with our usual black plastic vapour barrier.

    Last of the plastic lining 1

    Last of the plastic lining 1

    Last of the plastic lining 2

    Last of the plastic lining 2

    Last of the plastic lining 3

    Last of the plastic lining 3



    Then this week, we protected this plastic layer with our 11mm OSB boards. We had 42 sheets left in our stock and we ended up with four sheets left-over. Not bad guess for ordering hundreds of sheet way back last year!
    We had to make sure that we got the nozzles for our fire suppression system to poke through by marking the blank ends with a gel paint and then drilling a 25mm hole to get them through. We had seventeen of them to do!
    We also made sure that all the diagonal join lines were reinforced, to make sure that each panel is nice and secure, plus also nice and straight too. This is going to be our show room and the most visible room in the whole house.
    Last of the OSB Linig installed (1)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (1)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (2)

    Last of the OSB Linig installed (2)


    To help us put up these sheets, we made a concrete block “stands” so we could push two of these stands up against the wall, at the bottom of the rafters and we adjusted the height so the OSB board would land just in the right place, to start building up the rows of sheets up the rafters.
    Board Support Stand

    Board Support Stand


    Now that we have finished the last major piece of work to the shell of our house, we are now fully insulated in all directions and at the moment, we do not need to heat up the house because there is enough solar energy coming in our Skylight to keep the whole house relatively warm at around 15°C which is just pleasant for working in and not get sweaty. We have a min-max thermometer and it is reporting that the down stairs only varies between 14°C nighttime and 15°C daytime, even if the overnight temperature drops to 5°C !!

  • First Level of Testing Great room Fire Suppression – Passes with Flying Colours

    We spent this morning giving our newly installed Fire Suppression system a check over against any leaks, by connecting up our compressed air supply, on each half of the Great Room’s pipework and nozzles. We mounted a pressure gauge on as well, and put in 7bars of compressed air into the system. We waited a few minutes, watching the gauge. We noticed that it was going down after a few minutes so we went around with a bottle of soapy water, to dab on every single joint and see if any bubbles grew. One of our nozzles was not tight enough so we tweaked it just a fraction with a pair of spanners and got it tight so no more bubbles came out. Two or three of the T-junctions had tiny little leaks so they got the same little tweaks too. After this process was done, the pipes was pressurised again and we then waited a good half an hour without any loss.
    We repeated the same test cycle on the other half.
    We now have two circuits of microbore pipes with nineteen nozzles, all sealed and this first level of testing coming up good. We will do a second level of tests, by using “live” water next time, but after we have installed the actual spray heads themselves and we will record the results and report back soon.

  • Seven Day Break!

    We have just returned from a week of visiting several members of our family. Our tour was 500miles in a loop! We even stopped at IKEA to examine lots of different household furniture for ideas to when we are ready to populate our new house!!

  • Skylight Double Glazing Units – Part 2

    These last two weeks saw the installation of all our double-glazing units up into our long Skylight at long last.
    But one of the last pieces of preparation work to complete was to cut the freshly painted white battens into twenty-two sets. Fourteen of them had four pieces and eight had just three. We took the glass size of each unit and added a generous 20mm to their measured lengths and cut the battens accordingly.At this point, we had to inform our glazing supplier that two of the triangle units were not manufactured correctly. We had specified that these two particular windows had a very slightly non-right angle corners and we had clearly indicated this in our drawings we had sent off, but somewhere along the process, this piece of information was lost and it was only third time lucky, after we had to strongly argue with our supplier that there are such things as non-right angled triangles, we finally received the correct shaped units yesterday. They fitted ok .. more later !

    So, in the meantime, we started at one end of the Skylight, at the North end and specifically number 18, the first square one and proceeded to install each one in turn. Our first one nearly took all day to do as we were learning the procedures and order of getting each step done correctly. The first step was to test fit the glazing unit up into that window, to make sure the physical glass went in and had enough gaps all round for the sealant to go in. Then, it gets taken over to the cleaning department so that the outward facing surface was thoroughly cleaned and polished. There is only one chance to get this done perfectly because we won’t have access afterwards. At the same time, the polycarbonate outer glazing pane was also polished and double checked for any ‘dirt’. The double sided sticky tape was stuck all the way around the framework. The third step in our procedure is to put the glass unit back up into the Skylight and hold it up using two temporary wooden rectangular battens with two screws in each, to take the stain of holding the weight up. These 28mm thick units, comprising of two panes of 4mm thick toughened glass and 20mm space that has been filled in with argon gas, were quite heavy, ranging from 17kg to 26kg for the square shaped ones, and about 13kg for each of the triangle ones. This made them just a bit too heavy for a person to hold it up while we did various tasks, hence the two support battens on each of the upright sides.

    Uint held up by temporary battens

    Uint held up by temporary battens


    At this point, we balanced the position of the glass unit by putting in plastic spacers on each edge, so we had an even gap all the way around. We wanted a sufficient gap to squirt in our low modulus double-glazing approved white sealant and make sure that it is completely sealed against any water vapour and dirt from entering the upper chamber. So, we stuck down bent over plastic spaces around the edges so when we insert the glass unit in for the final time, it will go up straight and evenly in one go, without worrying about accidentally slipping sideways and sticking the glass in the wrong place.

    Putting spacers in to center the unit

    Putting spacers in to center the unit

    At this point, we can release the glazing unit and lean it ready to one side of our working platform.
    we now need to make up the two trays that holds the desiccant powder, cover it up with a breathable cloth tape and put two pieces of aluminium sticky tape at each end to seal the cloth tape to the tray, to stop the powder coming out.

    Dessicant tray with tape on end

    Dessicant tray with tape on end

    Dessicant tray filled with chemical

    Dessicant tray filled with chemical

    Dessicant tray covered up

    Dessicant tray covered up



    This powder is highly active in absorbing the water moisture out of the air and we had to be very careful to tidy up afterwards each time we make a tray, or we get a horrible pool of very wet ‘sludge’ as we discovered! We modified our procedure, and we collected up any spillage by using a strip of toilet roll paper and poured any excess back into our pot of powder, clean the worktable, and vacuumed it as well to remove any fine powder.
    These two trays then were immediately put up into the Skylight, to sit on their little prepared shelves, one at the top and the second one at the bottom. Then, the security tape had its protective wax paper peeled off and we lifted the glazing unit back into place, making sure that our plastic spacers were all still in place and push up hard to stick the glass to the sticky security tape. We reapplied the temporary battens to hold it in place as we don?t trust the security tape to hold the glass forever!

    The next part of our long list of tasks to perform, is to measure the bottom and top edges and cut the battens with 45degree angles at both ends, using our chop saw. We had our super sharp mitre guillotine up on our platform, to allow us to trim a tiny bit off the length until the battens fitted in. A thin double sided security tape was then stuck on these wooden battens. Meanwhile, we used our compressed air sealant gun, to push a decent amount of sealant into the gap between the glass unit and the frame, all the way around on all edges, except the small section blocked by the temporary holding battens. We generally use about one and a half 300ml tubes of sealant for each window, but sometimes it is a bit more and sometime a bit less, depending on how big the gap around the glass unit is. We had bought thirty-six tubes and, we very slightly under-estimated the quantity, so we had to order two extra tubes!
    Anyway. The next step is to push the batten hard up against the glass (remembering to peel off the wax protective tape!) and then nail the wooden batten into place using 50mm long brad nails, using another one of our compressed air nail guns. These nails have very tiny heads, so we only need to put very small spots of plaster filler on and rub it smooth, ready for painting. All this will be done later.
    Having, done the bottom and top battens, all nailed and secured, we then can unscrew our temporary battens of the vertical sides and then finish squirting in more sealant to complete the full circuit. Here, we then measured the final two battens for the vertical sides and fitted them into place, with any small trimming to ensure that the mitre joint is neat as possible.

    Nailing the battens in place

    Nailing the battens in place


    That finally, concludes the procedure of fitting one of these windows! As you can see, the first one took us many hours to get it all done, but after the fourteenth one, we were getting them installed in about 75minutes!

    Then, we tackled the triangle ones! At this point, we were now in the Great Room so three of the four windows went in smoothly. The only addition that we had to adjust in our procedures, was that we needed to be able to cut a mitre angle at 22.5degrees, half of a 45degrees which are the normal square corners. Now, the four triangular windows have one 90degree corner but two 45degree ones which means that we need a way to cut the battens with an even sharper angle than the machine can manage. We made a ‘wedge’ to support our batten with an additional 22.5 degrees rotation and the blade now can slice long diagonal cuts.
    So, as I was saying, three of them went in with reasonable ease, following all the steps we did before, but, for the fourth one, we discovered that the glass unit wouldn’t slide into place. It is very similar to the first window we put in a couple of weeks ago and like that time, we had to file and grind the framework on the long hypotenuse, to widen the ‘entrance’ to allow the glass unit to slip in. Once inside, there was enough gap all round so we resume our list of tasks and got that window done as well.

    Lot's Double glaing units (1)

    Lot’s Double glaing units (1)

    Lot's Double glaing units (2)

    Lot’s Double glaing units (2)



    The final stage of doing the Skylight windows was back down at the other end, to put up the last four triangular units. Two went in ok as usual, and then we had the delivery of the two special ones with their non-standard right angles and we got them in too. One was very tight and the other one was very loose! It used up a lot of sealant and we were very glad to have ordered those extra tubes!
    One observation we made today was the huge amount of condensation there was on these two last windows. The temperature had dropped overnight to below 10°C and the air inside our house was 60% humid and contained lots of water because it is still warm inside and we arrived this morning to find the outer polycarbonate pane covered in loads of water.

    Condensation on a plain window

    Condensation on a plain window

    We wiped it all off. We then went to inspect all our other twenty windows that we had completed before today and there is no signs of any condensation at all. This is very hopeful and we keep our fingers crossed for these windows surviving for the long term. It depends on how good the outer rubber seals are on both sides of the polycarbonate pane. We can gain access from above if we need to do any extra sealing in the future and replace the desiccant material with fresh dry stuff.

  • Skylight Double Glazing Units – Part 1

    We started the new week by tackling the task of installing our new double glazed units up in our Skylight. We have twenty-two units to put up, 8 triangles and 14 rectangles.
    But, the first job is to prepare the framework and make sure that it is nice and solid, without any gaps etc.
    So, using our new High Platform, we went along and blasted out all the crevices with compressed air, put in short lengths of 10mm PU “sausage”, squashed into the gaps, to help to reduce the amount of sealant, squirted in plenty of sealant and bringing it all up so everything is more or less smooth and level.

    Next, we gave the windows a thorough clean on both the outside and inside. Shaun went outside on top of the roof with a bucket of hot soapy water and armed with a squeegee and sat on the Skylight itself. He lent over to reach all corner of each window with the microfibre scrubber pad and then drew off the water using the rubber scraper. The windows haven’t been cleaned for several years so it took a while to get the dirt washed off. Shaun shuffled clockwise around all twenty-two windows and ran out of energy, and clean soapy water, by the time when he reached the solar panels so we will come back another day to do those.

    Shaun washing skylight windows

    Shaun washing skylight windows


    We will invest in a long handle cleaning tool that can telescopically extend out but also has a hose pipe going up the middle to supply a flow of water at the same time while scrubbing the surface. This tool will also serve to clean our seventeen solar panels as well. It will save us having to clamber up onto the roof tiles and be able to do this task from the ground itself, or at least, on a high platform at the gutter level.While this was happening, Stephen went around inside to clean the inside surfaces of the windows, using a little gadget that scrubs and sucks up the dirty water at the same time. But, it was also needing several washing cycles and each were polished with a microfibre cloth. He was standing on our high wooden platform. These windows needed to be extra clean because they won’t get a second chance after the double glazing units gets sealed in later in a few days.

    We were considering what sort of battens to secure and fix up the glass units, and after thinking about making it out of Oak, we decided to phone our local timber merchant and ordered a set of planed 21mm square beading. They come in 4.2metres lengths and we calculated that we would need 23.5 pieces so we round this up to 25 lengths just in case. It is quite shocking to how high the price of timber is these days, it cost us about £1 per metre of 21mm by 21mm planed pine wood and only a couple of years ago, we paid £1 per metre for 63mm by 38mm planed timber!!

    Next we adapted a compressed air sealant dispenser tool so that we can get a constant pressure and flow of the low-modulus neutral cure glazing sealant that we need to squirt all around the edge of the 28mm thick glass unit and make sure that it is completely filled in. The problem we got with our existing tool, is that it is too long. It was designed to take a higher capacity sealant tubes that were 1½ inches longer. It is a pity that there wasn’t a unscrewable section on the body of the chamber and therefore adjust the tool to take shorter sealant tubes.
    We made an internal extender to take up the slack by cutting out three circles from a piece of 12mm thick cement board, measuring 47mm diameter, using a core cutter. These three pieces were glued and bolted together to squash the joints and waited overnight for the glue to set. Next we found a little length of 50mm wide plastic pipe which is a fraction too wide to fit inside so we sliced a very small chunk out of it so it can close up to fit smoothly into the gun. Then, we “turned” the solid cement plug very fractionally so it also just fitted smoothly inside the plastic sleeve. We made sure that the cement core was exposed by 5mm or so so that we can slide on a fat O-ring rubber seal over the cement core and sit snuggly down to the edge of the plastic sleeve. The whole lot (minus the rubber O-ring) was glued all together so that it forms an air tight plug with just a small hole down the middle to allow the compressed air to enter the tube of sealant. The O-ring squashes up tight to the ends of the sealant tubes and the cement plug also seals against the original rubber seal at the bottom of the gun.

    Air powered Sealant gun

    Air powered Sealant gun


    It works very nicely without any air leaks! We can now go ahead to provide a steady flow of sealant for our glass units when we get them installed up into the Skylight.

    We also modified some sealant nozzle to flatten them to allow the sealant to be pumped into narrow gaps around the units.

    Modified sealant nozzle

    Modified sealant nozzle

    Our wooden battens arrived this morning (Wednesday) and we got on with shaping all 25 pieces in our router machine attached to our router table. We just wanted to put on a single extra flat surface on the corner of the square 21mm by 21mm batten, to chamfer at a 45degree angle a third flat surface to provide a slightly more pretty finish than just plain square.

    Double glazing battens

    Double glazing battens


    We then proceeded to give all pieces two coats of primer and undercoat, rubbing them between coats and get them ready for when we install the glass units.

    The last piece of work for this week is to make the moisture extraction system. It sounds fancy but all it is, is a tray of desiccant powder with a breathable tape over the top. We bought a heap of long 1inch wide by ½inch high extruded aluminium trays, measuring 5metres long. We then cut these up to make two trays, one at the top and another one at the bottom, in each square window and one tray at the bottom of the triangle windows. We had pre-built a little “shelf” in each window, to hold these trays of desiccant but, we discovered that some of them are slightly tight so we sliced off a couple of millimetres to reduce the height of these trays. We made 36 trays in all, with eleven of them reduced in height. We also rounded the ends and then taped a small piece of aluminium tape to seal off the open ends, to retain the crystals.
    Lastly, we test fitted a couple of our triangle glazing units because we discovered that the last two units that we had to order again were not correct. We were cleaning off some sticky tape that the glass people had put on and cutting off excess amount of the tough sealant that is filled inside in between the panes of glass, when we tested the angle of the “right angle” corner and discovered that wasn’t correct. We then measured all three sides and the glass people neglected to take any notice of the hypotenuse and just assumed that these two triangles were exactly right angles when they were not. For some reason, they failed to noticed that these two triangles had special angles. We took them up to the Skylight and made sure that we couldn’t get them in. We will now have to go and chase them up and get them to admit their mistake. What a Fuss! We tested two more triangle windows, number 22 and number 19. Number 22 fitted in straight away but number 19 was ever so slightly too tight and we had to make some minor adjustments to the wooden framework so we could eventually get the glazing unit to fit into place.
    Finally, just for completeness, we also tested one of the square windows, number 18, and it went straight in with no fuss at all.

    We will carry on in dealing with the Skylight windows so it is all done, before we resume working on the Great Room.

  • Sliced Off Dangling Metal Posts

    The first use of our new High Platform, that we built earlier in the day, was to go along up in the Skylight and slice off the small metal posts that are hanging downwards from the steel cross members in the skylight. These posts were originally intended to allow a wooden framework to be constructed, to box in half the Skylight and extend the flat ceiling portion of the room.
    But, we decided that would feel too “crowded” and we liked the idea of opening it up and make it more airy and also allow more of the Skylight sunshine to pour in and reach the back half of the rooms.
    So, we used our 5foot high platform and a pair of angle grinders tools with one having a cutting disc and the other having a sanding disc. We proceeded to slice off all eight stubby posts.
    Removing Downward stubs on Cross beams

    Removing Downward stubs on Cross beams

    Stubs cut off

    Stubs cut off

    Stub free cross bars

    Stub free cross bars



    We will weld on some new metal tabs in the future and allow us to screw up a set of sheet material to form the box that will house the ventilation ducting and other bits and pieces living up there.

  • Decommissioned the Slicing Table and Converted it into a High Working Platform

    Today, after we have sliced up all the remaining foam boards yesterday, we proceeded to demission the slicing table, taking off the sabre saw that had been mounted underneath the table (with the blade sticking up through the top) for the last couple of years. We converted this table and extended it original 8foot by 4foot size by adding another 2feet width to the long side, reinforcing the framework, extending and putting in additional legs and then stiffened the whole thing up with bracing structs so that the new working platform is much stronger, safer and also much higher so we can reach comfortably the Skylight.
    Skylight work platform,

    Skylight work platform,


    It has a tactile edge strip all the way around the edge of the 8feet by 6feet platform so our feet can detect when we are getting close to the drop off, especially that the platform is five feet off the ground now! We will need a step ladder to climb on and off it!!
    We are using this platform so that we can easily install our double glazing window units, but also, we can build the upper boxing on the back half of the Skylight for the air ventilation, solar panels, the window blinds and lighting units, all inside this box-shaped construction.