Blog

Today, we did two jobs on the fly. One was on the computer to organise, sort out and prepare diagrams for the steel bracing support unit, and the other job was to tidy up the workshop and bring in the various steel strips from the shelves outside under cover. The steel had to be sanded to remove the little bit of rust on the top most strip of the pile, so using the orbital sander with lots of emery cloth discs to go up and down each strip to remove as much of the rust as possible.

The Steel Bracing Unit that holds and reinforces the K Ridge element (this is the section of the house with the extension at the back over the Bedroom 2). The picture below shows the 3D diagram of this module.


Tomorrow, we carry on with the preparations and soon will be slicing up these steel strips into the jigsaw pieces to then be welded together.

This morning, we took out the completed rafter we had glued and nailed yesterday out to get it up into the HI corner of the building (Bedroom 3). We had a pile of excess timber material plus the other corner legs, all covered up so we had to try a different method of lifting the rafter up. We thought we would try lifting it using just the one winch motor, the one on the very tall and much stronger support arm. Actually, it turned out to be relatively easy to control, to lift the sticking out end up and over the wall first and swing the rest of the rafter back up and above the steel I-Beam and bring it down into position quite easily. It slid into place without fuss so that was that. We did our usual of gluing the corner leg into the two cement boards and screw them all together. Then glued the webbing and bird’s mouth all over the place and plus the metal bracket and the kerb at the other end of the rafter. The whole lot then was reinserted back into position and nails hammered into the side of the metal bracket and screws at the wall end to fix things down while we waited for the glue to set.

And that was it! Using the single winch might turn out to be a good discovery and may speed up the operation of getting all the rafters up and into position. We will see. The next job with these special LVL Rafters is to make the metal bracing bracket that will join and support both the K Ridge and O Ridge together. After those are done, there would be only 7 more diagonal rafters (4 Hips and 3 Valleys) to go and we would be finished with these complicated and specialised elements of our roof!

Just for this morning, before we have other commitments and before the rain comes, we went outside with our completed EH Hip Rafter and installed it into place (the Utility Room corner). It was a fairly easy operation as this rafter doesn’t have a sticking out eve piece. We first glue and screwed the vertical leg into the corner and screwed the two outside cement boards hard back onto the leg. This provided support to allow us to use a crowbar to push the rafter back up towards the steel I-Beam and the Kerb as our tests revealed that we needed to shift the rafter back again after being dropped into the metal bracket at the top. Then, the two ends of the rafter was glued and finally nailed into place in the metal bracket to lock it tight while the glue sets.

After tidying up the towers and covering up the winch motors to protect against the weather, we went back in the workshop to spend the last hour to assemble our 3rd rafter in this set we have been doing these last week or so. That was also a fairly easy job as we had the pieces all ready for the task, so with a quick vacuum everywhere, we glued and nailed the HI Rafter so it can dry overnight before also being installed.

Tomorrow, we will put up this third rafter and then start the next job of preparing everything to make a set of metal bracing parts for the K and O Ridge sections on the two back extensions.

This morning, we got down to putting the finishing touches to the materials that form the EH Hip diagonal Rafter. All the webbing plywood pieces and both the top and bottom LVL flanges were sanded. Then we moved on to the HI Rafter, we went outside to measure the top flange which turned out to be 5635mm, so we cut in the bird’s mouth and sliced the inverted arrow cut-out at the other end at that measurement. We tested this piece outside again and all is well. We then cut the bottom flange to size.
Back in the workshop, we vacuumed everything to get rid of the dust and then started building up the layers of the EH rafter in the template and glued and nailed the whole lot together, on both sides, of course not forgetting to insert the polystyrene foam pieces too.

That concludes the day’s work, but first thing in the morning, we will assemble the other rafter, the HI one, and get that one all glued and nailed so it can be drying while we take outside the EH rafter and mount it into place, and on Saturday, we will mount up the HI rafter and we would finally have done those three similar rafters – At Last!

This morning, under a very nice sunny blue sky, we took out our completed PA Hip Rafter from the workshop to the building site, and after positioning the towers into place and trying 3 times to lift it up, finally made it to get it into place just before lunch!

The trouble was that this rafter has a long sticking out bit that forms the Eves of the roof and goes out to the facia board and the guttering. This meant that we couldn’t lift the beam high enough one way and ran out of lifting wire on the winch before we could get it up. We finally shifted around one of the towers so it gave us more freedom of movement and also hit on the idea of lifting the other end (the end with the sticking out bit) first into the air so it overhung the wall entirely and this allowed the other end to come up and miss the obstacles on its way up! Phew! Oh yes, it fitted just fine!!
After lunch, we smeared lots of glue all over the joints at both ends, up and down the leg and on around the top-plate of the wall. We wiggled and banged the rafter into the corner and inside the leg, and also slid into the metal bracket and against the kerb at the top too. All then was fixed down with nails and screws to hold it while the glue sets. Hooray At Last!!

We carried on by moving the towers across to the next corner, the EH corner in the Utility Room and got our templates to measure the distance of the top flange which turns out to be 5570mm long. Inside the workshop, we took the correct LVL timber, sliced a flat bottom on one end and an angled cut upwards, and then measuring from that point, marked the timber at the other end at the 5570mm and drew the inverse arrow head with the tilt backwards. This end goes up and connects to the kerb of the Skylight. We carefully sawed out this inwards facing groove and took it outside to test it. Yes it fitted very nicely!
Finally, we removed the excess plywood sections on all the strips, both for the EH rafter but also for the other corner, HI too. We transferred the pattern over from the HI webbing to the EH but in a mirror orientation so all our webbing is now ready for sanding and assembling into rafters tomorrow. We hopefully can get both of them glued and squeezed together and have them dry and ready to go either Friday or Saturday. Fingers Crossed!! Grin!

We carried on today with the PA Hip LVL Rafter, making internal noggins (four of them, one at each end and two in the middle at the joints of the webbing). Everything then was vacuumed (the whole workshop, template, LVL timber, plywood webbing and everything else too!), but before we put the rafter together, we took the webbing and copied over the shapes of the cut-outs to the next set of webbing for the HI rafter we are going to do next. This rafter is the same in almost all ways as the PA rafter so we just copied over the pattern to save us some time.
Next, we assembled the whole rafter and got our glue machine going and laid down a layer of glue along the LVL timber and noggings and sandwiched the plywood webbing on top, and went down both sides with the squeezer and nailed it tight together. We turned it over and then inserted the polystyrene foam pieces and vacuum it again and finally applied more glue to the this side of the LVL and again sandwiched the second webbing layer with the squeezer and then nailing that side together as well.

While that was drying, we went outside to set the three corners we are doing, cutting to an exact length for each leg so it fitted just nice and tight between the foot-plate and top-plate!!

Also, we put on the new wheels for the second scaffolding tower, after reducing the height down by one section so it can more easily fit under the diagonal rafter beams.

Finally, to finished off the day, we sliced and trimmed the funny cut-away piece on the HI corner, removing a small vertical piece of the cement board, just like we did on the PA corner. Tomorrow, we will go out with our new PA rafter and see if it will fit in according to the plans! We have our fingers crossed ! Grin!

This afternoon, we carried on with sorting out what we need to do to make the PA Hip Rafter. All the surfaces are sanded (both the LVL flanges and plywood webbing) but we discovered that some of our plywood had a fault in the manufacturing process with the glue missing in the middle layer. It was a small section about 1 foot long and about 5 inches deep. We carefully looked at the other plywood strips and found three more. we never noticed this before and it is quite obvious! So we poured some glue inside the crack (forcing it open a bit more with a wedge) and then squashed it flat using large blocks of wood and half a dozen clamps. We did two strips today and will do the other two tomorrow.

The next job was to cut away notches in the webbing at each ends so they can slide into place and keep clear of any obstacles like steel I-Beams and wall’s top-plates etc.
Lastly, we need to vacuum all the pieces .. but we had an Incident!! The vacuum system suffered a major breakage! We accidentally blocked off the nozzle and suddenly there was a loud cracking sound and we turned everything off rather quickly!! We discovered that the wooden side of the box that holds the first major separator chamber has split right along the vertical edge and also the bottom horizontal edge too!! Wow! What sort of level of force would that need to do that kind of damage?!

It was nearly the end of the day anyway, but we sorted out a temporary by-pass connection pipe (to go straight into the second filtration chamber and the motor unit)so we can still use the new vacuum system to clear up the dust before we glue all the pieces tomorrow. Phew!