Roselea

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  • Very Carefully Preparing PA Hip Rafter

    Today, we continued with preparing the LVL timber flanges for the first of the main corners of the roof, over the Great Room, in the corner where the P wall meets wall A, hence we called this rafter the PA Hip Rafter.
    We wanted to be very careful while cutting and slicing out the Bird’s Mouth notch, making sure the length of the top flange is as exact as possible, as because we have One and ONLY ONE of these LVL special timber so making any mistakes would mean buying another one (£40 and weeks of delay)!! We achieved the accuracy requirement, double checking and analysis of how the real world reflects against our computer drawings, by the help of another little template that plugged into the metal bracket up on the steel I-Beam. We could see where we had to remove sections of the webbing so it could hook over and get past the sticking out flanges of the steel I-Beam itself. We recognised that the corner point of the I-Beam needed to be sliced off too (about 15mm using a hacksaw and plenty of muscle!). Then, down on the PA corner, the cement board was sliced away to just allow the LVL 38mm wide timber to come through and also remove an angled section of the top-plate timber so that the Bird’s Mouth on the LVL timber will lock into place. So following this corner, we made another little block of wood with the correct slope sliced out on the bottom so it could sit and line up with the new cut-away section and provide exactly where the LVL timber will go.
    All this preparation work allowed us to measure the exact distance along the top flange of the rafter, all the way to the Kerb’s corner up on the I-Beam. This distance turned out to be 5600mm.
    This gave us a measure of confidence to commit ourselves to cutting the Bird’s Mouth and marking out the other end using this 560mm number. We wanted the LVL flange to fit neatly up against the Kerb’s corner, so it had to have an internal corner sliced out the end of the beam. We took back outside the LBL timber with the Bird’s Mouth and the markings, got it up into the corner and up onto the bracket and slid it into the template so we knew what height it should be. We double checked the markings to make sure it was looking good, so again we committed ourselves to cutting the excess wood off the end and slicing the funny inwards pointing angled groove and got it fitted just nice and tight!! Phew!
    Then back to workshop with our LVL timber again, and laid it down into our rafter template so we could position the bottom flange next to the top flange (the one we have been working on) and line everything up, double checking everything again, and then slicing the bottom flange to exactly the right size too!

    Rafter-PA-Top-end-and-Measuring-jig

    Rafter-PA-Top-end-and-Measuring-jig

    Rafter-PA-Birds-mouth

    Rafter-PA-Birds-mouth



    This pretty much was our day’s work – Phew! It is slow but we can’t make a mistake or it will costs us money and time and be very annoying too!! Nice and steady for these special diagonal LVL rafters around our roof. Thank goodness there are only 17 of them in total and we have done three of them so far, with the three we are working on now. Monday, we will carry on with the PA rafter and get it fitted into place and prove our methods and increase our confidence to do the other two similar Hip rafters for the other two main corners.

  • Vacuum System Construction Continues

    These last two days have seen more work on the new Vacuum System for the workshop. Yesterday saw the electrical wiring, switches and sockets being fitted to the machine module (housing the two motor units). The idea is to have a high current 32Amp lead coming from the utility rail to enter into the box, split into two 13Amps lines. One for the vacuum motors and the other line, via a socket on the back of the unit, going onto to the work table, next to the vacuum pipe.


    A rotating switch (taken from an old fan heater) provides the means to switch one or both motors into action, to provide two levels of vacuum power. This is not exactly correct way to describe this as the level of the vacuum doesn’t change when both motors are running, but what actually happens is, there is a great increase in air flow and this feels as if it has a higher vacuum power. It is more true to say that it is a case of how fast the air moves up through the pipes and the faster the air gets “sucked” up the pipe, the broader the effect of materials being caught and dragged along with the air and disappearing up the pipe!
    One result of all the unit being connected together (the vortex separator chamber and motor unit), is the noise! The motor noise is not so bad and we could reduce the noise with some wadding inside the motor unit, but the loudest noise was coming from the Vortex Separator chamber! It was very loud, like a tornado .. which is what it is!! We probably will build a box around the vortex unit and put more wadding inside to keep some of the noise in – We Hope!
    The last job of the day was to electrically connect the new “second” line to the work table so we can immediately continue to make use of the equipment in and around the table. The final task left to do, is the vacuum 50mm hard plastic pipe that comes across the floor from the box, and redesigning the existing pipework (this providing the connections to various equipment for collecting the saw dust and the like) so everything is joined up and ready to Go Go Go!

  • LVL Hip Rafters Preparation Continues, Light Bulb Moment and Update to Drawing!

    After we finished off doing the wheels for the scaffolding tower, we continued preparing the bits and pieces for constructing the LVL Hip Rafters for the PA, EH and HI corners. We sliced a 26.6° wedge off the ends of 12 strips of the plywood webbing, making sure that the better side was towards the gluing direction (I.e. facing inwards). Then, the next job was to sort out the LVL timbers and labeled them so each one it is now determined for the correct role, three longer pieces for the top flanges and the three other one for the bottom flanges.
    Next is to take the two top flanges that are going to have the bird mouths cut into them and start marking out the complicated shape of the cut-away section. We decided to do a practice run on a spare bit of 89mm CLS timber rather than the precious LVL timber. So we sawed the bulk material away and used a mixture of our wiggle saw (officially called an oscillating multi-tool, but what a mouth full!) and hammer & chisel to carve out the concave angled groove so it can sit tight over and on the outer corner of the top plate (see pictures below).

    Corner-birdsmouth-cut

    Corner-birdsmouth-cut

    Corner-birdsmouth-cut-on-corner-piece

    Corner-birdsmouth-cut-on-corner-piece



    While we were looking at this complicated cut-away (double checking) on the computer, and also inspecting the actual Top-Plates on the walls in the corners of the house to make sure that we didn’t have missing timber which may meant a weaker joint (it turns out that all six affected corners were fine), we had a light-bulb moment! It suddenly it occurred to us that the pointed part of the corners on the top-plate could be removed to make a flat area for the rafter’s birds mouth to sit against flat .. WITHOUT any complicated inward groove! Phew!
    So the rest of the afternoon was spent on the computer to update the drawings so that all the six corners around the house will have regular ninety degree birds mouth cut-outs and instead, a measured and angled chunk is removed from each corner on the top-plate with just a good old plain handsaw and Hey Presto .. All will Comes Together Plain and Simple .. Nice and Strong .. Oh Phew .. Smile!
    On Saturday, we can proceed with a much relieved state of mind over these LVL Hip Rafters and get on with it much faster! Hooray!

  • Final Wheel Is Completed for Scaffolding Tower

    This morning, we finished off the fourth wheel by drilling the holes into the foot plate and bolting the wheel together to the foot. We then shortened down all the fatter metal pipe (this is the support pole that goes up inside the scaffolding leg and bolted down) so we can minimised any extra height we would put on the tower (we are wary of this factor because we need to move the towers around and have to slide underneath any rafters we may have put up), the new length of this pipe is 110mm.
    The fourth foot had its nut plate welded back onto the support pole and the threads were all heavily greased to avoid any further rusting problems!!
    These are now ready to be re-installed back onto the tower when we are ready to put up another completed rafter beam.

  • Scaffolding Tower Has Wheels Fitted To Its Feet!

    While we waited for the rain to stop, we rescued the castor wheels from some old tool object which served in the past to help move around the massive steel I-Beams. They were unbolted and set ready for fixing on the scaffolding feet, which we went out at the point the rain was almost stopped and took the flat metal feet off the scaffolding tower. Then, we unscrewed the fat pipe section off the threaded rod and the flat plate (we really had trouble with the fourth one! It was so badly rusted inside that it took us an hour of bashing, blow torching, oiling and everything else under the sun to get the damn nut to move! Eek!). Then each plate (10mm thick by 180mm square) had four holes drilled into them and had the castor wheel bolted on, we finished only three of the four before we stopped for the day, .

    Casters-for-scafold-tower

    Casters-for-scafold-tower


    Tomorrow or Saturday, we will do the final fourth foot and then put the new feet with wheels back on the scaffolding tower and this will allow us to easily move this second tower around, just like the other one!

  • The Next Set of 3 LVL Hip Rafters Beginns Construction

    Today, we started on the next three rafters, the corner Hip Rafters that goes in the main corners of the house. They are the Great Room “PA” corner, the Utility Room “EH” corner, and the Bedroom 3 “HI” corner. They should be all the same length from the wall up to the steel I-Beam and their bracket, at 5430 mm. We measured them as follows:

    • PA – 5400 mm – short by 30mm
    • EH – 5380 mm – short by 50mm
    • HI – 5450 mm – over by 20mm

    This is not bad considering the nature of our steel I-Beam being plonked down in the middle of the house when we only had short concrete stub walls at the time!
    We carried on measuring around on the other bracket to corner distances, as follows:

    • IJ – 5780 mm
    • LM – also 5780 mm
    • NM – 5275 mm
    • P11 rafter – 3520 mm

    We then brought into our workshop 8 sheets of plywood boards and sliced them up into sixteen pieces of 433 mm wide strips. We then got a piece of the polystyrene foam board and hot melted this down into 2 x 217 mm wide strips, generating 7 strips ready for filling the internal space inside the rafters.

    Plywood-and-foam-for-beams-PA-EH-and-HI

    Plywood-and-foam-for-beams-PA-EH-and-HI

    At this point, the rain came hammering down and we couldn’t go outside to fetch the LVL timber we needed, until about an hour later when the rain stopped.
    We now have all the parts ready, to make three hip rafters tomorrow while the rain is forecast to hammer down!!

  • The Companion AB LVL Rafter Is Now Installed!

    Today, we carried on configuring and adapting various equipment and tools to help us with the task of lifting these roof Rafters up into place. For example, we reinforced the other winch support arm to stiffen up the vertical pole. We did this by welding on two angle iron pieces on the opposite side of the metal pole so that the bending moment is much stronger in the direction of the winch arm hanging over the side of the tower. The other thing we did, was to extend the cable for the control buttons for this same tower. By adding another 10 metres to the four-core electric cable going from the control box and the winch mechanism itself, now allows us to control the winch motor from ground level and have much better control when we are positioning the ends of the rafter on top of the wall and getting it to slide onto a leg too.
    We then moved both towers to the next position where the AB LVL diagonal valley Rafter will be going, rotating the towers so their ends are parallel to the wooden beam to make it easy to lift up smoothly up the sides.
    The next job was to slice the 41° angled cut off the top end of the rafter (the one fitting into the metal bracket) up on the C Ridge, and then cut out a clearance hole on the webbing at the other end where it fits over and on the top plate of the wall corner.
    We humped this 6metres long piece of work outside and got it up with our winches, did a test fit and all it well.
    The next job was to get the corner leg fitted, by cutting it down to size (exactly 2381mm high) and doing a quick test fit there too.
    After that, we squirted lots of the glue all over the contact areas where the legs fits into, both ends of the rafter and the metal bracket too and then slotted everything into place!

    Beam-AB-installed

    Beam-AB-installed


    This is the second companion rafter fitted, to go alongside the other DE Valley rafter on both side of the big C Ridge forming the Front Door and Entertainment Room Extension portion of the house. This section of the roof skeleton framework is now done! Hooray!
    Tomorrow, we will measure the next three corners (the PA Hip Rafter, EH Hip Rafter and the HI Hip Rafter) which are all the same size rafter (apart from their lengths [which ideally would be the same as well]) before the thunderstorms arrive in the afternoon sometime. Also, we will take in the metal foots of the scaffolding tower and drill holes in them to allow us to fit castor wheels to them for us to pull the tower around so much easier! Phew!

  • Lovely Bonfire While It Rained!

    This afternoon, with the rain that is coming, we decided to do a bit of site clearance and have a bonfire in our incinerator! We have been building up trug loads of wooden rubbish from various projects over the months and it was time to finally make a start on getting rid of this collection.

    Fire-in-Incinerator

    Fire-in-Incinerator


    We finally managed to get rid of eight trugs, 6 bags of wood shavings and one huge plastic bag of wooden rubbish!
    Empty-firewood-trugs

    Empty-firewood-trugs


    But we still have not tackled the huge pile of timber that is still lying up there near the incinerator! Phew!

  • New Lifting Mechanism Created and Finally The DE LVL Rafter is Up and In Place!

    We finished creating the new Lifting Support Framework for the winch, with some more welding of reinforcing struts at the top and handles at the bottom to allow us twisting control and something to pull on when we need to take down the arm.

    Strong-new-winch-bracket

    Strong-new-winch-bracket


    We took out our new support arm to the tower, mounted the motor to it and heaved it up and plugged it into the corner of the tower. We then hooked up this rafter (the DE valley Rafter) with both winches and started winding it up again. this time, it went all well and we managed to get the rafter fully into place correctly – at last! This was only a test run as we needed to get the DE leg in place too and glue it all together!
    We trimmed this corner leg to exactly 2385 mm long and smoothed it off with the belt sander until it just fitted nice and smoothly. We then did another dry run with our rafter to make sure it fitted in, this time with the leg there too. Yes is the answer and phew!
    So we went ahead to glued all the joints at the bottom of the rafter, and the top too and all the internal surfaces of the vertical leg. The rafter then came back and slid into place, even easier this time with the lubricant of the glue there to help us.
    Strong-new-winch-bracket-in-use

    Strong-new-winch-bracket-in-use

    DE-Lvl-rafter-in-place

    DE-Lvl-rafter-in-place



    We then fixed a couple of nails into the bracket at the top and screws into the wooden leg and rafter at the bottom to keep it held in place while the glue sets.
    This concludes the very long saga of getting this one rafter into place and thanks goodness at last, it is there – Grin!
    On Monday, we can move over to do the second rafter we have ready, this one being the AB LVL valley rafter on the other side of the C Ridge beam and it will go so much faster after all what we have learnt these last few days! We Hope So! Grin!

  • Lifting Equipment Saga!

    Today, we resumed the challenge of lifting our very long rafter (well there are two of them waiting to go up .. but one at a time – thank you!) and after talking about different types of lifting mechanisms, we decided that the pulley “block & tackle” system wasn’t flexible enough (like for example, when we need to stop hauling, we would need to tie off. but when we need another 6 inches or so, then untie, pull and then tie up again!) so this morning, we abandoned the pulleys in favour of electric winch motors instead. We took the support arm down and adapted them again so we can slide the winches all the way along the arm, back to the vertical pole. We welded a couple of pieces of square 5mm plates on the sides of the support arm so it would lock the winch machines into place and stop them rotating and tripping the safety switch that cuts the motor!!
    We went out with these new versions of our lifting mechanisms, installed them on top of the towers and then started lifting our DE rafter beam.
    But ..
    We didn’t get the tower lined up parallel with where the rafter needed to go so it was too far out and we bent our vertical pole section of our lifting support arm (again!). We took that one down again and straightened it out and tried again but this time, to get the tower lined up better with the rafter right up close to the tower. We were able to lift the rafter all the way this time, at last!
    But ..
    We discovered that the way the rafter needed to be fitted, our winch was NOT high enough to get the rafter clear of the steel I-Beam to allow the bottom end to slide back into the corner! Oh Blow! Drat! Phew!
    Everything goes back down to ground level, disconnect electric, tidy up one winch set and cover it up against the weather and the other set was taken down completely so we could start thinking a new design, using bigger, stiffer, taller metal pole, this time another 1.5 metres taller!!
    We found an old heavy duty pole that was an used for an old washing line and used that as our new vertical pole. It was just the right diameter to slide down inside the scaffolding tower’s poles in the corner but we had to bash out the dents made by the locking bolts. While that was being done outside, the new pole was having bits and pieces welded to it (like the old support arm off the original version).
    Tomorrow, we will finish off welding of extra bits and pieces to this new pole and then we will try lifting our rafter for the fourth or fifth time – We Forget Now! Smile!