Roselea

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  • LVL Timber Arrives!

    At the crack of dawn this morning, well perhaps not that early but early enough at 7:40am, the delivery of our special LVL timber arrived. LVL is Laminated Veneer Lumber and it is made of layers of about 3mm thick veneers glued together and our particular size we wanted has thirteen layers in total giving 38mm thick.

    The-many-layers-of-a-LVL

    The-many-layers-of-a-LVL


    The original timber was 220mm wide but some of it was sliced down the middle as we wanted  so we have a heap of 110mm wide pieces as well as 220mm wide pieces (all of the wide lengths will need to be sliced in half eventually) and they came in a range of lengths from a maximum of just over 7 metres (24 feet) down to mostly just 3.5 metres (11 feet). We managed to load the whole lot onto our large trolley at the top of the Loke on the main road (the delivery driver offered to try and back down the Loke but as the lorry was a full length articulated one we decided to offload onto the trolley) and then hauled it back down the Loke.
    LVLs-on-the-trolley

    LVLs-on-the-trolley


    Now we will put the pieces under our Rain Shadow area to keep it dry while we finish off our current jobs and then start working on creating our diagonal rafters that these LVL timber pieces will help to form for each of the 14 roof intersections (the valleys, hips and ridges).
    LVLs-stored-under-cover

    LVLs-stored-under-cover

  • Steel Support Arm Created to Hold Up Chimney

    This afternoon, in the dry and warm workshop, we cut up various steel pieces, for example, 3 lengths of 50mm by 50mm square tubing, a small length of 50mm by 25mm rectangular tubing, some flat 3mm plates and a piece of 6mm thick U shaped channel piece too.

    Then slicing a series of angles on 2 of the square tubes (the angle being 32 degrees that matches the angle of the roof) and drilling 10mm bolt holes in the U channel piece, we then welded the whole lot together like a jigsaw into a support arm that will be bolted on both the top and bottom flange of the steel I-Beam, angled downwards to travel just below the roof surface and a vertical pole which will stick up through the roof surface and tiles that has the U shaped steel piece above this surface, ready for the rest of the chimney to be bolted onto.

    Chimney-bracket-welded-togther

    Chimney-bracket-welded-togther

    There is a 40mm hole down the middle for a plastic conduit to be threaded through the steel tubing which will allow for various wires and cables to be pushed through from inside the house to the chimney and the equipment that is mounted on it, like TV aerial, weather monitoring gadgets, lights, cameras and anything else we might think to put up on this chimney – grin!

    Tomorrow, we will clean and give the whole steelwork three good quality coats of metal and weather proof paint to keep it in tip top condition for years to come! Then we can mount it up on the steel I-Beam and finally put on the very last plywood panel because it would have hidden the heads of the bolts!

  • Finished Off Putting Up Plywood Panels on I-Beams Before Thunderstorms arrived!

    This morning, we went around and finished off mounting the plywood coverings on the Steel I-Beams before the thunderstorm arrives. We did dash in for 15 minutes at around 11:30am but that was only a small fringe effect of a thunderstorm heading elsewhere!!

    We concluded this morning with putting up the seven panels and we have only one more to do when we have created the steel support arm for the chimney.

    Nearly-all-the-plywood-attached-to-kerb

    Nearly-all-the-plywood-attached-to-kerb

    It all went up fairly well in the end and now we can look forward to doing the next stage of building up the Skylight by installing the timber framework on top of the steel I-Beams, and flush against the plywood boards. But first, we are making the chimney support arm this afternoon during the thunderstorms!

  • Inner Plywood Covering Up On I-Beams Starts

    It was a gloriously hot day today and the thunderstorm weather front we were originally planning around wasn’t due to arrive until tomorrow so we dashed out there and started the task of putting up all the plywood coverings on the inner surface of the I-Beams, going up to where the Skylight glazing section will be mounted.

    There are a total of twenty-two plywood sections to be installed and we managed to do fourteen of them today.

    5-Boards-at-one-end

    5-Boards-at-one-end

    and-9-at-the-other-end

    and-9-at-the-other-end


    Most of the time, each piece went up quite nicely, applying the special modified silicone sealant/glue on the two lines of support timber already situated on the I-Beams, and screwing down hard the plywood to ensure the glue is firmly squashed flat to maximise strength of the joint.

    We changed our choice of glue for this operation as we knew that there were some locations along the I-Beams where there was a small gap between the steel edge and the support timber pieces and we wanted to make sure that the glue would not break apart inside the glue itself. We bought 4 different tubes of glues yesterday morning, when we stuck together a whole heap of timber and plywood pieces together with all the different glues including our original one .

    Glues-being-tested

    Glues-being-tested

    Glue-Test-pieces

    Glue-Test-pieces


    This morning, we found that the silane modified silicone (Stixall) one proved to be the strongest by far but it costs three times as much as the original one we were using! We just wanted to make sure that the Skylight stayed stuck together long term up on the top of our roof!!

    Tomorrow, because of the forecast of thunderstorm coming into our region for the whole day tomorrow, we are planning to work in the workshop and make the steel support arm for our (fake) chimney!

  • Sliced Up Polystyrene Foam and Inserted in the I-Beams

    Today, we got out our Hot-Wire Cutting Machine to slice up two sheets of our 120mm thick polystyrene foam and also a scrap sheet we had lying around for years, a 100mm thick piece. We first sliced using a single wire on the machine to slice the sheets in the vertical orientation to make 245mm wide strips, ending up with a pile of seven + two strips in total.

    Next, we then had the hot wire positioned much lower down at a distance of 45mm and then push through the machine the 120mm thick strips to produce two new pieces, one being 45mm thick (of course!) and the left over piece being 75mm thick which is just perfect to fill the inner flange of the heavy duty I-Beams. Finally, we added a second hot wire at the 90mm distance and ran through the two remaining 100mm thick strips to produce two equal pieces 45mm thick and a thin sliver of waste.

    Now, taking all the foam strips (a total of 7 thick ones and 11 thin ones) outside with an old bread knife and tubes of the MS special glue and loaded up the scaffolding tower. We then worked our way around the inner circuit of the I-Beams, placing the thin ones in the 100mm wide I-Beams and the thicker strips inside the 160mm wide I-Beams. We used the glue to smear some on the vertical webbing behind the foam strips to make sure they will stay put for the short while before the whole thing is covered up with sheets of plywood later on this week.

    Inside-of-Beams-Insulated

    Inside-of-Beams-Insulated

    It was a good day of work, before tomorrow which may find the day being washed out with thunderstorms, we will carry on in the workshop to make our steel chimney support arm! Good timing that! Grin!

  • Built Rain Shadow protected Storage Area

    First thing this morning, we planed the four half-done long timber pieces left over from last week, down to the required 69mm thickness, using our power assisted planer machine.

    Then, taking these four pieces outside, we wondered where to put them and keep them out of the rain. So we decided to hoist up one of our large tarpaulin sheets right across the top of the three sides of Bedroom 2 which is an extension sticking out towards the swimming lane.

    It was a folded over plastic tarpaulin using a tensioned rope to form the fourth side and then tied down the edges using string from the eyelets down to concrete blocks.

    But we found that it still wouldn’t form a flat area so we also propped up various locations up inside the covering using diagonal struts with footballs taped on the ends (for a softer contact to the plastic surface) and this helped to create sloping ridges to encourage the rain water to run off without forming puddles.

    Rain-Cover

    Rain-Cover

    Rain-Cover-from-above

    Rain-Cover-from-above


    It was a surprising long time to complete this task, some of it because we had some stiff breeze blowing our tarpaulin around, but also trying out different methods of creating a slope and having to change our ideas half way doing this job. Phew!

    Now we have a rain shadow ready to keep our timber mostly dry and also very well ventilated, especially that we have our special LVL timber coming this week and we need somewhere to store it in the dry until we are ready to use them in building the special roof rafters.

  • Production of Bits and Pieces for the Skylight Continues

    Today, we carried on in our workshop to prepare and create all the bits and pieces we will need for our Skylight framework. We sliced up the plywood strips we made yesterday (744 mm wide by 2400 mm long) into 10 unique sized pieces ranging from 1165 mm to 2385 mm lengths, a total of 20 pieces. We labelled them A to J in pairs of two, and the two large end pieces labelled as “3” and “6”.

    Then, we cut a series of square notches on some of the boards which are needed to avoid the steel tie cross bars, so everything is now a jigsaw and will (hopefully) fit all together smoothly and tight like a glove!

    They are now lying on our trolley and covered up with tarpaulin.

    20-Strip-of-Ply-for-inside-of-Kerb

    20-Strip-of-Ply-for-inside-of-Kerb

    Then, we took the two piles of 327mm lengths of timber pieces, one is 63mm wide by 38mm and the other piece is 31mm by 38mm wide. We glued these together to form a T shaped composite piece. We made 52 of this T shape and 4 L shaped ones.

    Kerb-Piece-glued-together

    Kerb-Piece-glued-together

    And finally, to close off the day and while waiting for the glue to set, we set up four trestle legs outside on the driveway, and sliced down the middle of 4 lengths of 89mm CLS timber to make 69mm wide pieces. But we had trouble with the circular saw machine and it produced wider and angled pieces so on Saturday, we will put them through our planer / thickener machine to square them back up again and get the size back to 69mm too!

    It is a very fiddly list of parts for our Skylight and we haven’t finished yet, for example, we need various thickness of Foam insulation to fill in the void inside the framework etc. – phew!

  • All Day in Workshop Slicing and Chopping Timber

    Today, to avoid the rain and wet afternoon, we worked in our workshop, slicing and chopping lots of timber. But first, we made a quick solid sound barrier for our doorway that leads into the kitchen at the back of the workshop. We made it using a spare 12mm thick cement board and cut it down to a size (800mm wide by 2080mm high) to fit the door hole. We then taped on strips of an old towel to soften the edges and to plug the gap to reduce the noise being generated into in the workshop. Mum really appreciated this!

    Then, we went to our timber storage and collected 15 lengths of the 63mm CLS timber and brought them inside. Setting up the saw table to rip down 4 lengths making 31mm wide pieces which are needed to fill in as a spacer in the framework design of the Skylight.

    Next, we got out the chop saw and proceeded to chop up all the remaining timber lengths as follows:

    • 56 lots of 327 mm long pieces (63mm CLS)
    • 72 lots of 277 mm long pieces (63mm CLS)
    • and 56 lots of the 327 mm long pieces of the newly made 31mm wide timber.
    Four-trugs-of-framing-pieces

    Four-trugs-of-framing-pieces

    After lunch, we went back to our storage and loaded onto our trolley, 20 sheets of the 12mm thick plywood and 5 sheets of 18mm OSB boards. We then reset our work table back to the big circular saw and then sliced these sheets as follows:

    • 15 strips of 366mm wide of the 18mm OSB
    • And 20 strips of 745mm wide of the 12mm plywood
    15-Strips-of-OSB-for-outside-of-kerb

    15-Strips-of-OSB-for-outside-of-kerb

    20-Sheets-of-plywood-for-inside-of-kerb

    20-Sheets-of-plywood-for-inside-of-kerb


    Tomorrow, we will slice the 12mm plywood pieces into a collection of different sizes that each will fit between the steel tie bars (these stretch across from one side of the I-Beams to the other), with cutouts to fit around the ties and then we glue and nail the 327mm pairs of timber pieces into a T shape composite piece. After that, we will go out and up to the top of the Steel framework and start assembling all these pieces together to form the Skylight framework.

  • Finished off Lower Wooden Support on I-Beams

    The other half of mounting a series of wooden support timber pieces on the lower flanges of the I-Beams, on the inside of the Skylight was completed today.

    Lower-Kerb-support-finished

    Lower-Kerb-support-finished

    This is now ready for the vertical plywood sheets to be glued and nailed up on the inside of the skylight module and then the kerb framework to be built to this plywood. But first, we need to slice up 20 sheets of plywood tomorrow and chop up loads of 63mm CLS timber as well!

  • Vertical Slots All Done – External Wall Almost Completely Finished At Last!

    Today, after a delayed start due to a dentist appointment, we resumed cutting the little vertical slots into the top of the cement panels on the walls. The wall O and Wall K were finally completed with the template adjusted in its third position, to cater for the 45 degree angle roof.

    Wall-O-slots-done

    Wall-O-slots-done

    Wall-K-Slots-done

    Wall-K-Slots-done


    We then went around doing odd ones here and there were an extra piece will look good and fill in under the Eaves.

    This completed task very nearly finishes the structure of the whole of the External Wall of our house, all 14 sections, all 77 metres distance around and 3 metres high, with 12 windows and 3 doors too!! We only need put in the corner posts (when we install the hip and valley rafters) and seal up the joints in the cement boards (when we clad the wall with timber).