Roselea

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  • Sliced up all the Remaining Foam Boards, Tidy up Generally and Moved the CLS Timber Pile

    We spent the day doing a whole heap of slicing up the last remaining heap of foam boards and chunks, chopping them down so that they are all a maximum of 300mm so that they are ready to be placed under the floorboards in the Great Room. Like the old saying, sweep the rubbish under the carpet .. well, we are lifting up the floorboards and throwing the rubbish down underneath!! No really, we need to insulate our room against both the cold outside but also against our hot Energy Modules that we have buried under the house. We don’t want to have our rooms heated up with heat rising from 90degree hot water tanks!!
    So, we have been shredding and slicing up all the rubbishy bits of foam boards and they will help protect us from the hot energy modules. We even got in the final chunks of insulation that we had outside and also sliced then up too.

    Piles of sliced foam (1)

    Piles of sliced foam (1)

    Piles of sliced foam (2)

    Piles of sliced foam (2)



    We now have a huge pile of “stuff” ready and waiting to be “swept” under the floorboards! The other thing that we have done is have a general tidy up of all our tools that we slowly accumulated upstairs, taking away random pieces of wood, cans of PU foam and gave the whole place a good sweep.

    The final thing we did was also to move the entire pile of CLS 63mm timber from the middle, underneath the Skylight and moved them all over to the back half of the building.

    CLS Pile before Moving

    CLS Pile before Moving

    CLS Pile after Moving

    CLS Pile after Moving


    We moved 280 pieces of timber, plus a dozen odd lengths! Phew! We now can reach any parts of the Skylight with our new High Platform!

  • Installed Water Microbore Pipes and Nineteen Nozzles – Part 2

    Over the last couple of days, we installed water pipes inside the roof of the Great Room, drilling 15mm holes through each rafters, located about a metre up the slope from the walls and threading the 10mm diameter microbore plastic pipes. We have two separate runs both start downstairs underneath the floor at the end of the Hall as it enters into the Great Room. One pipe goes off towards the back of the building, inside the wall that separates Bedroom One and the Great Room and then goes up until it meets the roof rafters where it is threaded through the holes in each rafter going half way around the Great Room. The other pipe goes off in the opposite direction, through the Kitchen / Great Room wall and then goes up to meet the roof rafters and also threaded through the roof rafters as well. We have decided to locate eleven spray nozzles on the first run of water pipe and a further eight nozzles on the second run.
    Nozzles all connected (1)

    Nozzles all connected (1)

    Nozzles all connected (2)

    Nozzles all connected (2)

    Nozzles all connected (3)

    Nozzles all connected (3)

    Nozzles all connected (4)

    Nozzles all connected (4)


    Each location then has a T-junction adapter and short lengths of 10mm copper pipe that has an quarter-inch female adapter on the end so that we can screw in a spray nozzles at the final stage after we have decorated the ceiling surfaces etc.
    A Low nozzles

    A Low nozzles

    A High nozzle

    A High nozzle



    There will be two more nozzles located right up to the under side of the Skylight so we can spray a mist of water directly over the Gallery as well. These will be installed later on when we have built the bottom part of the Skylight ceiling modules. We have also discovered another high pressure pump, this time it is a battery powered pistol shaped water pressure washer kit but it turned out to offer even higher pressure and faster flow rates. This handy neat little machine can generate over two megapascals of water pressure (this is about 20 bars or 300psi!) and this would be ideal to drive many more nozzles like we have here in the Great Room plus also produce a finer spray of water droplets and reach even further around the room. Connecting to it will be a bit convoluted but overall a very neat piece of kit!

    One of the final things that will do, is to perform a pressure check with compressed air first and then with water, and make sure all our joints and nozzles are good and tight. Once we are happy with that, we then can proceed to finishing off filling in the roof rafters with glass wool and sealing the roof with vapour barrier and 11mm OSB wooden sheets etc.

  • Research in Different Kinds of Water Nozzles for a Fire Suppression System – Part 1

    We have been researching into what we would need to incorporate a fire suppression system, using spray nozzles to produce a fine mist of water droplets. We have found that if we use micro-bore 10mm water pipes, we can lay in a network of a water pipe running around inside the roof rafters, and now and again, have a “T” junction to a spray nozzle outlet. We have been testing various different sizes of nozzles, connected to a high pressure water pump and seeing what amount of spray is produced.
    Our first attempt of a nozzle was to drill a tiny little hole into a brass end-cap, measuring just 0.3mm diameter, we also made two more end-caps with slightly larger holes, 0.4mm and 0.6mm. We tested all three and all three produced a very fine single jet of water going straight out of the nozzle without breaking up into a spray of droplets at all! We realised that there is more to the method of producing a spray so we bought a set of spray nozzles off the web, a bag of 30 nozzles with two sizes, 0.3mm and 0.4mm holes. The only slight problem is that these new nozzles had a American inch threads, labelled “10/24” (which is 0.196″@24 thread per inch). We took our brass end-caps and drilled a 3.7mm hole and then tapped a thread using a 3/16inch (0.187″@24 TPI) tap. It was compatible enough to allow us to screw in our new nozzles. So we tried the 0.3mm hole, producing a very fine misty like cloud which wouldn’t go very far and had a low thermal mass, which may not suppress a fire very well.
    We then drilled out their little hole with various sizes, from 0.6mm, 0.9mm, 1.1mm to a 1.5mm holes and each progressively produced heavier droplets in the cloud of spray. We felt that the largest hole was a bit too heavy and the “cloud” was much smaller. It looks as if the 0.6mm hole size was vigorous enough to generate a large cloud and quite a lot of thermal mass, to cool down a fire and reduce the smoke levels.
    The test results were all for a single nozzle and the pump was generating pressures of approximately 8bars of pressure (800kilo-pascals)so we knew that we had to make sure that multiple nozzles would work as well, so towards this aim, we made up four more nozzles, each with a 0.6mm hole size and then joined all 5 together and re-run the test and we still generated a huge cloud of spray and the output pressure from the pump only fell down to 6bar.
    Mist nozzles test

    Mist nozzles test


    This means that the method and choice of pipework is ok and gives us a solution and we can order a whole bunch more of these 10mm T junction pieces, along with more inserts for the plastic coil of 10mm pipe we already got.
    They will come in a few days time.
    This will allow us to install about fifteen nozzles in total for the whole of the Great Room, running around in the lower part of the sloping ceiling and up around the Skylight as well.

  • Surface of the Ceiling is Levelled Up and the Dormer has been Filled Up

    We spent three days levelling up all the “ceilings” of the Great Room. We wanted to make sure that the overall surface of each plane of the sloping roof is nice and flat, without any major wobbles. To achieve this, we mounted our green laser line generator on the side of each section of the roof rafters and adjusted the laser line until it is on balanced all even from one edge to the other edge of the roof.
    Using laser to align rafters

    Using laser to align rafters

    Measuring Rafter alignment

    Measuring Rafter alignment


    Then, we stapled various different thicknesses of wooden shims, depending on where the green laser line is in relation to each spot on every single rafter. We had a collection of 1.5mm plywood, 3.5mm hardboard, 6mm MDF, 9mm plywood, 11mm OSB and even some 12mm plywood pieces, all stapled using our air staplers and using 50mm long staples. We sometimes used combination so that we levelled up every rafter so that all of them matches up in one flat plane.
    Spacers to align rafters (1)

    Spacers to align rafters (1)

    Spacers to align rafters (2)

    Spacers to align rafters (2)



    We progressed right around on all four individual roof surfaces we got in the Great Room, especially the “O” section where we had to cope with one of the rafters having a steel band with lots of hex headed screws in as well. For this roof plane, we had to put in an entire strip of 11mm OSB board, with various thicknesses of shims so that we can mount our 11mm sheet right across the ceiling surface and miss the metal band and its screw heads.

    In the meantime, we then got on with filling in the space in the Dormer section with glass wool and then covering it up with our usual black plastic vapour barrier and protecting the plastic with our 11mm OSB sheet material too.

    Dormer boarded out

    Dormer boarded out


    This section is now ready for the layer of Fermacell plasterboard sheets in a few weeks.

  • Installed Various Lighting Conduits Inside the Roof Rafters

    This week, we have been installing a set of conduits for routing electric lighting cables to various hidden locations all over the ceiling in the Great Room. We wanted to make sure that we can install additional lighting units without having to rip holes in our beautiful ceilings. One such location is the Dormer that will backs onto our Conservatory which we have left open, exposing the original roof rafters and we thought that it would look great it it had some lighting hidden behind the rafters so the Dormer would glow with a gentle illuminations. We threaded through the walls a series of 20mm diameter plastic conduit, coming from the lighting channel running around the whole room at the top of the walls, and bends to behind the exposed rafters, with additional conduits so that the middle three rafters are all connected together.
    Conduits between domer rafters

    Conduits between domer rafters


    We have also put in a twin set of conduits that takes an pair of electrical wires and a thin rope that connects to our flat ceiling lighting module that runs down the middle of the ceiling, right up at the top of the ridge line and pass the end of the Skylight.
    This “mobile” module will be nearly 7metres long and 300mm wide, constructed using steel angle iron to form the basic framework, to attach a series of pulleys, six of them evenly spread out along the length. The rope travels down the conduit from the Triangle Void above Bedroom1, behind the large upstairs work room, where we will have a winch to unwind the rope and we can lowers the lighting module all the way down to the ground floor. The rope comes out at the top of the roof and drops down to the first pulley, goes horizontally to the second pulley, then goes back up to the ridge line where the rope is threaded through the next two pulleys mounted up there. It then goes back down again to pulley number three and four, when the rope returns back to the ridge to the final two pulleys before the rope comes back down for the final time to loop around the fifth and sixth pulleys on the lighting module itself, where eventually, the rope goes back up to the end of the Skylight and get tied off. This gives a pulley ratio of Six to One so if the lighting module weighs 60kg, which is likely with all the metalwork, the wooden board and the finishing plasterboard glued on the underside, with all the lamp units, seasonal decorations etc. then the weight on the rope back at the winch, will be only 10kg approximately. We bought 3mm thin rope, designed for parachutes and it has a breaking strain of nearly 200kg so it should be quite safe for years and years!
    Center Light conduits start here

    Center Light conduits start here

    Power runs up to center

    Power runs up to center

    and lift rope runs to the end

    and lift rope runs to the end



    We will build the mobile lighting module later on when we have finished filling in the roof rafters and got them all covered up.

  • All Remaining ‘Seconds’ Insulation is Now Hiding into the Roof Rafters Above Great Room

    The final load of our third hand rubbish pieces of hard PU foam boards have been processed and most of it is now stuffed and glued into the roof rafters above the Great Room.
    In the end, we had plenty to do the job, with most of the rafters now having well over 250mm thick of PU insulating material inserted.
    Great Room Foam insulation placed (1)

    Great Room Foam insulation placed (1)

    Great Room Foam insulation placed (2)

    Great Room Foam insulation placed (2)

    Great Room Foam insulation placed (3)

    Great Room Foam insulation placed (3)

    Great Room Foam insulation placed (4)

    Great Room Foam insulation placed (4)



    We had only a pile of thin pieces and trimmings to act as evidence that we had any of this type of building material.

    The next job will be to insert the final layer of glass wool to act as a fire break against the unlikely occurrence of a fire, to prevent it reaching our plastic PU foam boards.
    This will be covered up with the usual DPM plastic membrane to provide a vapour barrier, and this in turn will be protected by 11mm OSB wooden sheets.

    But, first, we will go right around the whole room and make sure that all our electrical conduits are installed etc. and we will report on that in another blog report!

  • Creating a ‘Dormer’ for the Great Room

    We decided to add a ‘feature’ to the Great Room by exposing the rafters where they run in front of the Conservatory Extension Gable wall. We are going to continue the room walls up to the roof of the Conservatory extension and keep the roof exposed on the inside. This will form a ‘Dormer’ niche, this allows viewing of the rafter size and illustrates the depth of the main roof.

    To this end we insulated the external wall to about 200mm depth

    Conservatory gable with Foam insulation installed

    Conservatory gable with Foam insulation installed

    Then framed the extension of the wall up to the roof. We then need to extend the roof surface of the extension the inside of the main roof. We was a little tricky because there was not much depth to align thing with so we fixed a strip of Osb down the roof to get an alignment then fitted noggins between the rafters.

    Framing Dormer intersection (1)

    Framing Dormer intersection (1)

    The noggins needed to have a complicated compound cuts to get them to align correctly which took quite a lot of ‘trial & error’! We finally got them cut and glued in place.

    Framing Dormer intersection (2)

    Framing Dormer intersection (2)

    Framing Dormer intersection (3)

    Framing Dormer intersection (3)

    Dormer Framed

    Dormer Framed


    We initially made the 3 sections each side of the centre then looking at it decided we had to make the last sections as well.

  • Extended the Ventilation Ducting for the Conservatory

    We spent this week building and constructing the rest of the ventilation ducting that connect the Conservatory to our Air Con system. We had built the lower half that went across the Great Room, underneath the flooring and then up inside the wall structure between the window and the door facing the Conservatory. See  Conservatory Air Duct Built Inside Wall for more details on the work we did two years ago.
    Just the duct from below

    Just the duct from below


    The internal gable wall that separates the Conservatory from the Great Room goes up 14feet up (about 4¼ metres) above the ground floor and now that we got our temporary platform built, we could gain access at last. The first job was to put a layer of 100mm thick PU foam boards all across the back of the cement boards and followed by a layer of smooth aluminium coated 25mm thick PU sheets. This forms the back surface of the air ducting we are going to make. We then drilled a small 5mm hole on either side of the central vertical post, keeping well clear of it so we can then cut a large 180mm (about 7inches) hole on both sides. This hole then had a short length of some left-over twin-walled plastic pipe inserted into it. Everything was glued into place and left overnight to set.
    Insulate wall and insert two inlet ducts

    Insulate wall and insert two inlet ducts


    Then, the next job was to build up the two left and right vertical sides of the air ducting, using more of our 25mm smooth aluminium coated foam board, connecting from the existing ducting coming up from below, and widening it out so both holes can be encapsulated within the ducting. We shaped the final part at the top of the two sides so that we can bend the lid around a quarter circle to help guide the air flow more smoothly when it is sucking the air out of the Conservatory.
    Ducts trimmed & Side walls built

    Ducts trimmed & Side walls built


    Then, the final fourth side was created, the lid in front. As previously mentioned, the lid had the foam sliced at regular lines across the sheet and this allowed the board to ‘bend’ around the curve. The whole thing was then glued into place and aluminium metal tape stuck over all the joints, to make sure that we are air tight and where possible, the joints are nice and smooth so that the air won’t catch any sharp edges.
    Duct covered

    Duct covered


    Eventually, we will cut out the large holes through the cement boards when we have built the Conservatory and put on a couple of neat unintrusive air grills that will allow the passage of lots of air with minimal noise.

    We want to be able to keep the Conservatory cool and comfortable, even during very hot sunny days, hence we have done this very large capacity ducting, equivalent to four 100mm diameter pipes.

  • Taking Measurements and Getting Quotes for our Triple Glazing Windows in Skylight

    We spent the last three days measuring all our Skylight windows so that we can send off for quotations for creating triple glazing units. Now that we have built our new working platform, it meant that we could get the whole job done in one go without interruptions.
    We decided that we would use lots of thin insulation boards that we had left-over and proceeded to cut a ‘template’ for each individual window in turn. We found some slightly thicker boards, measuring 40mm thick and also very flat as well, so we could test to how easy, or difficult, it was in moving the template into place, avoiding the various obstacles like the steel cross ties etc.
    The proposed triple glazing units are currently selected to be using 4mm thick glass panes with 16mm cavities which makes an overall 44mm in depth. Our 40mm template is a good size to test the installation of the real thing later on, the heaviest glazing unit being at around 40kg each.
    Happily, we can report that all 22 windows passed this particular test with flying colours!
    Another reason for using a thick foam board, is to also find out to how ‘flat’ our wooden framework is up there in our Skylight that we built all those years ago. The PU foam material is quite stiff and we can detect whether the pseudo glazing unit template sits rock steady or wiggles.
    Generally speaking, the majority of each window hole was pretty damn close to being flat and we will be able to get away in using only 3mm or 5mm thick sticky foam tape for the first stage of sealing the units into place. Only one window had a serious wobble, caused by a break in our framing timber. We will have to do some tidy up of the joint and recondition it so it is back to the same original coatings of fibre glass resin.
    After the 40mm foam was close to the right size (fits with a little ‘slop’), we made a copy onto 20mm foam and measured and labelled it and inserted it into the skylight. It was quite slow in getting each window done, we didn’t want to rush it as it will cost many £1000s for the windows, especially the triangular ones, four of them at each end of the Skylight.

    Each template is numbered & measured

    Each template is numbered & measured

    The list of our windows breaks down into these quantity and approximate sizes:

    • Great Room: 4 triangles measuring about 1150mm high by 1100mm wide and 2 rectangular – 1120mm high by 1190mm wide
    • Sitting Room: 5 rectangular – 1120mm high by 966mm wide
    • Stairs/ Hall: 2 rectangular – 1150mm high by 750mm wide (one of these is a special shape!)
    • Study: 2 rectangular – 1145mm high by 1066mm wide
    • Work Room: 3 rectangular – 1145mm high by 996mm wide 4 triangular ? about 1140mm high by 1110mm wide

    Skylight glazing

    Skylight glazing

    To measure the triangular templates we created a tool from aluminium bars which could hold against all 3 sides and measure the correct size of each edge (the foam is too soft/crumpled to measure directly)

    The Triangle Templates

    The Triangle Templates

    Measuring Triangles 1

    Measuring Triangles 1

    Measuring Triangles 2

    Measuring Triangles 2


    We have sent a request for a quote off to our local manufacturer, based in Norwich. We wait to see what they can do.

    We have requested that the outer pane of glass is treated with the infra-red reflective and absorbing treatment so we can reduce the sheer amount of heat that we get during the Summer months! Hopefully, it won’t be too expensive. We will have to have safety glass in one way or another but we may be able to have a lowest pane to be laminated and the other two higher panes can be ordinary glass, to save money of not having it made with toughened glass. We now wait and see ! This expenditure will be the last major outlay for the basic building structure and materials.

  • Built a Temporary Working Platform

    We spent the last three days in building a temporary working platform, right across the Great Room so we can access the rafters and get them filled up with insulation, cover them up but also gain access to the entire Skylight so we can measure and order the triple glazing units while we have this platform up. We will also put up the finishing surface, the Fermacell “plasterboard” sheets and paint it all brilliant white, including in and around the Skylight that is over the Great Room too. We want to design and build a lighting panel that will have the capability of being lowered for maintenance, adds or remove lights etc as well.
    All this is difficult to do without this temporary platform so we proceeded by putting up our green laser line generator and then screw up a ring of CLS timber support rails around the edges of the room, so that we can then put a series of nine joists, separated by exactly 4feet, or 1220mm. We also put on an extra cross beam positioned at the end of the Gallery so that we can support these joist that lies beyond the Gallery. Then, we created a couple dozens of legs, along with a footpad to spread the load from the leg, and got them located every 4feet along each joist too. We wanted to make sure that our platform is good and strong and as sturdy as possible because we will be working with heavy pieces of equipment like a board lifter.
    A forrest of legs 1

    A forrest of legs 1

    A forrest of legs 2

    A forrest of legs 2

    A forrest of legs 3

    A forrest of legs 3



    Next, we now brought up a whole load of 18mm thick OSB boards from our store room (Bedroom Two!) and shoved them one at a time, up onto the framework. We started next to the end of the Gallery and put in five whole sheets, in the eight foot direction, starting from the “A” wall and almost reaching the “O” wall, with only a few inches short. This shows that our Great Room is five sheets of eight feet each, a total of forty feet!
    We carefully screwed plenty of screws to fix all the edges and for the second row, we sliced up an old sheet in half so we could offset the whole sheets to overlap half way. and finally, we put in a third row of another five sheets and again, there is only a small gap to the long “P” wall.
    The gaps left and right of the Gallery were then filled in. the Kitchen side had a 1900mm board cut and fixed in, while the larger other side had two more whole sheets put in. This left a 240mm gap which we found lots of left-over pieces where we could slice them down and fit them into this gap.
    Great Room 'First Floor' 1

    Great Room ‘First Floor’ 1

    Great Room 'First Floor' 2

    Great Room ‘First Floor’ 2

    Great Room 'First Floor' 3

    Great Room ‘First Floor’ 3



    We now have an accessible working level, connected to the First Floor, with a small six inch step down (it makes it easier to get at the bottoms of the rafters) and we can get on in doing the last section of the roof to get populated with insulation etc. And, by the way, the width of the room is four whole boards plus a bit, so that is four times 4feet which is 16feet!! This is what is called a large space, in fact, it’s a Great Room !!
    An because everything is screwed in place all the wood and OSB can be used for building the First floor walls later on so nothing will be wasted!