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Today, we resumed our task of nailing up the 10mm thick cement boards onto our External Wall framework.

After bringing all the tools out for this operation, namely, compressed air work tank, nail gun, glue gun, battery circular saw, cold chisel, two routers, electric cable, ruler, spirit level and several other bits and pieces, plus a heap of nails and a clutter of glue tubes too! We went off to load 10 more sheets on our large trolley and wheeled the stack around to the space between the Garage, Swimming Lane and the corner of the house. here we put another one of our portable table to keep the tools handy nearby for the cutting the tongue and grooves edges.

We proceeded to finish off the last section on wall “H”, turning the corner to run along wall “I”, “J” ..

And then along wall “K” which is a longer stretch going past Bedroom 2 and running parallel with the swimming lane and finally turning to do wall “L”.

You may have noticed that each of the corners has overlapping sticking out boards and this is deliberate as we will trim off the overlap later and make a neat sharp corner.

On Monday, we will continue on wall “M” (Bedroom 1), around onto wall “N”, wall “O” and wall “P” which are all part of the Great Room. But first, we must adjust the verticality of wall “N” and “O” before we nail up the cement boards, or we will be in trouble – smile!

 Today sees the start of the cement board skin being mounted on our External Wall framework. But first, we did some measurements of all the corners and also transferred the ground height reference point to inside the house .

As the photo shows, we first duplicated the Ground Reference point that we have on the Garage wall and put another one on our Steel Legs (specifically Leg number 5. we nearly forgot to do this task before we completely blocked the laser beam by having our new External Wall assembled with its skin! So this morning, we cut two pieces of 11mm plywood to exactly 160mm tall and 130mm wide and positioned the pair on the Steel Leg so they are on either side of the leg and the top edges are exactly at the Ground Reference mark – 1 metre above Ground Zero and or the level of our floor inside the house and all the footpath and doorways etc. We glued the plywood pieces in place and clamped on while it dries.

Then, we went around measuring the height between the bottom-plate to the top-plate at all 14 corners and wrote down on our plans so we will be ready to cut and slide into place those complex composite Corner Legs. We also went around and seeing where we needed extra posts to support the cement boards and only 2 extra ones were cut to size and glued into place on wall “E” and wall “H”.

After that, we double checked the spacing between the Wall Legs at places where the Top-Plate has joints in it and making sure the spacing was 612mm between centres of the two legs either side of the joint. We adjusted several of these around the perimeter.

Finally before lunch, we wanted to see how vertical  the wall we are going to start putting the cement boards on, so using the spirit level, we looked at all the legs along wall “H” (the one nearest the Garage) and the wall only needed a slight amount of pull to straighten it up. We did this by employing our canvas strap ratchet device and anchored one end at the end of our swimming lane where we have some sticking up steel re-bars and the other end tied on to the top of the nearest Leg. This wall only needed an adjustment of about 10mm pulled towards the swimming lane.

After lunch, it was the long preparation job of setting up the two router machines, one with the Tongue cutter and the 2nd machine set up with the Groove cutter. We discovered that it makes it so much, much better joints if we had two machines and we cut the boards on the same side with the two machines, to produce either the tongue or the groove. It  is expected that many of the manufactured building material have some variations in the thickness as we indeed discovered  with our cement boards today!

So starting at the beginning of wall “H” at the corner with wall “E” (near the Loke and Driveway), we started the whole process of mounting the 10mm thick cement boards to form the skin, by first cutting a tongue along one of the long edges, and then slicing off specific lengths to go from the corner to the first window, then covering the small gap between that window and the back door (all part of the Utility Room). we left a good overlap of 75mm on both the windows and doors so we can assemble the window and door inner framework later on and glue and nail them on the back of the sticking out cement boards. All our cement boards are being glued and nailed (the nails are hot-dipped zinc galvanised, ring-shanked (has serrations on it) and coated in wood glue for maximum long life proof against rust and good stable grip in the wood)

We managed to get as far as the 2nd window along wall “H” (belonging to Bedroom 3) before it was “knock off” time! There was a lot of experiment and learning what and how to do the various steps (the routing of the edges on the cement boards, gluing, nailing etc.)

But we are learning quickly and will be able to speed up over the next day or so.

Tomorrow, we will continue to mount the 1st line of the 4foot high cement boards right around the building, before we do the 2nd line and then finally the tiny 3rd line right at the top of the External Wall!

We started the day in lovely hot sunshine .. but only for about 2 hours this morning before it got cloudy and chilly. We continued working on assembling and building up the External Wall, finishing off wall “P” from yesterday, and then turning the corner to go along the front section and completed wall “A”.

We did a total of 29 Legs in all. Tomorrow, we do the Front Extension, wall “B”, “C” and “D” and finish off at wall “E”, just another 19 Legs to complete the full circuit of our External Wall!

In a very misty like sprinkle of rain, we started the new week by continuing with the erection of the External Wall, doing wall “M”, wall “N” and wall “O”, all these sections going along the back of the house, that is 17 Legs all glued and nailed.

It is the same old procedures of adjusting the height of each Leg, then gluing and nailing them into place and finally the top-plate positioned and nailed into place on top.

We then got half way along wall “P”, this being the longest stretch of wall on the left side of the house and the Great Room, having adjusted 8 Legs out of the 16 needed to be done.

Tomorrow, we will finish wall “P” and continue around onto wall “A” going along the front of the house.

P.S. Here is a diagram of the Walls with labels.

 

It was a long 9 hour day minus a 45 minutes lunch break and also a little “tea” break too! We continued with the assembling of the External Wall using our Leg elements. We finished off adjusting the final 4 Legs on wall “I” we left from yesterday, and then brought out the compressed air nail gun and tubes of the special waterproof glue, to fix each Leg into place along wall “H” and “I”, a total of 20 Legs.

Then we put on the Top-Plate pieces of timber on top of the legs and anchoring at the corner with temporary screws to make the whole wall so much more solid and stable.

We then resumed adjusting more Legs on the next section, wall “J”, another 4 Legs, using the chop saw and guillotine

And nailing and gluing those in place, plus the top-plate too.

We progressed around onto the next wall section “K” which was a longer stretch with a window in it, a total of 9 Legs.

And finally, we completed wall “L”, another 5 Legs, getting half way along the back of the house next to the swimming lane.

A grand total of 38 Legs we installed today! Only 65 Legs to go! Phew!

With a slightly shortened work day, we started assembly, adjusting and building the External Wall of our house at last!

The first job was to adjust each and every Leg so that it is vertical as possible. We did this by shortening the inner post (the 63mm CLS going down to the concrete) using our little circular saw and a super sharp guillotine to chop and slice little bits off the end.

The basic operation was to put the Leg in place, then use our accurate digital spirit level to find out how much deviation there was off vertical using the measurement mode of millimetres off vertical per metre of height. We took this figure and divided this by 3 which tells us how much wood we needed to slice off the bottom of the inner post. It is a simple mathematical calculation of angles and height. We verified this was true with our first Leg!! So repeating this process between measuring the angle and slicing little bits off, including using a piece of timber with sandpaper stuck on it to rub the slots down a bit too, we arrived with a Leg which is vertical and solidly sitting on both the outer concrete wall and the inner concrete floor.

So we decided to begin on wall “H”, the one nearest the Garage that has the “back” door in the Utility room and going pass Bedroom 3. This had 12 Legs to adjust for this wall and then we turned the corner onto wall “I” at the back of the house near the start of the swimming lane. This wall has 7 legs in it and we did 3 of them before we stopped for the day early.

We had to remember that the two windows and one door in wall “H” needed left-handed Legs (the plywood webbing is on the other side of the two posts) and on wall “I” had one left-handed Leg as well. Also, wall “H” is the major support for holding the First Floor Joists as they runs side to side down the length of our building. Wall “I” has ordinary Legs that only needs to provide support for the upper floor boards themselves.

Tomorrow, we will do the other 4 Legs of wall “I” and then go back to the beginning and actually glue and nail each Leg into place and install the top-plates (the front horizontal rail, made of the 89mm CLS pieces and the inner rail made of the 63mm pieces). This will anchor and bind all the Legs together along wall “H” and wall “I” around the corner. Having this right angled turn will provide a very strong bracing force to keep the section of the walls solid and unmoving. We are Getting There at Last!

Today, we started off in the workshop to build the combined Top-Plate for Wall “E” which has another extended beam coming out to support the porch we got hanging over our back door beside our Garage. It Is made of 3 layers, just like the front door porch, but much longer as wall “E” is 4 metres long.

While the glue was drying, we went outside, still working in a chilly wind, using our Router to cut extra slots in both the 89mm timber pieces and the 63mm timber pieces, for all our doorways and internal corners that has extra Legs. We also discovered and corrected several misaligned slots on the 63mm bottom-plate that is down on the concrete floor.

After lunch, we went around sorting and cutting another layer of the flat horizontal timber pieces that forms the Top-Plate to sit on top of the Legs. It is the 2nd layer to overlap and reinforces the joints in the first layer. Both layers are glued and nailed together to form one continuous solid framework to hold and lock all the Leg Elements that forms our External Wall structure.

We did the 89mm CLS pieces that goes on the outer post of the Leg and then the 63mm CLS timber pieces for the inner posts.

One little job we did afterwards, was to reduce the width of our ramp we got positioned beside the back door (nearest the Garage) so when the Wall Legs are installed, we still can fit the ramp in place!

Now back in the workshop, we constructed a plump-bob gadget to hook over the outer Leg so we can get a good accuracy in making all the Legs as vertical as possible.

But it was interesting to discover that our best spirit level (a digital £75 device) is actually as good as our plumb-bob gadget! It says on the label that the spirit vials are 0.5mm accurate in every metre. Which we never truly appreciated before so we now can use our spirit level instead – after all that work! Grin!

Tomorrow, we will start the process of adjusting each Leg one by one to get them vertical before we glue and nail them into place, just in case we discover something odd and have to make some adjustments etc.