Roselea

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  • Workshop Cleared and Prepared for the Steel Fabrication!

    This afternoon, we continued with the tidying up operation, while we waited for the steel pieces to be delivered, by tackling the garage workshop!

    We took a load of rubbish cut-off strips from under the saw table, plus some long left over timber pieces from yesterday’s sorting of wood rack and transported them down to the burn pile and some of the nicer pieces (inch by 3inch rough sawn 8 feet piece of timber) were put into the timber storage area under cover in the swimming lane.

    We then managed to get the concrete “stools” out of the plastic trugs, being made way back when we had the foundation strips poured – we had excess concrete and filled 4 trugs with the concrete and today, we finally managed to release the stools!

    Then we removed the 2nd work table (which was a sheet of MDF sheet 1inch thick, on top of our old dining table!) and moved over the saw table further into the middle of the garage, to make room for bringing in the steel pieces when we want to work on each piece.

    The whole workshop got a bit of a sweep on the floor too – smile!

    We now await for the arrival of our steel pieces tomorrow (Wednesday)!

  • Outside Wood Rack Completely Sorted!

    After finishing the roof repair, we got down to sorting out the external wood rack we got under the overhanging roof, alongside our front door.

    Everything was pulled off, lots of jumbled pieces of wood timber, some plastic pipes, metal tube and more small pieces of OSB boards.

    We decided that anything smaller than 6 inches in length and odd sizes in width, can be thrown away to the bonfire pile. We got loads of short pieces already in the garage under the internal wood rack so we didn’t need this collection outside as well!! We ended up with the bottom shelf containing rough sawn planks of 2inch by 6inch, 2inch by 4inch and 2inch square of various lengths from 3 feet, up to 16feet long!!

    Then, the 2nd shelf up now contains a collection of more long lengths of timber but much smaller batten size pieces like 2inch by 1inch and two fresh piles of 38mm by 25mm and 25mm by 19mm batten, both being 5.1 metres long.

    The 3rd shelf contains more finished pieces of wood strips, planed timber, plywood strips and more like that.

    The remaining shelves are mostly empty now ready for the new steel pieces to be stored on those shelves while we work on preparing the steel pieces in the garage.

    All the rubbish was put in a wheelbarrow and taken over to the burn pile and we finished completely in the dark very late in the evening!!

  • Overhanging Roof Panel and Felt Repair

     Today, we tackled a bigger problem with the overhanging roof section along the front of the temporary living quarters, especially over our front door! The wooden sheets that makes up the roofing structure has disintegrated in two particular sections. One larger one over the aforementioned front door overhang, and a much smaller section half way along the roof line. It is another example of the original roofing felt failing under the onslaught of the sun and allowing the water to get in and rot the wood underneath.

    We had to saw away a large section to get back to reasonable sound quality wood and replace it with a new fresh piece of a 11mm OSB board. That was a piece measuring 4 feet wide by 20 inches deep. The smaller section was only 2 feet wide by a foot deep.

    Then, we replaced the disintegrated roof felt on the front edge with fresh stuff, sliding it under the next strip up the roof and lining it up so it is just hanging over the guttering.

    Temp-Living-Repair-repair-and-refelt-front-overhang

    Temp-Living-Repair-repair-and-refelt-front-overhang

    We then used 3mm wire to make little clips to fold over the trailing edge of the felt and anchoring it down to stop it flapping in any winds. We nailed the overlapping joint as usual, but the wood is wet and soft so we had to use the wire clips to secure the trailing edge, and we hope it will stay put! We may have to screw down short but regular batten strips (screwing into the chunky facia board) if we find the metal clips are not holding well enough.

  • Roofing Felt Repair

    This afternoon, we went along the temporary living building and repaired the section of roof adjoining the top of the wall, at the back nearest the fence. It is the side that faces the afternoon sun all year around and so the roofing felt has got thin and fragile. We had made minor patches to fill holes but this time, in strong winds, it ripped a rather larger section. So we bought a new roll of standard shed roofing felt, the cheapest going and cut a strip off to slide under the roof’s felt, around the corner, down the wall and overlapping the felt still hanging further down the wall.

    Temp-Living-Repair-renew-felt-at-rear

    Temp-Living-Repair-renew-felt-at-rear

    We nailed along the overlapped joint on both the wall and on the roof too. The felt still on the wall is the original stuff we put up way back in 2003 or so and it is looking ok! Because likely, it has been in the shadow of the fence most of it life and not greatly affected by the power of the sun. We only want it to last the stated 5 years this time!!

  • Levelling Out Section Beside Loke

    Today we cleared and flattened the strip of ground alongside the Loke from our driveway, all the way to the hedge and water meter.

    Loke-side-flattened

    Loke-side-flattened

    We scraped the whole section between the house and  the Loke, making sure we still had a berm beside the Loke to keep out the rainwater running down the Loke.

    It is now approximately flat, ready for all our building materials to be unloaded from the Loke, like the first item to be delivered is the steel.

  • Drained Rainwater Away off the Floor Slab

    This afternoon, we got out our submersible pump and connected up with some 32mm bore plastic pipe to pump the rainwater that has collected in our house, from the last couple of days of rain showers we had.

    Water-Water-everywhere

    Water-Water-everywhere

    We estimated about 4500 litres of rainwater has fallen, forming a complete “lake” across the whole Floor Slab. We had about 15mm to 20mm of rain in this period of 3 days and the area of the Floor Slab is about 260 square metres which means that for every single millimetre of rainwater falling out of the sky, we would have collected 260litres of water. Since we had about 15mm to 20mm (according to the rain gauge), this means we had collected approximately 15mm x 260 litre per mm  = 3900 litres .. to .. 20mm x 260 litre per mm = 5200 litres – wow!

    We spent about 2 hours pumping the water out, mostly from the 2nd sump point near the Great Room where the “lake” seems to be deeper and more connected to the rest of the Floor Slab. Initially, we had 3 lengths of output pipe connected together so we could reach the downpipe directly connected to the underground rain soakaway module and we measured the time it took to fill a 3 gallon builder’s bucket (which came out at 20 seconds). This is about 40 litres per minute. Then, when we moved up to the 2nd sump point, we had to drain the output water from the pump straight into the swimming lane itself and this meant that we didn’t need the middle section of pipe (which is a corrugated air tube) and so we connected the 32mm smooth bore pipe directly to the short fat pipe off the pump and .. o boy .. it took only 15 seconds to fill our bucket up! This translated to an increased rate of 55 litres per minute!

  • Steel Ordered!

     It was a fairly easy and quick decision to place our order for the Steel pieces with the one company that was pretty good on the price (not the cheapest but also nowhere the most expensive either!) but won on the grounds of having a crane on-board their transport. It is a local small business called Standley Steel in Wymondham and we already have a good rapport with them! We expect that the delivery will be early next week.

    So, to be ready for that event, we need to get the area beside the Loke levelled out and have blocks of wood and pallets ready .. and currently it is raining hard – Grin!

  • Last Stretch of Pipework Completed

     We finished off the installation of the pipes (running around the whole perimeter of the house) that [will] collect the rain water off the roof.

    End-of-Rainwater-ring

    End-of-Rainwater-ring

    The last stretch is along behind Bedroom 2 and in the corner with Bedroom 3 and towards the end of the Swimming Lane. We put in the 8th and final down pipe spur in that corner of the building and it is now all finished, ready for the Filtration Module which will sit at the end of the swimming lane, we will assemble it later on when we have the roof constructed.

  • Steel Questions, Shopping List and Quotes

     The Steel requirement for the skylight frame has been sorted out into a shopping list and sent off to half a dozen different local suppliers in Norfolk, and beyond. We are getting Quotes from most of the suppliers and they are all running in around the £2300 mark but for one major difference, only one (so far) has said that their transport has a built-in crane, which would make it so much easier to unload the 3 tons of steel pieces we need!

    But, we discovered a situation regarding the Building Regulation and fabrication of steelwork, where in certain circumstances, one needs to show a certificate (or two) proving that the quality of workmanship and grade of steel meets the proper European Standard (as of November 2014). We made enquiries with our local building inspector and after leaving someone to look into this matter, and waiting a few hours, and a final telephone conversation answering last minute questions, they agreed that our design is neat and simple and well within our remit to fabricate and assemble the Steel framework  ourselves. Phew thanks goodness for that!

    We are now just waiting for one more final quote to come in and then we will probably order from the supplier that has the crane on their vehicle.

    In the meantime, we are tidying up along the Loke side, levelling up the ground so we will have a landing area for the delivery of the steel bits and pieces, as well as other material we will need later on.

  • Clearing Away Left Overs of Floor Slab Formation

     These last few days, we have been clearing and tidying up the left overs bits and pieces created from the formation of the Floor Slab a week ago. All the spillage of excess concrete around the outside of the Perimeter Wall is now all picked up and moved inside ready for collection. Also all the concrete blocks are loose and also ready for collection. The rain keeps coming and going and our Floor Slab has a constant thin layer of rainwater all over, which actually helps with the curing process so we are not in a hurry to drain the water away.

    We also are doing other tasks too like sorting out the remainder of the roof’s rainwater guttering pipework, plus also the process of ordering the steelwork as well.