• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Mike's ext'n & renovation (solar panels)

It's going to be slated, as the pitch is 22-1/2 degrees. This was a difficult extension to squeeze in under the windows and still be wide enough, which is why you see steps in the levels of the plates, and why the "porch" does two steps up with the plates, to make it tall enough to get a door in. I hope to get the slates today.
 
For those of you still following along, my next job was to do the lead in the valleys. This is Code 4 lead, cut to 1.5m lengths, folded and dressed into place, copper clout nails at the top only to hold it:

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I then slated the little "porch" roof, with the corners of the slate cut off roughly into the valley:

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.......before pinging a chalk line and doing the final cut with the grinder (with a board underneath to protect the lead):

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Note the piece of 3x2 temporarily screwed to the gable to give me the overhang I wanted. The reason for doing the "porch" first was so I could do the ridge with relatively easy access. It would be much more difficult once the main roof was slated. As always with ridging with hand-made tiles, lay out the tiles on the ground first, and get the best junctions you can (there is quite a lot of variation in the tiles, so they don't all meet nicely):

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Then I could get on with the main roof:

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I'll have to put the rooflights in before I can get much further.
 
Andyp":2m0efkdw said:
Mike G":2m0efkdw said:
For those of you still following along,
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Rest assured Mike, there are plenty of us watching with interest.
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:text-+1: and enjoying seeing so much work done so well.
 
With interest alright, I have absolutely no doubt you know where all the tiles are going to go Mike but starting tiling at one end how do you ensure you aren’t going to have a tiny bit of tile when you get to the L/H end?
 
Gauging the tiles is critical. I spent quite a while measuring and re-measuring, and working things out.....and am working on 19.5 slate widths across the roof, with about 1+mm gap between. I need to gain 25mm across the roof to avoid any cut slates in the width. The thing is, it is only the top 4 or 5 courses which go all across the roof, with the "porch" and the rooflights breaking up the rest of the roof into smaller pieces, but as everything must line up all the way up I have to get it right from the bottom.
 
Getting the slates on really starts to transform it. What are they Mike, spanish, brazillian, reclaimed?

Mark
 
The slates have been a real saga, Mark. They're Spanish (I think), but they're not what I ordered, or their promised replacement when the first order went out of stock. I don't actually know what grade of slate was eventually delivered. The difference between various grades of slate is about the amount of variation in thickness, with cheaper slates needing more sorting. You're supposed to sort into thin, medium and thick piles and use thick slates at the bottom of the roof, medium in the middle and thin at the top. But unless you sort the entire pallet of 600 slates before you start, you can't possibly do that, so this roof has seen more offering-up-and-rejecting than I'd like.
 
Yeah, they would. But roofers have 2 or 3 people working at the same time, so one or two on the roof, and one or two fetching, carrying, and sorting. The guys actually laying the slates wouldn't have to do any sorting themselves.
 
I had to do exactly that when I roofed the workshop at my previous house. They were Spanish and as you say a right pain but necessary to prevent any slate sitting up from the course below. Looks like give done a good job though
Mark
 
It took quite a while to fit the first Velux. I don't think I've ever done one in a slate roof before now, and there was a "new generation" of flashing kit and connections to the timber frame with which I was completely unfamiliar. However, it's a brilliantly designed and well made item, so it worked out well:

RHxYLVR.png

The rest of the roof, and the second Velux, were much quicker:

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It's nice having the scaffolding out of the way. I patinated all of the lead before getting the scaffold down, and finally washed everything down with a hose, as there was dust everywhere:

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Talking of lead......if you go back to the early photos of this sunroom you'll see that the flashing at the top of the roof was there long before the roof was built. I fitted it 4 or 5 years ago when we rendered the house (a bit of a gamble as we didn't then have planning permission for a sunroom), before I had even done any drawings of the sunroom. On the right hand side it was inch-perfect. On the left, I had to extend it by 3 or 4 inches, which was annoying, but surprisingly easy.

And still on lead........anyone who has worked on a roof knows why a valley is a minimum of 125mm wide. For those of you who haven't, anyone care to hazard a guess?
 
Mike G":4d4u0p6u said:
And still on lead........anyone who has worked on a roof knows why a valley is a minimum of 125mm wide. For those of you who haven't, anyone care to hazard a guess?
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Flow of the water running down will jump the valley, go under the other side if any narrower?
 
TrimTheKing":3scly3xn said:
...Flow of the water running down will jump the valley, go under the other side if any narrower?
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No, that's not it (although that is a hazard of valleys, and why good workmanship is important).
 
Thanks Jim, Al.

They're cleaned from the inside, Bob. They're "side swing" rather than "side hung", so you can easily reach all of the glass from within.
 
Mike G":lzo4v4sb said:
Thanks Jim, Al.

They're cleaned from the inside, Bob. They're "side swing" rather than "side hung", so you can easily reach all of the glass from within.
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Is that the type where you can slide the pivot axis along the frame to access the outside. I've seen them but not known what they are called.
I need to specify some replacement windows soon, majority of which will not be readily accessible from the outside.

Bob
 
They're not easy to photograph. This is the best I could manage:

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If you ask for "side swing casements", rather than "side hung casements", or show them these photos, any joinery manufacturer will know what you're after.
 
Back on lead. Here is the flashing below the oak frame, which has been in place without patination oil for about 10 months:

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A quick brush with a stiff brush, and then a good wipe down with the patination oil, and this is what it looks like now:

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If the tanin stains don't wash off the bricks through the winter I'll clean it up with brick acid in the spring.
 
Mike

This is no way critical, but why did you decide on slate, when the house is pantiles (Scottish terminology, may not be technically correct)?

And why didn’t you buy a bigger house to start with. (You know the pile of rubble I live in).

Oh, yes, Don Topley mentioned you the other day on the radio. Your fame spreads far and wide.
 
We've already got a slate roof on the lean-to to the left of the sunroom, viewed from the back garden. Slate and plain tiles are often mixed around here.

The choice of slate was entirely dictated by the windows above, which forced the roof to be as fleet as possible. Slate works down to a 22.5 degree pitch, whereas plain tiles (as per the main roof of the house) and pantiles both have a minimum of 35 degrees. It's been a really tricky bit of geometry to get the roof to work, the wall plate low enough, and yet still be able to get a door in......which is why the "porch" plates sit above the the main wall plates, and the door head lintel sits above those.

We bought this place entirely because we both needed a project. My wife has created a beautiful garden from scratch, and I have been gainfully occupied on the house and outbuildings for 7 or 8 years. We could easily have bought a bigger house and done little or nothing, but the point was to have years and years of work to do.

Who on earth lets Topley anywhere near a microphone?
 
How many years? :)
I note the first post in the thread was September 2014.

I, for one, have enjoyed the ride.

As for cleaning awkward windows. They have an answer on this side of channel……..inwards opening. But that would require a radical redesign placing the frames on the inside of the reveal which is a PITA for furniture placement.
 
Mike G":y627kbhz said:
Who on earth lets Topley anywhere near a microphone?
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To answer your last question first, BBC Essex. You know, sometimes on the BBC they put on live streams from county grounds, which I like to have on in the background. Essentially, he was handed a photo’ of an Essex team and ID’d you more or less first up. He wasn't that complimentary about your appearance.

Fully understand about the slates now. Should have known that if my practice wasn’t entirely commercial, and btw I would have just suggested crinkly tin.

Keep up the good work.
 
Tiresias":2nezvqc8 said:
........He wasn't that complimentary about your appearance......
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He weighs somewhere in the region of 18 stone these days. He shouldn't get to comment on people's appearance, given his lack of a sense of irony.
 
This will be a beautiful place to sit in the sun Mike and admire your craftsmanship remembering any little errors or challenges along the way. :)
 
That's always the way, Dan, isn't it. My cock-ups will be the first thing I see every single time I go in that room for the next 20 years.....
 
Mike G":tepnyatb said:
If the tanin stains don't wash off the bricks through the winter I'll clean it up with brick acid in the spring.
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Mike have you tried jet washing the tanins off the bricks?

Mark
 
No, I've not. Whatever I try it won't happen until the spring, when the last of the tanins should have come out of the oak, and the winter will have had a chance to clean the bricks a bit without my help.
 
Ok but you can accelerate the tannins coming out by jet washing the oak and then washing it straight off the brickwork as well. Will reduce any more tannins making the brickwork worse

Mark
 
Tiresias":3qcq9lcm said:
Oh, yes, Don Topley mentioned you the other day on the radio. Your fame spreads far and wide.
Click to expand...

First time I’d ever heard this name was in this thread, then I just pick up my phone to see this notification…

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Quick Google suggests Reece is son of Don. Clearly the sporting ability runs in the family given Uncle Peter was also a player.
 
The sun room is looking very smart and I really enjoy following this thread. The “porch” is a great way of overcoming the pitch issue to give height for the doorway.

What does it do for the level of the light in the two rooms behind? The previous owners of our house put an extension on the back of the kitchen, which has made the room quite dark.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Obviously it makes a difference, Mark, but both the room have windows on two walls (I think every room in the house other than the bathrooms have that), so are very light. The reason for the rooflights in the sunroom roof is to bring a little more light to the glass doors to both the lounge and the kitchen.
 
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