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

[9fingers]

I've just been looking back at page one and noticed that the original roof has the chimney stack and yet the new fireplace is in the extension. I presume you have modified the design a little.

Your spelling of "rooves" has always jarred with me but on investigation I see that it is in the OED as valid so I'll just have to get used to it!

I'll be interested to see how you are doing the join between old and new pitched roof section.

Cheers

Bob

 

[Mike G]

I've just been looking back at page one and noticed that the original roof has the chimney stack and yet the new fireplace is in the extension. I presume you have modified the design a little.

Your spelling of "rooves" has always jarred with me but on investigation I see that it is in the OED as valid so I'll just have to get used to it!

I'll be interested to see how you are doing the join between old and new pitched roof section.

Cheers

Bob

Three very valid points, Bob.

The new fireplace will terminate in a flue, not a chimney. The existing chimney in the old part of the house will be demolished, but a dummy replacement will be built on the roof.

Rooves is to roof as hooves is to hoof. I had an essay at Uni marked down by 20% for using the spelling "rooves", and every example of it was underlined and circled in thick red felt-tip pen. As the essay was about roof structures, it occurred scores of times. So, I scanned and enlarged the appropriate page of the dictionary, and circled and underlined the word rooves in thick red felt tipped pen, and stuck it on the tutor's door. I got my 20% back immediately.

The join between old and new rooves is a real headache. My current thinking is to put in a temporary low level level flat roof at the existing gutterline, and wait for the spring before whipping the roof off the old part of the house, to do the job properly. However, if we happened to get a forecast of a week of warm dry weather in the next week or two, I guess I could take the risk of being roofless in January for a few days.

 

[9fingers]

In a vaguely similar roof situation, I cut some OSB sheets to bridge between a new roof and an existing gutter and covered with a polypropylene tarp until such times as I could do it properly.

I'm not sure if I'd have enough faith in weather forecasts to open a roof in January.

Following with interest as always,

Bob

 

[Mike G]

Those OSB sheets scattered over my new floor were bought specifically to do the temporary roof, Bob, so we are thinking along identical lines. And you're right about the odds of doing a roof in Jan: somewhere vanishingly close to zero.

 

[RogerS]

Will you end up with a gulley between the two roofs? As we do in our double-gable? The stupid builder the original owner (a farmer) employed laid sheets of lead down. Only they were each about 12 ft long and so as the expansion/contraction cycle went on over the years, they ended up with ridges across the gulley. And each ridge forming a small dam. And to top it all, each ridge had a crack in it

 

[Mike G]

Yes, there will be a section of flat roof....technically a box gutter, I think. It will be about 6 feet wide, though. I will use EPDM as the roofing material (AKA butyl rubber).

 

[RogerS]

Not sure if this has been covered - apologies if it has. Calculations for the panel walls, glulams and flitches. Did you do those, Mike, or did you have to get in a structural engineer to satisfy BC? This question shows my ignorance regarding architects !

 

[Mike G]

The beams have been calculated by an engineer, although I provided the drawings and told him what my parameters were (ie, no RSJ's, and the flitch had to be 225 deep or less). The walls I have done so many times before that I know they are fine. I doubt BC will ask for any calcs for those, but I'll go back to the engineer if necessary for those.

Interestingly, he calculated my oak ridge purlin in the following manner: "by observation & experience" !! What I propose to put up there is so oversized (for aesthetic reasons) that he didn't bother to do the maths, but of course will provide the numbers if required.

 

[Mike G]

Right, where were we? Two days to catch up on, and I'm not going to tell you the whole story until someone answers a question.

First job was to add noggins to the frame over the flitch, and then to add more frames, with noggins this time:



Supplementary question...........why the over-wide and quite short door openings?

I have a ladder fastened permanently in place against the glulam, so left 2 or 3 studs out of the wall to enable easy access:



Having got the roof plate in along both sides, I am now ready to start building the main roof. However, I want to do a couple of smaller jobs first. Firstly, the roof over the utility. You all saw how I lay out rafters during the workshop build, so I won't repeat here. Suffice to say I made the first pair, and offered them up to check:



Looks good to me:



SOOOOOOOO easy if you have parallel plates. Get them wrong and you'll play catch-up all through your roof construction.

So, what's going on here? This is a view of the rafter foot from the inside:



There's your question. Answer that and I'll post a whole load more photos.

.......

I awoke to this sight:



And it was still raining. Over an inch overnight. No chance of any site-work, so I headed to the workshop, where it was lovely and warm, bright and dry. A blue-tit sleeps in my workshop every night (I leave the doors open all day, and it must fly in just before dusk). I let it out as usual, and set to work.

I had rafters to make. Two lots. Firstly, the utility roof:



Secondly, the lean-to roof over the lounge:



Note the rafter foot, very different from the utility rafter. So, what did I spend the rest of the day doing?

 

[TrimTheKing]

Not sure what you mean with the question about the rafter foot. Do you mean why have you done it that way instead of notched with a birds mouth the same way you have with the workshop?

My only thought right now is that you wanted a certain pitch on the roof but also below a certain height, and this was the way to do it? :eusa-think:

Re your low/wide doorways, not sure on the width part but I will take a punt that it's something to do with the fact that you have that raised flat section between the rooves and you will cut into that top plate later on when all the rafters etc are in place and the boor way will extend up into that flat space…?

Cheers
Mark

 

[Mike G]

Well, you're on the right lines with the door openings, Mark. I certainly will be cutting the top plates out later. The reason they are so wide, though, is that I will be making door surrounds out of 6" square oak posts, with a head of the same size or larger.

As for the rafter feet, there is no overhang at all. That's the oddity. Why would I do that?

 

[TrimTheKing]

As for the rafter feet, there is no overhang at all. That's the oddity. Why would I do that?

Well on your cad drawings there is (or looks to be), and thinking back to an old comment, I think you are going to add the overhang by way of sprockets, am I right…? :eusa-dance:

Cheers
Mark

 

[Mike G]

That's it Mark......sprockets.

MDF template:



Template on rafter:



Some shoddy old scraps of oak I've had for a while:



Schoolboy error. Got the bandsaw blade completely and utterly stuck trying to reverse out of a curved cut:





I couldn't get it out, despite drilling, wedging, using a coping saw and even swearing. None of it helped, so I had to cut forward, and waste a little wood.

The sprockets aren't finished like a piece of furniture, but I do chamfer the edges with a spokeshave, clean up the worst of the bandsaw marks, and put the flat faces over the planer:



I need 14. They vary in width between 2-1/2" and 3":



So, on to today: a two roof day!

Everything was ready to pop the utility roof up quickly. There is a tower scaffold set up inside to allow easy access to the ridge. By now you should be used to my habit of putting up some temporary verticals to restrain the gable rafters:





Note the pump. It's been running all day. I must have shifted hundreds of gallons of water today, once the temperature got above freezing point. Below freezing and it was freezing solid in the hoses.

Here's a sprocket offered up just to show some visitors what it would look like:



I had also made the rafters for the lean-to roof over the lounge yesterday (half a dozen this morning). It was a quick job to nail a plate in place, and place the rafters:



Stupidly, I carried the plate on to the return. I'll have to cut 110mm off tomorrow:



I then thought I would spend the rest of the day playing with raw sewage, bailing toilet paper and faeces out of the footings, rodding the pipe run to the septic tank (2 sets of rods required, it's that long) and so on. I know how to have fun.

 

[StevieB]

Feel for you Mike - I once spent Christmas eve doing that (unblocking a blocked septic tank run and cleaning up a patio it backfilled onto) - try finding gallons of bleach at 5pm on xmas eve! SWMBO has never liked sweetcorn much since then.... :eusa-shifty:

 

[TrimTheKing]

I left the most vitriolic voicemail I have ever left, or heard, for an incompetent builder who fitted the downstairs loo in our second house. He fitted a concertina pipe (no issue in itself) at a 90deg bend, but the section after the bend was uphill…

Needless to say solids don't like travelling uphill…

Christmas day up to my elbow in my entire families poop to clear the backlog (no pun intended). Took him a week to call me back he was so scared.

Cheers
Mark

 

[Rod]

What's the thinking with the lean to over the lounge - why not have a bigger bedroom 4?

Rod

 

[Mike G]

That was foisted on me by the planners. It was the agreed compromise........but they then recommended refusal anyway! Having said that, I do think it improves the southern aspect. Besides, the 4th bedroom is still about 10 foot by 12 foot, which isn't the end of the world.

 

[Mike G]

Apparently 1100 people have viewed this thread since yesterday. Not a single one of them has commented. Do we have a bot-invasion?

 

[9fingers]

Well Bots do visit and this is generally advantageous to raise our profile on search engines.

These show up at the bottom of most pages in the list "who is online"

Nuisance bots also visit and give Mark a hard time by trying to join the forum in order to subsequently post spam. Until we find a way of spreading the load, Mark has to deal with these manually. This class of bots are in fact run by low life human masters and smart enough to solve captcha puzzles and possibly paid a few grains of rice per successful membership.

Bob

 

[TrimTheKing]

25 bogus accounts created per day on average over the festive period! Will get that to the top of my list to work out how to lessen these and share the admin load.

Cheers
Mark

 

[AndyP]

Apparently 1100 people have viewed this thread since yesterday. Not a single one of them has commented. Do we have a bot-invasion?

Well it is not all me although I have visited often but as much of what you are doing is way over my head, especially the roofs and rooves ( pun intended ), I have run out of things to say.

 

[9fingers]

Apparently 1100 people have viewed this thread since yesterday. Not a single one of them has commented. Do we have a bot-invasion?

Well it is not all me although I have visited often but as much of what you are doing is way over my head, especially the roofs and rooves ( pun intended ), I have run out of things to say.

But it is an excellent opportunity to learn and ask questions where necessary Andy

Most of us are only too happy to discuss our work - that's why we are posting here.

Bob

 

[AndyP]

Oh Bob, I am certainly learning lots but I know that tackling something as major as a house build is way beyond me.

 

[Deejay]

Morning Mike

Is there a reason for using C24, rather than C16 timber?

Cheers

Dave

 

[Mike G]

No, Dave, there was no timber grade specified when I ordered timber. It's just what was supplied, and was the cheapest of the 3 suppliers I got prices from.

 

[the bear]

What do these timber grades actually mean?

Mark

 

[RogerS]

What do these timber grades actually mean?

Mark

Boards graded to C16 are generally recommended for most applications and if the correct spans are used this is usually the most cost effective option that will still meet the performance requirements.

Boards graded to C24 is a more demanding grade. Boards will have fewer knots and the knots in the board will be smaller than in a board graded to C16. C24 graded decking boards are typically used where higher loads are required or wider spans are required.

I also believe that we have to get C24 from abroad.

It is interesting to see the difference in softwood that is available now and that which was around maybe 30-40 years ago. Then the growth rings were very tightly packed and generally pretty straight grained. Now, the rings are spaced widely apart due to the forced growth in managed forests.

 

[Mike G]

Good answer, Roger.

The grading is done by a machine at the sawmill. Essentially it measures the bending strength of the timber by passing it between some rollers and seeing how much it deflects. I don't know how it senses knots, but they are taken into consideration as Roger said.

 

[9fingers]

I had understood that the grading was done on a batch by batch basis purely by stress testing?

So a high stress grading would tend to have fewer knots but if you wanted knot free timber, asking for a particular C grade would not guarantee this. One does not automatically follow from the other.

I could be (often am) wrong here?

Bob

 

[Mike G]

I had understood that the grading was done on a batch by batch basis purely by stress testing?

So a high stress grading would tend to have fewer knots but if you wanted knot free timber, asking for a particular C grade would not guarantee this. One does not automatically follow from the other.

I could be (often am) wrong here?

Bob

You may well be right, Bob, other than about grading by batch. Certainly my main supplier has machinery which grades each individual piece of timber, and each and every one has its grade (plus other info) sprayed on it.

 

[Stargazer]

And thus Mike and Bob demonstrate why some of us keep coming back......we learn something new every time!

 

[the bear]

Me too Stargazer.
Thanks for the answers

Mark

 

[9fingers]

A day that passes without having learned anything* has been wasted!

*or re-learned something forgotten! - its an age thing :lol:

Bob

 

[Phil]

A day that passes without having learned anything* has been wasted!

*or re-learned something forgotten! - its an age thing :lol:

Bob

Too true .................

And YES


Cheers
Phil

 

[Mike G]

I don't want to appear too nerdy, but there have been 2600 visits to this thread in the last 2 days. Something odd is going on.

 

[Charlie]

I don't want to appear too nerdy, but there have been 2600 visits to this thread in the last 2 days. Something odd is going on.

Well Mike, I account for two of those, just had my daily browse through your great post.

 

[DaveL]

I don't want to appear too nerdy, but there have been 2600 visits to this thread in the last 2 days. Something odd is going on.

I think you are being stalked by a rouge BOT [emoji79]

 

[Mike G]

A rouge one? I don't care what colour they are :lol:

 

[Wizard9999]

I had understood that the grading was done on a batch by batch basis purely by stress testing?

So a high stress grading would tend to have fewer knots but if you wanted knot free timber, asking for a particular C grade would not guarantee this. One does not automatically follow from the other.

I could be (often am) wrong here?

Bob

You may well be right, Bob, other than about grading by batch. Certainly my main supplier has machinery which grades each individual piece of timber, and each and every one has its grade (plus other info) sprayed on it.

Mike

My workshop timber from TP (cheapest quote) also turned up and was C24, though I had expected C16 to be honest.

I recall an epidode of Grand Designs (don't get started on my mate Kevin again :lol: ) where a couple were using Japanese Larch. As this is not typically used for construction they had to get it strength tested. If I recall correctly it ended up at something like C50+. But they certainly only tested a sample, not every piece. I conclude this because after the initial test they all said great, that's it we can build our house out of this wood. If every piece needed to be tested they could not have said that until the last length was tested.

Terry.

 

[Mike G]

My roof turned up this morning:



All I have to do is cut a bit of it away, then put the remainder upstairs and nail it in place. Simple!

Quick little job. Before:



After (there's about 20 of these):



I had deliberately oversized the trenches for the tie-down straps so that I could spray expanding foam in.

I spent the rest of the day completing the sheathing board on the outside of the framing:





This little wall above the mono-pitch roof needed a little thought. I need to be able to finish the lead flashing to a proper location, and there is the sarking ("felt"........but not felt), too, which needs to tuck under the board. I put a batten across as temporary support for the boards:



Then, using my smaller router, I cut a rebate along the bottom edge of the boards prior to erecting them:



That should do nicely for tucking the lead under, so long as I have got my levels about right.



Tomorrow: rafters!!