A roof over our heads

The past couple of weeks have seen great progress on the roof.

The lower roof over the sitting room is already slated at the front and the green roof membrane is on at the back.

We settled on a warm roof construction. Most of the insulation is above the rafters to minimise thermal bridging through the rafters themselves.

We'll add a lesser amount of insulation between the rafters, which is advised to prevent condensation forming within the roof.  Total U value about 0.16, and we're working to get it really airtight.



We had to buy special skewer-like nails to get through the fat sandwich -  38mm battens, membrane, 75mm insulation and 35mm into the rafters.  The standard 4" nails are just too short and would have conducted even more heat out of the house, we would have needed more of them too.

There will be nearly 1000 skewer-nails as it is - each one puncturing the insulation board.

The picture on the right shows the front section of the the sitting room roof before the holes for the Velux windows were cut out, and before we started filling all the gaps between walls and roof. The rafters will be covered with plasterboard, but the 2 big beams will be exposed.

 The upper roof is far from straightforward. We're grateful to have such experienced people on the job.

They've worked hard to overcome the various obstacles (constructional discrepencies, lack of accurate drawings, baffling angles etc. ) along the way.

It's probably for the best that we felt we couldn't afford a SIPS roof - it probably would have been butchered to get it to fit

It was so bright at the weekend with the sun shining through the rafters I'm almost sad to think most of it will be covered in. At least the front bedroom will have a good-sized Velux giving a view across the valley.

We have been busy painting the soffits, undercloaking and exposed rafter ends. It's been a family job.

 

  


Plywood over insulation board - the green roof base.

Joe (who's not family) came over from Lancaster earlier in the week and put on the membrane for the green roof in the most miserable weather. It looks great so far.





He'll return later to finish it off and seal around the stove pipe and make the little balcony floor. 













Once the scaffolding's down and the tree protection zone fence dismantled there'll be a nice view up the garden from the sitting room.

This is the biggest window in the house at  2.4m wide by 1.8 high. I would have liked a full glass wall - but it was prohibitively expensive and would have lost too much heat. I'm quite happy with the compromise. This way there's room for the curtains to be drawn fully back during the day.

Our windows are due on site this week (they've been sitting in the factory waiting since Christmas) and hopefully we'll be having them fitted over the Easter break.

The Lovely Beams

Just when I was beginning to give up on them, the steel men came and measured up. They started work that night and 2 days later came and installed all the steel.

The steels are lovely and as far as I can see they are in the right place.

It doesn't really look like much has happened in the past few weeks. Apart from the beams the garage door has gone on and bizarrely we've had our kitchen sink delivered.






The building still looks slightly surreal with the ziggarat style wall. (Temporary - we hope!)










While they had the lifting gear (and men) they also lifted the timber gluelams for the sitting room roof. So now they are in their pockets,  which is good - but they are not level - somehow the pockets in the wall were set too low on one side. They were correct on the drawing!


This end of the timber gluelam beam needs lifting about 200mm and straightening up.

No crane involved.  A big hi-ab, plenty of men and good planning.  Thanks guys!

I've made a new model 1/50th scale to help explain the roof shape. (My first model got crushed in the car boot). This model doesn't include the ground floor.

Next job - rafters on and a real roof, can't wait!