The Roof

There's a good possibility I was overly pedantic today! I cut the roof trusses to give a slope of 25°. When I put them up the overall look was too high. So I took it all down again and recut the trusses to give a 20° slope. I think it was the right call! As a result I didn't have time to put the felt on the OSB. Let's hope it doesn't rain!

Got the felt on the roof, there was a sale on for the nice green one! Not decided yet how to finish off the gable ends. I've run out of feather edge cladding, I might use the rest of the roofing felt that I have left over. And the palm has 14 flowers coming on it this year!

The roof open support posts are in. My good friend Andrew tells me that the uplift on the roof is around 75 kg/sqm for a site near the Thames Estuary, 3km from the shore. So if the roof is  supported on the 4 corners that would equal 75kg x 2m x 3m / 4 = 112.5 kg per leg uplift minus quarter of the weight of the roof. Which almost exactly equates to two bags of postcrete and 8 house bricks per post.

We have lift off! I got the wheels on and the cross members up then I put the steel angle iron up in the centre of the 4 x 2 but that was a bit of an error because it followed the slight curve of the wood. The first roof roll off was not as smooth as I hoped. So I had to re-fix the steels to lay them parallel. It's still a bit stiff so I'll have to put some thought into that. But otherwise smoothish and to be fair the roof does weigh about 130kg! It's a pleasing milestone, I might get the telescope in this week and start setting it up, The finishing touches, the gable ends, the air bricks and the floor can wait till next weekend!

Well that's the outside all done! I used the remainder of the roofing felt to cover the gable ends. I think it works but not sure if I like the roofing tac nail heads, it might need some sort of trim around the edge. But for now I need to crack on! Using a different type of wood on the last strip at the top of the walls might have been an error, probably should have got some more feather edge boards and cut them to fit. Then I would have got a better colour match. I've knocked out the bricks for the air vents but I need some sort of anti spider mesh before the vents goes in. I must do something about that gap at the end of the angle iron when the roof is open, but that can wait for now.

Need to crack on with the inside now!

Just one last thing to do. Block paving reinstated around the 4"x4"s and sanded. I was two brown blocks short so I used grey ones to finish off. Keep it quiet and I don't suppose anyone will notice! 😀