A bit of adjustment to the roof

Since putting the roof membrane and turf on it has rained almost continually so when Irene phoned to say the roof was full of water I was a bit worried. The weight of 3 inches of water plus all the turfs etc would be massive. So I went in today to have a look. The water was not running away as the temporary drain off was blocked. It was a good test of the roof structure which had not moved at all despite the huge weight.
I decided that I would change the roof design so I lifted the roof beams along the front of the building a couple of mms at a time and removed the rear facia so the pond liner can lap into a traditional gutter this should prevent all possible blockages and is easy to install.
Lifting the beams was a slow project but it worked a treat so the roof now has an 18mm slope over it's length. And is draining away slowly as you would expect.

Day 11 More turfing

Got a load more carpet and underlay last night so we spent a few happy hours lifting turfs onto the roof. As we had a lot of underlay we put it double as this hopefully will store water. We have been taking Sedum cuttings for a while now so when all the turfs are down we put the Sedums in and hope they spread. It is starting to look good already but I am sure the turfs will soon start dying through lack of water but gradually the Sedums will take over.

Day 11 Insulating the walls

The walls are being lined with 18mm OSB this is for strength as the studio will need a lot of shelving and work benches. So spent half the day sawing insulating and fitting wall boards. I think the walls will have to be painted as you can have too much OSB so we are looking at testing emulsion against some kind of external render paint to see what covers best.

Day 10 Grassing up the roof

The structure of the roof now complete we fitted the roof light and facias. Then after sweeping the roof clean we covered it with old carpets from skips outside carpet stores (they are really happy to give it away). We then carefully laid out the Butyl Pond Liner and covered it with more carpet and underlay (to protect the liner and act as sponge to hold water).
We then had to start lugging up the turfs dug from the front garden and laying them out. hard work but fun. They do seem very heavy so I was interested to see how the beams were coping but so far they have not moved at all which was a relief.
Still a few more carpets to get so that we can complete the whole roof.

Day 9 Putting on the roof

The roof beams only go from fron wall to back wall so we have to screw on 3 x 2 exetension to provide the overhang this will also allow the roof space to be ventillated. Having put on the extensions it was time to deck out the roof with 18mm OSB this will take the membrane and turf. It ws a bit tricky getting them on the roof but with 2 of us pushing them up 2 ladders it was not so bad.

The roof turned out tp be very square (only 7mm overall) so putting the bords on was a simple and the with almost no waste as the roof was designed to be 2.5 boards long by 4 boards wide. With a hole for the roof light. The boards were screwed in all corners and the nailed at 150mm centres all over. This made the whole structure as solid as a rock. Good day.

Day 8 Putting on the roof beams

After making the front wall, which turns out to be mostly windows and doors, we erected it and then spent some time checking measurements and that the building was square. Then we fitted the roof beams allowing space for the roof light.They all fitted a treat and look huge. But they should be very strong and will allow for a reasonable amount of insulation.

Making the roof beams

Rather than buying pre made I beams we decided to make our own using 2 lengths of 3 x 2 ClS glued, screwed and nailed to OSB. after making the first one we could make them very quickly. I have done no calculations but they are very strong with a depth of 300mm at 600mm centres.

Day 6 and 3 of the walls are up

The two end walls were quite simple so we got them up in the afternoon.

So by the of day 6 we have 3 walls, a floor and a chunky set of foundations. Having a day off so back on site on Monday picking all the liitle bits that don't show but are essential (noggings etc)

The walls go up.

A simple stud wall can be built very quickly, so after spending a bit of time sorting out a couple of little details the back wall was ready.

The structure is EX 4 x 2 CLS studs sheathed with 11mm OSB I have decided to screw the studwork together as it so much stronger and easy to take apart in the event of a mistake. The back wall went straight up and was held with a few temorary braces. As always it looks much bigger than when it was just the foundation area and certainly much higher so we will have some serious tree puning to do next week.

Ground beams and joists

With the foundations done and the site prepared the last bits of strutural timber arrives just in time. I had planned to put in the ground beams and joists and lay the OSB Floor and then put the wall on the floor but that would mean insulating the floor now wth a great risk of the whole lot getting rained on. So I have tweeked the design so the floor can be laid after the building is watertight. That feels so much better.

Putting in the ground beams and loists was easy but took a while tweeking everything so it is square and level. It seems as though you go around doing that all day but in the end we got it acceptably good.

Then we laid a temporary floor to build the walls on a perfect flat surface it made the whole thing so easy.

Finishing the foundations

Finished the foundations and cleared the site of rubbish and rocks. We then covered it with a membrane that lets water though but stops growth. This is then covered with 20mm gravel to hold it down. So tomorrow we can finally start cutting timber. I really find the whole foundation thing just bloody hard work and un rewarding but hopefully they are basically OK and the floor structure should be quite simple with just some fine tuning. We will see.

Foundations 2

On first look the site appeared to be quite level but when you measure it there is quite a difference from one side to the other. So we just set the pads at around ground level and we then set levels with heavy concrete blocks.This way will be quicker and save costs.

Foundations

As usual the foundations took longer than I had hoped this was partly due to clearing the site and the top soil being very light and deep. We had to dig bigger and deeper than I had hoped so we have ended up with slightly over the top founations but better that than the building sinking.

So we spent best part of the day mixing concrete and moving the delivery of timber. There seems to be a lot of OSB so I hope I have the figures right if not I am sure we can sell it on or use it somewhere else.

This is the current design but it does keep changing shape, colour and layout. The windows may be bought but we may get a local caftsman to make the frames and buy the sealed units.

The structure will be simple stud wall with an insulated floor, walls and a lot of insulation in the roof. this should mean that there will be a minimum need to heat the building as at the moment we only have electricity. If it is cold we may install a small wood stove.

Preparing the site

After a day clearing years of rubbish from around the back fence we cleared the site removed some of the top soil and checked to see how level the site was. Never really used a laser level befor but for approximate levels it seemed great. We will see how it performs when we come to level the foundation pads.