Roof half done, glass roof kind of done

The north side is fully tiled

Despite the absolutely terrible weather at the moment, the roofers got the north (street) side of the roof tiled yesterday (Wednesday, May 29th) and made a good start on the south side. Niedermaier GmbH sent around to of his men to get the solar heating put up on the roof. It's much easier and faster for them to fix the solar panels when they can walk on the lats rather than on the roof. It also doesn't make any sense at all for the tiles to be put in place and then have to be removed again (at least sixteen of them) to fix the panels. At the end of the day, the solar panels were fixed but they were not able to bore a hole in the roof as the tile with the hole had not arrived yet (it was sent by post for some reason). Today (Thursday) is a public holiday and most workers will probably have taken a holiday tomorrow (Friday) too, so I doubt anything else will be done before Monday. That takes us up to four weeks of work - which means it's time that things start finishing up.

Half the height of the slot is cased

I wanted to pull the Cat 7 network cables through the pipes I put in for them a couple of months ago. However, the plastic cups into which the pipes go (and where the socket itself is fixed later) were not really secure in the tile cement mixture - it takes a couple of days for that stuff to dry out sufficiently enough for it to hold wires/sockets securely. The sockets are positioned just above the perimeter slot that I cut into the walls in the bedroom area last November, to allow for the heating pipes (to the radiators) to be installed. I used these slots for carrying the empty pipes through which the Cat 7 network cables will be pulled. I decided to close in the slots below the sockets, to make the wall more stable - so the sockets themselves sit more securely. Unfortunately, given that the insulated heating pipes were on the bottom of the slot (and didn't take up the whole width), it was difficult to see how I could properly build anything to fill up the slot. I decided to case the pipes in mortar, so that I'd have a flat, stable surface to work from. As the mortar bed is not all that thick (and also has steel in it), I hope it won't fall out. Once it is dry, I should be able to fill the rest of the slot with flat bits of bricks. I'll also have to use wall anchors to make sure it is properly tied to the wall itself.

Installing the glass roof

Other than that, the company that were to fit the glass roof came as well. The roof was to consist of a double layer of glass, which they brought with them. They had a kind of a suction tool which they hung from the crane. The suction cups grabbed the glass plate and they hoisted the plate up onto the roof. All went well (it took them about three hours) and they were packed and ready to leave. Then there was a snap and one of the panels broke. Apparently they had put it under too much pressure. They'll be back on Friday to repair it - well, to replace it - there isn't much left to repair. The rest of the glass roof looks fantastic. The entire area underneath is now rain proof. This is good news for my cement and lime.

Lastly, we managed to get the four concrete supports poured for the supports for the glass roof. Stuckenberger's men moved the two acros which were unfortunately positioned just where I had to dig. I dug the remaining two holes and on Tuesday evening Uli, Alois and myself mixed concrete and wheelbarrowed it over to the holes. This morning I removed the timber casing - the concrete looks good. Tomorrow the fitter is coming over to measure the lengths of the support poles (i.e. from the concrete foundation to the outside joist of the glass roof).

I started installing the OSB above the kitchen

Casing the heating slots to stabilise the sockets

Sandra found (and rescued) this. It's going on my office door

Working on filling the casing with concrete

It took a double lorry with 17 crates of tiles for the roof

The glass panel being hoisted into place

The machine must have a battery powered vacuum

The glass working fixing a glass plate to the machine

The south side was tiled after the north side

Stuckenberger's men needed to leave space for the solar panels

The solar panels with the glass installed - ready to go up on the roof

Eaves and chimney done, lots of small jobs finished inside

The eaves are done

The weather has been absolutely terrible for the last couple of days. Actually, for pretty much the whole last week. Rain, cold and lots of wind too. Exactly what you don't want when (a) you have a house with no real roof and (b) you are a roofer trying to put a roof on (a). Anyway, fair play to the roofers, they still managed to get a lot of work done. The pavatex hardboard insulation "exaskeleton" is done and the lats are finished. Best of all, the "Spengler" (not sure what this trade is called in english - the guy who fits eaves and does the lead/tin/copper work on the roof) came last Saturday and got almost everything done in one go (one half day's work really). He put a metal skin on the chimney as well. We went for metal because brick chimneys tend to rot over time. Water from rain (and we get enough of that) gathers in any cracks in the mortar, freezes, expands and breaks. That continues over time (not even much time required) and the end result is a chimney that rots and decays.

The wallplate is no longer hanging on skyhooks

Other than the Spengler work on the roof, there were numerous small-ish jobs on the inside that finally got taken care of (mostly due to the weather). You can see from the photos below, that the Ytong wall in the bathroom is now built up to the ceiling (credit goes to Daniel for this piece of tetris work). Uli has started the wiring in the bedrooms (and the main electric unit is in the wall already). I finally finished the reveal of the front door (I kept getting called away to other jobs) and the kitchen windows are pretty much finished as well. I also dug two of the four holes necessary for the steel beams which will support the glass overhang. The other two will have to wait until Stuckenberger's men move the existing Acro Jacks. I also bricked up a section of wall under the wallplate on the north wall. It was bothering me for months because it looked as though the last metre of the wallplate was floating in the air (apart from one huge rusty nail which might have been holding it). I bricked it up yesterday afternoon while a tempest raged outside. I almost forgot to put in my empty pipes to carry the network cables. That would have been a disaster...

The cladded chimney (with some example tiles)

The acro in the background is just where I need to dig

The drainpipe from the eaves on the south side

Finally finished the west reveal of the front door

The gate to hell (or at least 90cm down)

Metal reinforcements for the concrete foundation for the roof supports

The wiring is started

Where I have to go to flick fuses back on

Daniel's tetris work

The kitchen wall is now 36cm thick everywhere

Getting ready for tiling

The chimney is cased and filled with concrete

When the roofers were finished today all of the horizontal lats were in place, which means that they can get working on the tiling on Monday. This is good news - we're not exactly behind schedule, but it will be good to have the roof finally closed off against the rain. The "Spengler" was there today - that's the german word for the tradesman that does eaves and chimneys - anywhere where tin/copper has to be shaped. He wants to do the chimney tomorrow (Saturday, 25th May). The old chimney stack was pretty much derelict - the concrete cap it had was badly broken and the bricks themselves weren't really in good shape either. Another issue was the building regulations for chimneys - the mouth of the chimney must be no less than 40cm above the finished top of the roof. As our roof is now substantially higher than the old roof, there was no way that we were going to be anywhere near 40cm - more like 15cm. We cased the chimney and I used the crane to carry up big buckets of concrete to fill the casing. The entire chimney stack is going to be covered with a copper (or something like copper) casing. That should mean we should have no issues with water penetration over the next (hopefully) decades.

As well as the casing for the chimney, the markings are now on the ground for the four support beams for the glass roof overhang. Currently, the rafters for the glass roof are resting on a horizontal beam which itself rests on three acro jacks. The four 12x12cm steel girders will themselves rest on a concrete foundation which will be 50x50cm with 40x40cm reinforcing steel. I still need to make four casings for the concrete - I might be able to do one or two of them later on tonight so that we can pour two of the supports tomorrow. I'll have to wait with the other two because (coincidentally) two of the acros are positioned rights where I have to dig down about 90cm.

The lats are finished on both sides of the roof

The roofers finishing the lats

More updates

Insulating the north side of the roof

I just saw that the last post on this blog was from May 11th - ten days ago! In that time there was (obviously) quite a lot done. So here are some updates. The roofers are now working on putting in the insulation (2 12cm layers of 032 fibreglass wall). They have the street side (the north side) done already and they will be moving to the south side soon. There were a couple of rainy days since the last post. The roofers got quite a lot done on the inside. The joist which supports the roof posts on the east side of the house is not properly supported (like the engineer prescribed). On the west gable they have already added the horizontal beam which the engineer prescribed to keep the weight of the roof from pushing the two vertical beams inwards.

The window on the left is finished. The bottoms are level - on the right some bricks are holding the plastic sheet down

We got a lot of work done on the windows and doors. A representative of Auer Baustoffe is coming tomorrow (22nd May) at 08:00 to measure the windows. We had decided to make the two kitchen windows bigger (1m x 1m) to let in more light. We also decided to raise them up so that they would be at about 86cm from the finished floor level (rather than 65cm as they would otherwise have been). This meant that we had to break out a lot of wall above the existing top of the window, add more lentils, break away a good portion of the wall to the right of each window and built the reveal back up again. It wasn't particularly easy to do, as the old bricks we were using were difficult to build with. It's finished now, so the Auer guy can come and measure. The main door of the house also had to be broken out to be 1.4m wide and 2.26m from the OSB floor. We are still in the process of building the right hand (looking out) reveal back up. A portion of it is built, so it should be possible for the Auer man to measure from that.

Below are some photographs showing some of what was done since May 11th.

The big gap where the door was in filled in

The east gable

The roof post now rests on three joists instead of one

While the roof was open we lifted the water tank and insulation in with the crane

All joints have been screwed, just to be sure

The post supporting the east roof was cut at the bottom and a support shim added to spread the weight over three joists

The underside (i.e. visible from the street) of the roof overhang

 

This will be the glass overhang on the south side

The concrete casing over the bedroom door

Wall openings (almost) done

The kitchen windows are much bigger now - 1m x 1m

Today, Uli, Daniel and I had a go at getting the remaining wall openings done on the south side. I had already finished the balcony door, so what was left to be done was the house door and the two windows in the kitchen. The bathroom window that I started last week had to be finished too. We had started the front door yesterday (in the rain) and one side of the wall opening was already done. Uli broke out the other side, down to the OSB floor.

The front door is left, the balcony door is right

The weather was not exactly ideal today - a bit better than yesterday, but still plenty of rain. By 19:00 we had managed to get the lentils in and the lentil overheads filled on the kitchen windows, the bathroom windows and the front door. Tomorrow, it probably makes sense to keep going in the kitchen and bathroom, tying up the inside wall with the outside wall. There is also a tricky job to be done on the roof, taking the cap off the fire wall and setting a mortar band. I'll wait to see what the weather is like first.

Below is a photo of the new window in the west gable wall.

Progress with the roof

There wasn't much noise out of this blog for the last couple of days. The simple reason is that there was no time for blog - only for work. Yesterday and today were very busy - mixing cement, finishing the top of the wall near the wallplate, painting the remaining timber, making a new reveal for the balcony door etc. Johannes Stuckenberg's team were busy too. Now the entire former haybarn has a proper ceiling. There is a new window in on the west wall (looks a bit like the window of a church but otherwise fine), the joists are up for the glass roof, the bitumen paper is up and the first joists are done too. Have a look below for photos...

The finished ceiling

Bitumen paper on the roof

Down comes the roof

The roof over the living room is stripped already

This morning the Stuckenberger team arrived at 07:30 (it should be noted on the day agreed on, May 6th) and got right to work stripping the roof. There were three men on the roof, one controlling the crane and I was on the ground doing anything that needed to be done and taking care of the container (which was swinging out of the crane, full of tiles). By 10:00 most of the roof over the living room area was stripped. The tiles are going out into a field, where the neighbour needs them to stop his tractor sinking into the mud every winter. The lats and other timber (like the boards on the exposed underside) will be burned.

The walls of the bathroom and the kitchen are also in. The were prepared over in Stuckenberger's hall and brought on a truck. The crane dropped them in and two of the carpenters had them up in no time.

The rest of the day will probably be a bit slower, as they stopped stripping tiles at the fire wall. There are a couple of photos of the work thus far below.

Stripping tiles and lats

Bathroom walls getting dropped in by crane

The weather is ideal for opening a roof

This much got done before lunch (11:00)