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