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