Sunday, May 31, 2009

Roof & walls

Our roof is now 99% complete. Only the front porch to go.....once it's built.
The wall wrap has been installed, the windows are in and the brickwork has begun at the rear of the house.

The box bay window was delivered this week after a long wait. This particular window is double glazed and also made with low-E glass. The window faces west so the 'low emission' glass emits light but blocks radiation.

This is the arched window in my future office.


The large dormer window in the room over the garage.


The framing is almost complete in the upper level.


Dormer window over the garage. The external wall cladding will be applied this week.


The scaffolding on the east side has been removed now that the roofing is complete. The rest of the scaffolding will come down once we have clad the gables.



This is it so far. Not long til lock-up now. Brickies will be on the job this week as will the builders with the weatherboard wall cladding. I may even make an appearance with a paint brush.......We'll see.
Greg

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Overdue Update

Due to a hectic workload and computer failure I haven't updated this blog for a while so here's a quick update.

The plyboard has been applied to the front section of the roof. The horizontal timber battens you can see on top of the plyboard is just a temporary measure to make it safer and easier to climb up and down the roof.


This is a view from the window over the garage. The roof guttering is mid-way through installation.


A view of the room over the garage.

A snapshot of the progress so far.

Here come more bricks. Next week, weather permitting, the brickies will begin bricking up the walls.

Oops.
Why does there have to be someone with a camera watching when this sort of thing happens?
This is the side of building you don't see in the glossy brochures. It just proves that we're all human.
I have been receiving a lot of questions about our roofing system and I do intend to do a more detailed post with an in-depth explanation at a later date, but for now I'm out of time.
All for now
Greg.

Monday, May 4, 2009

More roofing

This week the roof progressed a lot further. As this type of roof construction has created a fair bit of interest I thought I'd show a few more photos and explain a bit further.


This photo is the front right hand side of the house. The scaffolding is required here due to the steep, (40 degree) pitch of the roof. Our roofing contractor is Canadian and he finds our regulatory safety measures to be quite amusing and a bit excessive compared to what he is used to.

The rear section of, (lower pitched) roof is now complete


As this type of roof is so well sealed, the ridge is ventilated as shown above to allow air to escape.


This photo shows the method of roofing construction quite well. The plyboard is nailed to the rafters and a metal 'drip edge' is fixed to the bottom edge of the plyboard where it meets the gutter. The 'drip edges' prevents water from seeping back into the timber roofing materials and directs it into the gutter.
The Underlay is stapled to the plyboard then the roof shingles are nailed over the top. The nails are covered by subsequent layers of shingles.
The little shiny blobs you can see on the shingles in the middle of the photo are a bituminous adhesive which is a part of the shingle. After installation when the roof heats up these blobs self-adhere to the shingle above to provide a stronger bond and a very high wind rating, (up to 190km/hr).


The valley section of the roofing is lined with a thick rubberised material. The underlay and the shingles overlap this material to provide a waterproof valley.


The rear section of the steep roof is almost complete.
I am very happy with the colour shade of the shingles, they are close to the local slate shade.
It was a bit of an educated guess when choosing the colour for this roof. This type of roofing can vary in it's perceived colour in different light. The manufacturer recommends that you look at an existing roof at different times of the day to get a true sense of colour rather than rely on photos but this is very hard to do if you don't live in North America and no-one around you has a similar roof.
Anyway, I think we chose well and the colour will tie in well with the brickwork.
Brickie should be on the job this week.
Greg.