First Two Windows

The roof was finished yesterday, it was an odd day, even though we organized ourselves a lot better, the time still drifted away and another five hours slipped through our fingers, however, it was done and we are very happy with the results.

Today, as promised, we fitted our first two windows.

We noticed that six of the eight windows were 33" tall and not 34" so we changed our plan slightly, it meant that both of those 34" windows had not been pre-painted grey, so this one will need to be painted in place which will be a bit more fiddly, but it will get done.

I will do it.

It means that as each day passes, as we add windows, the greenhouse should become more waterproof, we have rain forecast for the next 24 hours, so we are not sure if any progress will be made in the morning. 

Now we're talking....

Saturday. Four and a half hours. Half done, the rest of the roof will be finished tomorrow.

Bays F1 thru F6 completed today. 

It is an exciting time, for the partial bays to be completed, there is a definite production line required for each twenty-five inches of the side to be completed, and a very odd process, because for each bay that was completed, one sixth of our energy was depleted, after all we all have a resevoir, and that is divided into six pieces for some reason, and today, six bits were definitely used up. 

We are done for today, but we will regroup for Sunday and start afresh.

Rain stopped play.

The first front hole, designated F1 has now been filled. 

The upper panel is 24" wide and 48" long, lower panel is 24" wide and 12" long. Splicing those two together are two 22" long pieces of matched H-channel, an upper and lower piece that clip into each other, the lower piece is attached to a 23.5" cross beam that connects between two joists.

On the upper surface of the fascia beam, there are two lengths of lower H-channel that run the length of the greenhouse, on a temporary basis, the two long upper pieces will not be clipped into it yet, so each bay will have a short piece just to hold it against any gusts of wind.

Two screws with washers were added to reinforce the connection, we will add them each time a major joint is completed, it should also be noted that the upper edge of the lower 24" x 12" polycarbonate panel was sealed with aluminum HVAC tape and on the upper side of the cross beam H-channel, neutral cure silicon caulk was added to reduce leaks.

This process will now be completed five more times on the front side, bays F2 thru F6 and when they are all completed as above, the two long pieces of H-channel will be clipped into place along the fascia, after that, a few retention screws and washers will be added and then we will move onto the back side.

The blog, and our brains, feel a little overloaded and tired at the moment, happily it is an anti-social Thursday and we will attempt to correct everything by applying appropriate amounts of imported Czech Lager this afternoon while it is supposed to be raining.

Preparing to fill in the holes

The fascia boards have been installed and we are left with the 12 holes on the roof to fill in.

At the top right of the picture you can see the first "test" cross beam with "bottom" H-channel attached that has been fitted to retain the upper piece of polycarbonate and also to work out the smaller piece dimensions. If you can visulaize the area, the required piece should be 24" wide and about 11" long which, due to all our tolerances and lack of straightness, will vary for each bay.

Once the two fascia boards were fitted (which also have bottom H-channel attached to the top surface) the dimensions of each piece front F1-F6 and back B1-B6 will be worked out one by one, when all twelve pieces are cut and in place, two long pieces of "top" H-channel will be clipped in down the sides and all will be retained. It should be noted that also every bay, F1-F6 and B1-B6 will have a short 22" piece of top H-channel to clip on which splices the two pieces of polycarbonate sheet.

Up to speed?

All pieces of top and bottom H-channel will be clipped into place and the roof should be complete and we know what will be next after that :

Considering that all the other holes need to be filled and painted, the front side windows are being prepainted before being installed. They are being painted grey and the retaining surrounds will be brown, as someone pointed out, we are not painting the windows as that would be silly.

The daily quota for painting is definitely around the three mark. Any more than that is just out of the question.

Major Milestone Days

Yesterday and today we danced with the big ladder and installed the majority of the twin walled polycarbonate sheets, each measuring 24" x 48" and approximately 0.25" thick. The sheets had been taped at the top and after a learning curve day on Sunday, today we completed the optimized "production line" of positioning each sheet, placing the upper H-channel in position, applying the correct caulk and adhesive at the top, installing a shingle on top of that then installing the EZ-Ridge XT on top, all while dancing with that ladder, making sure we were safe, dropping things, losing things, forgetting things...

The majority of the polycarbonate is installed and the big ladder has gone back in the garage.

This is what the EZ-Ridge product looks like when installed almost correctly.

You can see that the H-channel pieces are not closed off at the lower ends yet, this is because our next steps are to install 23.5" long 2x4 cross beams between each rafter at the lower end of each polycarbonate sheet, each beam will have a piece of H-channel attached to trap the large upper panel, in addition to that 48" long piece, we will be adding a short length at the bottom to extend the polycarbonate to the end of the rafter H-channels, the ends of the rafters will then be capped in some way, we have not worked that detail out yet. 

That starts in the morning, for now we are both tired, but happy to have this milestone behind us.

Temporary Column number One.

There is a sort of excitement building, this morning we taped twelve of the twin wall 24" x 48" polycarbonate panels upper (open) edge with aluminum tape, basically HVAC duct tape, to keep moisture out, the asphalt shingles are folded, but need to be cut into 29" lengths for approximately a 4" overlap with the 25" pitch of the rafters.

A temporary column has been installed on the "front" side and in the morning we will do the same with the "back" side - this is to sort of square out the entire roof structure for the installation of the polycarbonate, as we have said from the start "there can be no windows installed until the roof is done" because waving big ladders about in a confined space will always result in tears.

The slight curvature of the front side beam has been mostly corrected, the second column will be installed on the back side as logically, even though it is not too noticeable, there will be a curvature, every time we add structure, it makes moving the ladder around more difficult, and it would be impossible if we had installed any of the windows.

I was explaining the curvature to Karen, being all engineering and all that, and I was reminded of a really funny line (well, funny to a couple of geeky engineers) that a great friend of mine, Alan Marsden, said and it goes something like this : "no matter what you do in life, you should always consider Young's Modulus!" and this is a perfect example.

Windows, back side.

I think we were both surprised this morning when we went to pick up the additional free windows from a local address, the photo on the listing showed perhaps five or six windows but when they were all loaded into the little car, there were eleven.

That is eleven approximately 28" x 33" single pane windows, with three double frames, which means that perhaps we can have a couple of sliding windows on the back side of the greenhouse for ventilation.

We believe now we have too many windows, however we are not complaining as the price was right!

No big progress today besides a few extra boards attached to the apex, which still took over an hour, once they are sorted out we will be affixing shingles, which signals that the roof is about to start, and once we are finished with the ladder work, all the windows, and the door, will be painted and start to go in.