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 each side to be completed, and a very odd process, because for each bay that is completed, one sixth of our energy is depleted, after all we all have a resevoir, and that is divided into six pieces for some reason, and today, six bits were used up. 

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

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.

Windows. Front side.

It is true at some point, that symmetry is discarded on what we build, and this is no exception, there is also that moment when we realise that we do not have enough windows, even though days ago, we were convinced that we had enough. I had a long, basically silly, conversation with AI today, and it is concluded that "garbage in and garbage out" is what you get with most of the so called artificial intelligence services nowadays, I could say they are quite mad, but the "services" are only as mad as their programmers.

Therefore, we went old school with our layout for the "front side" of the greenhouse.

In the middle there, at the top, we will place a vent.

When laying them all out, for this side of the structure, we realised how very big the thing is, and that more windows will be required for the "shed side" and so this afternoon, through marketplace and a seller in Sooke, we have found more free single pane windows for that side. We will pick them up in the morning, mainly as we have already had a few beers on our lovely Thursday afternoon "far from the madding crowds"

Big Progress

We class yesterday as one of the milestones of the greenhouse build, in the last week, everything has been tiny details, assembly of things, staining little blocks, staining big blocks...

Yesterday and this morning, all of that came together as the roof structure was added, of course it is "just" the rafters, but so much work went into the planning and construction of what you will see in the next photo, in addition, this was an awful lot of ladder work and it literally sucked the energy out of both of us to finish this barebones joist/rafter situation, we will leave placing temporary columns in the middles of the sides until another day.

What you cannot see from this photo (because they were not installed at that point) are the multitude of four hole 2-7/8" custom blocks that we created, sanded, stained and installed, to ensure that the roof is not just attached with brackets, believe me when I tell you, the roof is so attached now you could pick up the entire structure.

We considered what we should do next and the usual 'trip to the legion for a couple of beers" seemed to be perfectly adequate.

We slept like logs last night.

Lots of progress, but mostly little details continued...

An update, as the title says, lots of progress on little things, but it feels at times like the project has stalled and as you can see from the latest photo, it does not look that different, so I will highlight the changes.

Each one of the gaps in the corners, that will hold the patio door glass pieces (34" x 76") have been updated with strips of pressure treated 2x1 all cut and attached with nails or screws and then stained. In addition, four 65" long 4x4 have been stained and added to the base sides, smaller pieces will be cut to fill the gaps, and then another layer added to build up the side walls, we intend to use up all our materials if possible.

Today, on the side rails, the brackets have been added to locate the rafters, or joists, whatever you want to call them, the rafters will also be pre-drilled and "toenailed" into the upper side beams and apex, before we do that we will add a temporary middle support on each side to prevent those beams from sagging with the added weight.

The rafters have been updated as an assembly with the polycarbonate H-Channel bottom pieces, each held in place with five special screws to allow for flex and expansion, there are 14 rafters in all, 10 of them for the middle of the greenhouse and 4 have been modified to be end pieces.

The plan is to install the middle columns at the sides and all the brackets along the ridge beam tomorrow, which may be the day that all the rafters are installed.

We will see how much enthusiasm we have then...

Little Details

The creation of the rafters meant that we had a lot of small pieces of 2x4 sitting around in a scrap heap, so yesterday we decided to start filling in the middle space at the end of the greenhouse which will be below a specific window we purchased, we did a lot of cutting, and as we progressed we did cut some the wrong size, but we managed in the end without strangling each other. Today it was a far more relaxing day as staining was involved and at each corner of the upper structure, little details added.

Recycling end cuts of recycled wood.

Those top corners needed a "feature" to allow for the end rafters and angle brackets to extend past the outer frame of the greenhouse, along with four filler pieces to make the upper edge of the frame continuous. This involved much cutting, clamping, attaching and staining and even though it was all very relaxing, the workers have voted and we have decided that we deserve a pint.

 

Fit

The rafters are all stained and available, special roofing screws with neoprene compound washers ordered from Amazon, the "dry" fit of the polycarbonate has been done, as you can see, two rafters at the 25 inch pitch, H-channel that has been cut and one piece of the 2' x 4' polycarbonate twin wall used to verify the dimensions from the spreadsheet...

 ...and just to make sure we did not miscalculate the lengths, two end rafters were placed in position.

As mentioned, special screws that will allow for expansion have been ordered, once we have them, all of the rafters will be assembled with the H-channel, five screws per length and pre-drilled holes. There will also be a couple of "pitch guides" created that will help with the positions of the hurricane brackets, anything to make life easier, especially when up on ladders.

Joists or rafters, Ridge angle and supplies...

It is labour day, supposedly a day off for the workers, but not on this job site.

We need 14 rafters, and need to have a couple spare for the back end of the greenhouse if the tolerance stackup works against us. Therefore we cut 16 rafters, or joists, whatever you want to call them and they are 65" long 2x4 material, then an extra cut of 22 degrees at the ridge point. 

It became somewhat of a production line, finding straight (ish) wood, cutting to length, then cutting the angle at one end. Then all of them needed to be stained, which will take a couple of days because they need to be stained on both sides.

In the photo above, in the distance you will see three bundles of wood that someone on the estate was giving away, 8 foot long strapping for siding, we will use it for the inner, and perhaps, outer retention of the large 34x76 window panes on the left there which are scheduled to be installed after we have finished the roof.

Talking of that, it was looking like we may have to exceed the budget on the ridge line of the roof, plus we needed a plan, we always need a plan. I had worked out that as I still have plenty of the 2x4 wood, I could use a double width of 7" on each side of the ridge, so that factors into other calculations of polycarbonate length, positions of H-channel and some clearance, and all that material is on hand, except for sealing the ridge, which of course is essential to minimize leaks.

On marketplace yesterday, the above popped up with a price tag of $20 and after talking to the chap, we arranged to pick it up today, which made it quite a labour filled labour day. The EZ-Ridge XT has 24 of the original 30 remaining (a full box costs around $180) and 24 of them covers a 16' length so it is perfect, plus the shingles will also be used to cover over the 2x4 external ridge beams, which will also be stained and retained with those angle brackets we bought a week or so back.

We love it when a plan comes together.

That means that, besides a box of roofing nails, caulk and some short screws and washers, we should have all the materials required to finish the project. 

Famous last words.

Back in the saddle...

We had a great four days in Calgary and returned on Saturday, on the drive back from the airport we stopped off at Home Depot for an eight foot piece of epoxy coated rebar and as usual, strapped it to the roof rack but this time using four zip-ties we had found in Calgary City Center - it was odd that zip-ties would be lying around on the street, however, there was construction everywhere and one thing for sure is, I cannot walk past a free zip-tie on the floor without picking it up and subsequently watch Karen give me the look.

There was to be no photo today, mainly because after about two hours working on the greenhouse, it does not look any different, as though nothing happened. Ok, I will show a photo as it is a record of what happened, plus when we add the 4x4 on top it will never be seen again, except here :

The rebar was cut into six 16" pieces using the reciprocating saw, then on each side of the greenhouse base three holes were drilled at about equal distance, the base being approximately 5-3/4" deep and the gravel was cleared below the holes before the stakes were driven into the compacted ground using a sledgehammer, after that we pushed the gravel back and finished off with some stain.

This two hour process is merely to add some lateral stability to the structure. A greenhouse, or a shed, will move over time because of vibration, gravel shifting and of course, the weather, especially the wind. Although this greenhouse is quite sheltered we decided that placing six stakes about nine inches into the ground provides a little sleep at night factor that at least we did something to stop the structure moving.

As we say, time will tell.