teaky

Well that's the front of the house fitted with eaves vents. There are certainly a lot of spider's webs. No doubt inhabited by upset spiders since the webs are now very visible with their uPVC dust dressing. I thought this was going to take longer but the most time consuming aspect turned out to be getting the uPVC discs out of the hole cutter. I might have to devise some kind of tool before I tackle the back. Top tip: I made a simple jig for marking the hole positions from an off cut of timber with lines marked on it which enabled me to mark the centre points of the holes a consistent distance from the front edge of the eaves and at the correct intervals (200mm in this case). The scaffolding has a row of cross braces that exactly match those on the main top platform so I was able to remove a couple of boards down by just over 0.5m and lie on my back to drill the underside of the eaves. There are still two left to do which I'll need to do from a ladder after the scaffolding, which was in the way, has been removed. I'm not bothering with photos. I posted a picture of the circular vents a while ago and they don't look significantly different once installed. I might take a snap once the scaffolding is out of the way. Time for lunch.

btw There's a small bonus with fire doors. Our house is significantly quieter (when the builders aren't here). Although the effect may be greater because the old doors were the hollow type.

Yep, this is no different Pete, but rather than lay the mesh after the floor joists are in I chose to fix it to the existing ceiling joists. See posts 27 to 30. This wouldn't be an option for anyone fitting under slung floor joists but in my case the bottom of the new floor joists will be above the ceiling joists. I appreciate you asking though. For the inexperienced like me it is easy to miss things. If you don't have one already I recommend buying an electric stapler. (A bit like a poor man's nail gun.) They really help. Did you not have smoke alarms already? Our house has them in the hall and on the landing and all I've had to do is connect in to the landing one using some 3-core and earth cable which will run up to the new alarm in the loft. Blimey, 11 fire doors. I hope your door frames are straighter than mine. I have done seven so far with just one door left to do and some of them have been a real faff with lots of planing, sanding and adjusting.

Perhaps that's a little too much ventilation then? The important thing is to have a flow of air which allows any moisture laden air to escape without condensation being created. At the same time, you don't want a howling gale blowing through because that draws away heat.

The final roof structure will be: tiles, felt, 50mm air gap, 100mm PIR insulation between the rafters, 40mm PIR under the rafters, 12.5mm plasterboard and a few mm of plaster. This will meet the current building regulations. I know from converting the garage a few years ago that it doesn't take much insulation to keep things nice and snug. Eight teenagers in there on a cold winter's evening produces so much hot air that the heating doesn't need to be on. (N.B. I am not recommending teenagers as a form of heating. They're much too noisy and the fuel input is too high.) If you are thinking of improving your current set up Stu then anything you add between the rafters will be an improvement even if you can only get, say, 50mm in there. Just make sure there is an air space between the insulation and the felt and that this space has decent air flow. As well as the 50mm gap on mine I will also be adding additional ventilation near the ridge and fitting some vents in the soffits. (See earlier post.)

The floor joists will sit on the bottom plate of the steel beams. So that's just above the insulation at the bottom of the photo above Stubby. As you look at the steel beam the distance from the front edge to the large central, vertical web is just over 100mm so that gives a good bearing for each end of the floor joists. The floor joists are 200mm x 75mm and make the rafters look small. They will be at 400mm centres but that means there will only be an empty space between them of 325mm and there will be 100mm depth of 'wool' loft insulation between them to comply with fire regs. The steel beams and wooden posts on top of them will be insulated and covered over to form the side walls of the new room. This won't give very tall sides but I chose to have it this way to maximise the width of the room. A perfectly valid approach would have been to have the taller side walls with the steels closer together and thereby gain a little extra height because slightly smaller floor joists could have been used due to the smaller span. It's all swings and roundabouts.

Soil vent pipe altered, extended and reconnected. Rear face of roof re-felted, re-battened and tiles replaced. Three of the four holes for the steel beams bricked up and made good. Timber plates bolted to top of steel beams. Short posts added to support new rafters where they pass over the steel beams (I wonder if they used enough glue?). The builders won't be here tomorrow as they are playing in a once-a-year golf match for charity. I can hardly complain since it is for a worthy cause. Don't go thinking you're going to be spared a day of these exciting updates, I'm sure I'll be able to find something to post.

You see, now that would worry me. The thought of the light coming on leading to the car vanishing a month later.

I'm struggling to see why that one's funny. My mum's car was damaged whilst parked last year and has cost her hundreds for the excess and in increased insurance costs. My cousin had exactly what you illustrate done to him in a nightclub car park several years ago. Also, expensive.

Thanks Reorte. There is no explanation of what MS mean so I just thought I'd ask in case it did turn out to be dynamic IP addressing but I guess not. I'm at a bit of a loss to figure out the point of this Win10 feature. Having it On or Off appears to make no difference.

Do you mean this symbol by any chance?

Yes, they have been fairly tidy. There's pile of debris on the drive at present but a skip is due to arrive today (Thursday) so that will be sorted. Most of the sawing of timber has been done on the drive and always swept up at the end of the day too. Yesterday, the head builder was clearly pleased about the way the steels had gone in and was delighted how they lifted slightly as the bolts were tightened, taking the weight from the structure below exactly as they should. It was nice to see this and seemed more like pride in the job than relief at taking another step towards finishing and payment.

I know Manna. The steel beams and all the timbers seem way over the top. I don't know if is true or not but I was told by someone who ought to know that they are around 2.5 times what is required. This struck me as ridiculous margin of error but I'm stuck with it. I need structural calculations in order to obtain building control sign off. I know I wouldn't buy a house with any significant alterations which didn't have this, so it is unavoidable. I am hoping that the value added to the house will be more than the cost. Bear in mind though that the steel beams have an unsupported span of 8.2m so it is quite different from the usual span of, say, domestic floor joists. Plus they carry the entire weight of the third storey - floor, roof, finishings (insulation, plasterboard etc.), room contents, occupants, allowance for weather (e.g. snow, gales) and so on.

In Win10 Settings there's an option to "use random hardware addresses". I cannot see any explanation of what they actually mean by this. Is this of any use for this problem?

Each steel beam was made in four sections and bolted together. In theory, they could be in one piece but at almost 800kg each they might have been tricky to handle! (You can see why I opted not to do this bit myself now.) Here's a picture to illustrate. (There's a further section to the left of the shot.) This represents a significant step in the process. The piece of timber sitting on the beam is just a piece of scrap but the next step will see a timber plate bolted to the top plate of the steel beam and on top of that will go a series of short posts to provide additional support to the new rafters. The holes at the ends of the steel beams will also be made good with bricks/blocks.

I'm just trying to decide what track to use. I'll ask over on the Peco bullhead thread. I'm sure I'll get a clear answer quickly without any conflicting advice.

Steel beams are in. Floor joist timber has also been delivered. I'm not expecting much else today. I think putting back all the roof tiles that were removed will take the rest of the afternoon. Mind you, they are sawing something up there. I am pleasantly surprised by the lack of damage from getting the steel beams in place. They were in four pieces weighing around 200kg each with four people lifting them into place. Although there were boards down to spread the load, this is quite a concentration of weight on some skinny ceiling joists. There is a 250mm hairline crack in one bedroom ceiling which is so small it might even be covered by paint and in another bedroom a small (50mm2) patch of plaster fell off plus I had to tap a nail back in. Trivial.

Actually, I suspect we're in agreement Atso. I wasn't suggesting the colour becomes grey like no. 5, but that it greys like everything else when covered by soot and grime.

It's such a tricky topic this, isn't it? So much depends upon weather conditions, photographic settings etc. I like no. 3 too. Older teak coaches seem to tend towards a greyer version so Atso's suggestion of a wash would cater for that. Have you considered narrowing it down further then painting up a couple of slightly larger samples which you could take to a preserved railway next time you're in the UK and do a direct comparison? (Before anyone says it, yes I realise preserved railway teak may not be spot on for assorted reasons but you can make a judgement at the time.)

Rain stops play again. Three of the five windows are in. Set for an early start tomorrow for the steel beams.

Based on the amount of junk I cleared out prior to starting work, the new steel and timber additions might well be lighter.

I think you might be looking at from the wrong angle Chris. The point is to feature layouts that people wouldn't have the opportunity to see because, unlike exhibition layouts, they never leave home.

Roof windows Two of the five roof windows are now fitted. Not too difficult but leaving this to a builder who has fitted lots of them, albeit not of this brand, is reassuring and much faster than I'd manage. The first one seemed to take ages but the second one took a fraction of the time. Pleasantly surprising how much brighter the loft is already. There has been quite a bit of the usual sawing, hammering, drilling and angle grinding but I'm not sure what they've been doing all day really but they finished later than usual and they aren't being paid by the hour. The uncertain weather forecast and the proportion of roof tiles due to be temporarily removed mean instalation of the steel beams is now scheduled for Wednesday.

I also fixed a short length of guttering at one corner that had been bugging me for years. The house builders had failed to put a bracket near enough to the end of the run which resulted in the gutter sloping the wrong way and overflowing in heavy rain. I could just about get a ladder up to it but the narrow path meant the angle was so steep I had to point my knees out to the sides whilst climbing and the need to lean backwards at the top in order to reach around the gutter put me off. Heights don't bother me but that was just too unpleasant and the idea of using a drill and other tools was out of the question really. However, kneeling on a scaffolding plank 200mm below the gutter with a handrail to one side ... piece of cake. Not that it stopped my wife saying "ooo, is that safe all the way up there?" At least it shows she cares. (Or perhaps there's an exclusion clause in the insurance policy.)

Well that's the fastest gutter clear out I've ever done. I managed to spin it out to a whole ten minutes. Might be a little extreme to have scaffolding put up every year though.