Tanking the east wing walls

We are working to get our east wing habitable for next winter, and we need to get our timber studwork built around the external wall. Which means we must get the wall tanked up to 1m, over the render that Ric had applied last year. We need to tank across the floor by 1.5m as well, but that will wait until we need to build the floor up and screed it. We are using the same stuff that we lined our window sills with – we paint a primer on the render, wait for it to dry out, then use tanking membrane that more-or-less sticks to the primer. The membrane comes in 1mx20m rolls and is surprisingly heavy – over 30kg. It comprises an outer polythene skin and a rubbery, tacky backing. We used it last year under the studwork that holds some of the east wing roof trusses up, it has been well trodden ever since, but seems tough as old boots. We also used it to line our window sills.

We did the tanking in two stages. We primed a 400mm strip round the edge of the concrete slab and 100mm up the wall, then cut lengths of membrane in half lengthways into 500mm strips. We followed the advice to leave the primer 1-2 hours, but found by experience that that was not long enough, overnight was much better. Probably because the weather has been cool-ish. Anyway, we folded the tanking strips to get a neat fit right into the corners of the wall & floor, then laid the tanking onto the primer. We used a hot air gun on a medium setting to get good contact in key areas where we thought it might not stick properly.

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The next stage was to prime up the walls, wait for that to go off, then apply full-width lengths of tanking over the 100m upstand from the first stage. The membrane sticks very well over other membrane, so we had to get it right first time! The membrane mostly stuck well enough to the primer, but we knew from last year that gravity would do its thing and that eventually it could well simply fall away from the wall. We fixed that by screwing a 30mmx4mm PVC beading along the top edge. We turned the top edge of the tanking over on itself under the beading and used stainless steel screws into wall plugs. A couple of times we needed to loosen the ends of pieces of beading and discovered that the membrane bonded to it very effectively – I had to use a screwdriver the lever them apart. Most of the work involved simple straight runs, the tricky bits were getting good results in the external door opening & our big window reveal, and lapping it onto our previously-tanked window sills. So it took a day and a half and we were glad to see the back of it – the primer is stuffed with VOCs and the membrane was heavy and unwieldy. We found out that it really needs to be done in dry weather. Any dampness really reduces the sticking power of the membrane onto the primer.

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Slapping down our last window – the inside

We have one more window to open up, the only one that we have to make in an existing wall that we cannot open up from the wallhead. We planned it in two parts:

• Firstly to open up the inside of the wall, insert concrete blocks to form the sides, then dig out above to install two concrete structural lintels and support the wall.
• Secondly to repeat the process on the outside of the wall, quoin stones each side then a concrete lintel and the decorative granite lintel above. We will probably notch the quoin stones 25mm or so, so that we can slide a granite sill in place afterwards.

The first part went as planned. I marked out the window with spray paint, then dug out rubble up the left side to at least half the depth of the wall. I used a cement mortar and built concrete blocks up to form the left side of the window opening. Then the same up the right side. Digging out the stones above the window was a lot more problematic. There were two big stones from the front face that went well over to the inside wall, there was no way I could get them out without knocking right through. So I got the rotary hammer out, drilled holes across the stones and used the feathers & tare set to split them. It was a bit of a fiddle, but they did the job. It was fairly straightforwards after that – I made up a dryish cement/lime mix, set up the chain hoist on the joists of the roof trusses and lifted the lintels into place, packing mortar above them as they went in.

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Sarking on the north wing

We got all the trusses up on the north wing that we could, 31 in total. That leaves 8 more that will have to wait until we have the front door stonework completed. We over-ordered by two trusses, I was not certain of the length of the north wing when I ordered them.

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We nailed battens across the rafters in preparation for a storm that did not really materialise, although it was breezy throughout. Next up, we trimmed the ends of the rafters, routed notches in the ends of fascia boards and nailed them up,

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Over the next four working days, we got both sides of the roof covered with sarking boards. They had dried out over the winter & spring and were easy to handle.

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And that is all we can do on the roof without rooflights, which we order soon. We will leave installing them until Ric gets up on 5th May.

More north wing trusses

The north wing currently has 8 trusses installed, right up against the east wing roof. Our first job is to get as many of the remaining ones up as we can. Ric had prepared the trusses, cutting the birdsmouths that will bear on the wallplates and trimming the rafters roughly to length. We mortared 22x100mm wallplate onto the outer edge of the two courses of 215mm concrete blocks that make up the top of the wallhead, using 1:6 cement mortar. After it had gone off, we drilled and screwed it into the wallhead, 4 screws per 4.8m length.

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The following day, we marked up the positions of all trusses that we could (we have not yet built up the wall around the front door). We then used the angle grinder and medium breaker to cut notches in the concrete blocks below the top two courses of blocks. These are in the way because we have cut birdsmouths in the rafters, dropping the lower edge of the rafters too far for the design of the wallhead.

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We then got down to placing trusses on the wallhead, without Ric to guide us. He had parked them just where we needed them, we could hoist a truss at a time using our mobile bay of scaffold, push the truss over the wallheads and stack them up in groups (six in this case), to keep enough space to work in. We could then shuffle them along the wallhead away from the installed trusses, dropping the last one into position and using batten nailed to the top collar to hold the truss in place. We repeated until all had been nailed in place.

We checked the alignment of trusses against the north wall wallhead and also checked that the upright timbers above the collars lined up. We put a truss clip under each end of each truss, then strapped every second truss down to the top of the wall. After two days we had 12 trusses up, joining the existing 8. This is just over half, with 19 left in total, but 11 that we can install until the front door is built up. When I ordered the trusses, I was down south and did not have accurate measurements of the length of the north wing, I erred on the side of caution and ordered 41 trusses. So we have two spare trusses. Ideas on a postcard, please…

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We have moved to Scotland!

We are now living in Scotland, in our static caravan, surrounded by our part-built steading conversion. The change all went more or less to plan:

• We had been clearing our house in Kessingland for the last few weeks, boxing up out belongings and moving furniture out to our garage. This kept us busy right up until the last minute, though we will not move it up for another week or two. In the last week, we had a lovely meal out at the Jolly Sailors (Pakefield) with past and present swimming club people on the Tuesday. On the Thursday, Jill worked her last day at Bungay library, eating cake and bringing home a box of gifts. On the Friday, we both finished our last days at work. I worked until lunchtime, handed back my work laptop, speaker phone, headset and pass, then went down to the Jolly Sailors and stayed there with past and present colleagues, until 4pm. I got a bus home, being unfit to drive. That evening we went out for a meal with Kessingland library staff.
• On Saturday, Jill jogged her way round Lowestoft Parkrun for the last time, we packed immediate essentials in the car and top box and at midday, headed over to Manchester, where we met up with Catie, Mairi & Ian. Jill is running the Manchester marathon with them.
• On Sunday, they got up at 5.30am to prepare for the marathon. At 7am, the runners got a tram over to Trafford Bar, to the start. They started their runs from 9am. I went to Homebase in Stockport to get plywood, to make a shelf for Catie’s cupboard in her flat, then headed over to the marathon finish. I got their in time to see Ian finish on a time of 2h 41m, a championship entry time for the 2020 London marathon. Catie & Mairi came in together on 3h 43m, giving them guaranteed entry to the 2020 London marathon. Jill came in just under 5 hours, looking as fresh as a daisy – an amazing first marathon. We ended the day with a very satisfactory meal in a Canadian-style restaurant (Poutine, anyone?)
• We got going at 10.30 on the Monday, driving up to Aberdeen, taking just 6.5 hours. We stopped the night with Fred & Lesley. At about 10am on Tuesday, we arrived at the steading to find it all in good order. We got straight down to work, getting roof trusses on the north wing. In breaks and the evenings, we contacted organisations that need to know we have moved.