New House, New Workshop Build.

[Jameshow]

The steel supports for over the openings were delayed and should have been with us two weeks ago; only arrived today on a typical wet Cheshire day. There are three supports, one over the two openings that can be used as double and single garage doors (I’m installing bifolds) and one over the large window. I’ve christened them the ‘goldie locks’ supports, as we have a thin support over the single, large support over the double and a ginormous support over the window opening. I’ve no idea why it’s such a large section beam, and the photo does not show it very well. But look at the size of it compared to the blocks.
The support beans are on gusseted steel pillars, which are bolted to the slab. The block work can now be completed up to wall plate height in the areas around the supports. The gable ends will be blocked up after the roof trusses have been installed. The brickies estimate a day of laying before the wall plates can go on ready for the roof a week on Monday.

The supports make me smile, when I’ve pulled out windows and doors and seen a bit of ‘scabby’ 4x3 of your lucky acting as a lintel or, in lots of cases the window frame is the lintel that have stood for hundreds of years.

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It's a bit small!!

 

[Ollie78]

This is looking great, I am most envious.

Ollie

 

[deema]

I need to think about what to do with the floor. There are at least four solutions for a final finish that I’m considering and would welcome your experince and thoughts. The main thing I want to avoid is oil getting into the screed over the UFH. With restoring old machines and general tinkering with metal stuff oil drips are inevitable. My ideas so far.

1. Standard floor paint with mats to reduce wear. This will be easy to maintain, I won’t get precious about it getting scratched or metal being dropped on it. It’s also probably the cheapest solution and easy to maintain.

2. Two part floor paint. Probably harder wearing than the first option, but about as easy to maintain

3. A thin layer of epoxy floor ‘paint’

4. A built up layer of epoxy floor.

Options 3 and 4 are the most expensive, I have a friend who has recently put down option 3 (he had the same company that uses the same stuff and thickness in Airbus) however his floor with moving his machines in had already lots of scratches on it and is starting to look ‘well used’. This is probably the reason I’m not totally enamoured with the epoxy route. I used to epoxy the factory floors, and put a thickness on knowing it would get scuffed very quickly.

I had wondered about the commercial grade ‘jigsaw’ piece flooring, that’s incredibly tough but I’m not sure if it’s oil proof. I suspect not. Again I used to have it around machine in the factories and we ran 10 tonne fork lifts over it! Perhaps overa standard painted floor?
What do you think?
Any other suggestions?

 

[Spectric]

only arrived today on a typical wet Cheshire day

I always though Holmes Chapel was Derbyshire but forgot the peak district covers some of Cheshire !

 

[Spectric]

Regards your floor, go for a two part epoxy / resin as several places I have worked have used it over huge areas and done right it is hard wearing, easy to clean and impervious to oil soaking in.

 

[deema]

Roof on!
Well, the perlins have been hoisted into place. They are much larger than I was expecting! The photos don’t do them justice, the larger ones are 640mm deep and 140mm wide. They are beautifully made. Very impressed.
A small crane was needed

 

[Ollie78]

I need to think about what to do with the floor. There are at least four solutions for a final finish that I’m considering and would welcome your experince and thoughts. The main thing I want to avoid is oil getting into the screed over the UFH. With restoring old machines and general tinkering with metal stuff oil drips are inevitable. My ideas so far.

1. Standard floor paint with mats to reduce wear. This will be easy to maintain, I won’t get precious about it getting scratched or metal being dropped on it. It’s also probably the cheapest solution and easy to maintain.

2. Two part floor paint. Probably harder wearing than the first option, but about as easy to maintain

3. A thin layer of epoxy floor ‘paint’

4. A built up layer of epoxy floor.

Options 3 and 4 are the most expensive, I have a friend who has recently put down option 3 (he had the same company that uses the same stuff and thickness in Airbus) however his floor with moving his machines in had already lots of scratches on it and is starting to look ‘well used’. This is probably the reason I’m not totally enamoured with the epoxy route. I used to epoxy the factory floors, and put a thickness on knowing it would get scuffed very quickly.

I had wondered about the commercial grade ‘jigsaw’ piece flooring, that’s incredibly tough but I’m not sure if it’s oil proof. I suspect not. Again I used to have it around machine in the factories and we ran 10 tonne fork lifts over it! Perhaps overa standard painted floor?
What do you think?
Any other suggestions?

I suggest a combo of the floor paint and rubber mats. As it will be a nice and smooth new floor then I think the 2 pack type floor paint would be a good option, its a bit cheaper than epoxy.
My floor isn`t concrete but chipboard I painted it with the Leyland battleship grey screwfix sell, it is pretty good but does chip a bit if a big bit of cast metal gets, er "placed gently" on it.
I bought a 10 metre roll of the 3mm rubber flooring and put this in areas where I stand in front of machines etc. which has been very successful and cheap, can be moved when rolling a machine about etc and provides some comfort and floor protection. Note I put it upside down so its easier to vacuum.
If you want thicker rubber like the jigsaw things you mention then look for horse stall /stable mats they are about 20mm thick and come in 8 x 4 sheets (very heavy) this is the cheapest way to buy it, if they call it gym mats or industrial flooring then it costs way more for the same stuff, its popular for making olympic lifting and deadlift platforms.

Workshop looking very good, those beams are enormous !

Ollie

 

[Jameshow]

Roof on!
Well, the perlins have been hoisted into place. They are much larger than I was expecting! The photos don’t do them justice, the larger ones are 640mm deep and 140mm wide. They are beautifully made. Very impressed.
A small crane was needed
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Beams more like!!

 

[Inspector]

Nice gluelams. You going to varnish them, or are they going to end up hidden?

Pete

 

[deema]

Yesterday’s joy is today’s problem. Wifey with her eye for detail spotted immediately an isssue! The roof line will occlude the master bedroom window, which was a design criteria that was written in blood to the architect. Builders have built it to drawing, and drawing is wrong! So, today the roofers have been cancelled and all work has stopped while we look at options of how to overcome the problem. Over night mulling over the problem I think we can reduce the roof pitch and gain some of the discrepancy back. The roof has a pitch at the moment of 25 degrees, the tiles can go down to 22.5 in sever conditions and 20 degrees in moderate. That will give us either c5.5 or 11” reduction in roof height if the area is considered moderate for weather.
Today we go measuring and find out exactly how much we need to reduce the roof by.

 

[Spectric]

The roof has a pitch at the moment of 25 degrees, the tiles can go down to 22.5 in sever conditions and 20 degrees in moderate. That will give us either c5.5 or 11” reduction in roof height if the area is considered moderate for weather.

Someone who is happy about global warming, much less risk from snow loading ! You might need to use a different tile or change the overlap but a good roofer will know about that, lower pitched roofs will have slower run off during a downpour and so a higher loading, rafter lengths need consideration and may need to be structually heavier.

 

[niall Y]

I worked on the roof of an extension that had a lowered pitch to the tiled roof, The architect had specified Onduline as the roofing felt layer,. I'm sure it bought him a bit of kudos amongst his colleagues, but it was a bit of pig to make work.
The main problem came when trying to trim around the Veluxe windows. There were no proprietry fittings available to channel any water that got through to the Onduline, away from the top of the Veluxes to down the sides. I often wonder how well it has fared over the years since

 

[Fergie 307]

Roof on!
Well, the perlins have been hoisted into place. They are much larger than I was expecting! The photos don’t do them justice, the larger ones are 640mm deep and 140mm wide. They are beautifully made. Very impressed.
A small crane was needed
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May be a daft question, this is a woodworking forum after all, but out of interest why did you choose wooden beams rather than steel? I would have thought the latter could be smaller and probably cheaper. I also find it handy to have a chain hoist running on wheels on my central steel beam. They do look good though

 

[Fergie 307]

I remember visiting RAF Henlow, one of the oldest bases. The hangar roofs are constructed entirely from wood. Can't remember the exact details but something like 100 foot span with a low domed roof, all done in a complex lattice of wood. Very impressive.

 

[deema]

I choose laminated beans for three reasons,
1. Aesthetically they are more attractive.
2. In a fire they are far better than steel
3. They are cheaper than steel

 

[Fergie 307]

I choose laminated beans for three reasons,
1. Aesthetically they are more attractive.
2. In a fire they are far better than steel
3. They are cheaper than steel

Agree entirely on 1 and 2, you surprise me with cost. Never looked into it but would have assumed steel to be cheaper. Every day's a school day. We had a big fire near here recently, completely gutted a steel framed industrial building. Amazing how big girders let go once they get hot enough. The remains look like a pile of spaghetti! Looking forward to the next instalment of your build, hope you manage to sort the roof. Good job you realised the issue before you got any further.

 

[Jameshow]

I remember visiting RAF Henlow, one of the oldest bases. The hangar roofs are constructed entirely from wood. Can't remember the exact details but something like 100 foot span with a low domed roof, all done in a complex lattice of wood. Very impressive.

The Purbeck hall at Bournemouth conference centre has an amazing glulam roof...

 

[imageel]

This reminds me of my house extension that had vaulted ceilings and glulam hip beams - I'd miscalculated by maybe 0.8m the hip lengths but luckily they were long enough to straddle the inner skin of the cavity wall, so I took some joist offcuts and glu-laminated and morticed and tenoned them onto the ends of the hips to support the overhanging tiles - my house doesn't have boxed-in soffits so the overhang is larger than most...
My bricky attested to their strength after skinning his shins on them whilst laying the outer leaf of blocks!

 

[deema]

Well, on further inspection solving one problem creates another
We can reduce the height be circa 150mm or 6” by changing the pitch to 20 degrees. We have measured everything and ideally it should be 300mm or 12” lower. The 6” just about meets my bosses approval. However the GlueLam has been made too thick, it’s just over 100mm too thick, great for strength……but reducing the roof height coupled with thick beam means that the height within the workshop is severely compromised. I need a certain height to use a stacker truck / room to lift things out of machines…..and 10” makes a lot of difference. The roof height was at the minimum I really could live with already..

The option of a flat roof is out of the question both from aesthetics, longevity and keeping leaves off it. I’m surrounded by trees. So at the moment I don’t have a clue how to resolve the various requirements and find a solution we can live with. To add to my woes, we are now going to miss the slots for the joiners, roofers etc and head into winter. I’ve no idea when I can next get a slot to get the roof on. Well and truly F****ked. I can see those laminated beams going into the scrap pile!

A well aged Scottish friend and I are going to be good company this evening! Something I rarely if ever do. Building and renovating a house I find extremely stressful. Never, ever, again!

 

[imageel]

Wowsers, that is not good.....
Given the SWMBO issue I don't know what to suggest, albeit the route I took (predating my house purchase) which involved a significant legal expense and likely years off my life was via the matrimonial courts and so is definitely not to be recommended...

Could you get the GlueLam bandsawed perhaps or run through a thicknesser to reduce to the correct dimensions, I appreciate these are large and heavy beams so transporting etc is not simple, but perhaps keep your build on track?