First wrap
April 15th, 2008 - Posted in bodging, eco-building - by Sarah|
We are now back in the swing of things here at the Croft after a very enjoyable but hectic March which included introducing my parents to our sheep and taking them on a whistlestop tour of the South Island . It was hard to get back into the rhythm of building again but we’re making visible progress now which will makes things easier.
Our next step was wrapping the frame with Watergate building wrap stapled to the studs, nogs and top and bottom plates. We used a single length to go all the way round the building which was hard work but more efficient that having lots of overlapping joins and also easier to keep straight. You’ll notice that the writing on the wrap is upside down. This is because we needed to start wrapping on the side where the prevailing wind would blow the wrap onto the building rather than away from it. For us this meant moving anti-clockwise and the way the stuff came off the roll meant that it was upside down. This is OK though – so long as the writing is on the outside you can attach it any way you want.
Most of the wall insulation will be added later from the inside but on either side of the doorway we have got ply bracing on the inside of the frame so we needed to put that insulation in before fixing the wrap on. The Terra Lana insulation is really nice stuff to work with.
We needed to build the doors so that we could attach them at the same time as wrapping so that the wind wouldn’t just get inside and blow the wrap off. This was a bit of a bodge job, although they are up and working. The doors were designed before we had to add a cavity to the building to satisfy the council. So in order to get the doors to close into the recess in the concrete slab we had to put 50mm thick pieces of timber under the outer hinge straps.
Still, we knew we were going to have to do this in advance so we were prepared. What we weren’t expecting was that the gudgeon and pintle hinges specified in the plans would not actually leave us with enough room to attach the door jamb between the building frame and the door. The outer bolt hole is just too close to the hinge. So we have put them up without a jamb for now. Unfortunately we had measured the doorway and allowed for the jamb when cutting the doors to size so we were left with a gap in the middle which we have covered over with some spare plywood. On paper the door design looks great but in practise it doesn’t work unless you want to buy 500mm gudgeon straps which have slightly more space between the hinge and the first hole. We’re still not entirely sure how we’re going to resolve this long term so please send through any great ideas.
Still, we now have an actual room, with doors and stuff where we can sit in comfort when it rains – progress!
