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The End of the Beginning


dnb

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I have finished crawling round on the roof so my attention turns to finishing off a few bits of fascia, then battening, fire breaks and cladding. I left most of the battening to Jeff while I put in the first few bits of wiring for the (almost Blackpool level of ?) outside lights and made the last cuts in the fascia ends so they meet the soffits nicely. This ended up as several hours of work, making what felt like tiny progress while the battening seemed to fly along.

 

This is the fire break and battening surrounding on of the gable end arch windows. Next job here is to install the insect mesh over the top vents and I'm not looking forward to that much because the mesh is marginally more vicious than the autumn insect population and likes to tie itself into gordian knots.

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We have had more than our fair share of wind and rain over the last fortnight, so I quickly gave up on the fascia trims because the scaffolding was slippery and I didn't like the idea of gluing plastics when it is likely to be very wet, so I opted to start cladding on the finished battening - it all needs doing! This is the first corner near the front door prior to cutting the excess lengths off.

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A bit more cladding done. The priority is to get the gables completed, then we can think about getting the scaffolding down because it's at the point where it is hindering almost as much as it is helping. We now have a scaffold tower to finish off the last few jobs when the time comes. It's beginning to feel like a house now.

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I needed to attend work for a lot of this week but was able to escape when I got a phone call out of the blue from my window supplier. I was in there the previous weekend for something else and they had no news, but by Wendesday my windows were in their yard and they wondered if I would mind awfully taking delivery fairly quickly because they could hardly move.  They agreed to my timescale of "Now is a good time" very quickly. Three round trips later and I had 48 pieces of glass and 15 frames.

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We opted for aluminium framed windows so that we could get away with very thin frame sections as well as having a reasonable performance. They aren't the best performing window on the market, but they are pretty good and the cost difference would never be recovered in efficiency savings.  Besides, there are easier and cheaper ways to claw back the "lost" performance should it be required.

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We elected to store the frames near the apartures they are supposed to fill. The old bed frame and furniture is there to try to get some engagement from my not quite teenage daughter about room layouts and colours. It was partially sucessful.

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My first attempt at window fitting. I have put in wedges to hold the windows at the right position on the outside of the building and another to stop the frames tipping back so that I can see how the windows are going to fit before I drill holes and get out the expanding foam, in case I need to change anything with my plans. So far, so good... ... Apart from the scaffolding being in the way again. Only 12 more to go.

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All looks good. Windows look very tight in the openings - do you have much room to get compriband in? I had the opposite with mine in that I went with the gap stated by manufacturer of 13mm all round, could have been half that in hindsight.

 

Are you fixing through the frames or using brackets? Both have pros and cons. Brackets are causing extra work for me now as I cut ply to pack out around them so plasterboard can sit properly!

 

 

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Good progress.

 

I could be wrong as I've never done it. But for the vertical battening above the arch window I think there should be a gap to allow and water to free drain down the sides of the windows. Just now as the vertical battens are tight up against the window fire break if water gets in there it can't get out. Sure this is what my render supplier told me and what I'd read on here somewhere too. Worth double checking I think. 

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2 hours ago, SuperJohnG said:

I think there should be a gap to allow and water to free drain down the sides of the windows.

 

You're right - and embarassingly enough I hadn't noticed it (yet). It's one of the very few slip ups stemming from someone else helping. All the others have a gap!

 

At least it won't be hard to put right with a correctly set up circular saw.

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3 hours ago, LA3222 said:

Windows look very tight in the openings - do you have much room to get compriband in?

There is an 18mm void space inside the window, and they aren't quite so tight on the outside because the OSB of the SIPS sits away from the timber. My plan was 10mm x 12mm compriband on the outer edge and filling the void with (very carefully injected) foam. The compriband then seals to the outer OSB and is partially covered by the external detailing.

 

The gap is nominally 5mm all round butwhen I took the photo I hadn't centred the window in the openings so one side does look very small. The bathroom window has 7mm all round. SIPS tolerances are tight, but they are still not perfect!

 

I am going to fix through the frames because it's the easiest option for me.

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Cutting the vertical battens short also allows air to flow up behind the cladding and around the windows, and you hopefully will have air gap top and bottom, closed off with stainless steel insect mesh.

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Shop around for your Compriband as it is very expensive.  The genuine stuff is sadly the best.  I have bought from ebay in the past.  If is is warm out, keep it in the fridge.

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2 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

closed off with stainless steel insect mesh

 

It's stainless rodent mesh (slightly thicker wire, but same pitch) at the bottom - we have quite the collection of critters on site so it seemed more sensible. I made a former and bent it into a U profile so the battens clamp it. This was much more fun to do than I was expecting, right up until it came to moving an 8 metre length of it to the front of the house.

 

The cladding is definitely vertically vented all round, apart from the bit we know wasn't done right! I don't have any good pictures of the bottom mesh and stuff because it has been far too muddy and wet to want to go near it again.

 

2 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

If is is warm out

I kind of hope I am done before the weather warms up!!

 

2 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

...The genuine stuff is sadly the best...

You're right there. I'm not seeing much price difference between places on line so I am making sure I only buy the minimum I need.

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I got the first few windows levelled, shimmed and screwed in today. Lots of careful measurements with the laser level to make sure the frames didn't become parallelograms... I believe them to be good to less than 1mm for squareness and levelness. Hopefully I will get a bit faster because 3 windows took me all afternoon!

 

It was cold but sunny today and it was the first time I have had the window apartures opened up. I can believe there will be significant solar gain from the mostly south facing windows. It would have been good to see them with glass in to get an idea of this. Maybe tomorrow...

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12 hours ago, dnb said:

I can believe there will be significant solar gain from the mostly south facing windows

The sun is still low this time of year.  23.74° at noon yesterday, will be 59.82° on the 20th June.

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5 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

The sun is still low this time of year.  23.74° at noon yesterday, will be 59.82° on the 20th June.

I assume those are elevations and noon UTC. The idea l have in mind is that the longer than average eaves act as sun shades as the sun elevation increases in summer, so hopefully if my maths is any good there will be at least some shade for the bedrooms for the warmest part of the day in a summer.

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3 minutes ago, Mrs dnb said:

@dnb Please can you stop upsetting the weather Gods?  I do not like fitting windows in sub-zero temperatures.

 

It's good for the Compriband. 

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