gavztheouch

@JamesP oh yes I forgot I have an external membrane and internal vapour barrier. Do you have a closed cladding or is it open rain screen?

@JamesP yes it’s 60mm wood fiber 12 mm Elka board 245mm stud filled with wood fiber, 12mm osb then 45mm service cavity and plasterboard

Roof complete! Major relief. Third baby is due on the 16th of March. Scaffold came down yesterday. Next job is to finish building the porch, install the rest of the windows and complete the outer membrane. we have been lucky with the weather low wind and not much rain. Need to wind proof the membrane in case we get another storm soon.

Built a rough staircase today. I needed a better way of getting materials upstairs. Next step is to take the windows upstairs ready for fitting.

Still up at roof level but I see light at the end of the tunnel with the roof. A couple of weeks and I should be able to get rid of the hire scaffold and then switch over to my own. last week I installed my first window, 1 down 23 to go.. What this project needs is a one man band joiner. I need someone I can work with together. What I find is most companies work as a pair which leaves me redundant and paying twice as much. I would rather employ one person for a long time rather than multiple people for a short time. This is especially true with theses passive house style builds as a lot of time can be lost scratching heads with unfamiliar details.

I found it really hard to secure the membrane without making holes which leak. The biggest leaker on mine was the screws holding down the battens and there is not much you can do about that. In general though it kept most water out. If you do not secure it down well and use less fixings to avoid hole if the wind picks up it will tear and oil on the membrane making much bigger holes.

Hi im thinking about a temp install of my heat pump to put some heat into the slab. My timber frame is sitting on an insulated slab and water is pooling under the sole plate. In winter it prob is not drying out under there. Going to start to seal the house up to limit water ingress. I though it might be worth hooking the heatpump up to the ufh to try and dry the soleplate. My system has about 70 litres of water in the pipes. Im looking at connecting the arotherm straight to the ufh manifold, from the diagram the only thing extra I think i need is an expansion vessel. Does that sound right. I was hoping the Vaillant heat pump would be able to pump the water round the circuit using its internal pump. It might be worth adding insolation valves both ends of my temp pipe so I can try and save some of the expensive antifreeze/inhibitor

Hi everyone, Im looking for some ideas and opinions on my flat roof design by my architect. I am a bit worried about the use of sealant as a primary waterproofing layer on my new build roof. Here is a walkthrough of the design and how to build/sequence the detail. Step one: The green coloured roof in the image is a layer of osb attached to the rafters, it is covered in a breather membrane. The purple part is firestone epdm formed inside the parapet, up the walls and down the other side of the parapet to form a little triangle web. Step two: A ventilated deck is formed above the original osb roof and epdm. This layer is covered in another breather membrane. There is a plywood upstand running up the cheeks to form the standing seam upstand against. Step Three: Standing seam Greencoat metal roofing material is added, note the upstand against the dormer cheeks. Step four: A flash band tape is added to seal the standing seam metal roof against the dormer cheek membrane. The tape is called extoseal by proclima. Step five: Cladding battens are added. Step Six: Add wooden cladding Step Seven: Adding metal capping piece over parapet walls tight against metal roof Step eight: Add sealant where the capping piece meets the roof. My issue with the design is the reliance on sealant to waterproof the junction between the capping piece and metal roof. This will have the roof above pouring water onto this area and also wind driven rain will be blown back against it. I have 4 dormer windows so there will be 8 of these junctions. The architect did mention I could slip the capping piece under the standing seam. I think for that to be better it would need to be running up the roof with a suitable overlap to stop wind driven rain and capillary action. I think it would also need to flair out and become flat to be able to go under the roof which will be difficult with a steel capping piece. Also unless you lap the metal roof like slates in this area you will always need to seal certain edges with sealant. I have a few ideas on how to better the design but I wanted to get some opinions on the design as it stands today. Would you do this detail on your new roof? Cheers Gavin

https://youtu.be/uZf9aAsytm4?si=TO_7B4VJdSwwK2bB I have a question about my parapet walls and thermal bridges I think as a compromise I might just use one 245mm by 45mm for the upstand and cover it with 60mm insulation on the outside to keep it warmer

Looking for some opinions on my roof. I have a 18mm plywood ventilated deck for my standing seam roof. It sits on top of the basic roof joists and osb. the deck is 18mm plywood sitting on top of 50x50mm battens. Today we installed the 50x50mm battens. We used 100mm spax stainless steel screws to hold the battens down. I was worried about the 600mm centers not being accurate enough to make sure we were screwing into the joists ( I measured them drifting out with my 30m tape over the whole length of the roof. The joiner assured me not one screw will miss the rafters. Over the first ten joists this was mostly true as I didn’t spot many not hitting their target. I felt assured and went off and did something else. When I returned at night with my head torch I noticed a few screws that did not go into the joist. As I walked to the far end of the roof it got a lot worse, I counted 103 screws missing the rafters out of 300 so about 1/3. Not to mention the ones you can’t see that will be just under the surface with not much holding force. Some rafters have every screw on the batten missing the rafters. My intuition say the engineer will have over specked and this will most likely be ok as it is. However I am not very happy that things like this keep happening. The only way of fixing it would be to have someone inside spotting for someone on the roof to call out which screws to remove and rescrew. This will make a lot of hole in the membrane but I have come to relise this first membrane should hopefully never see water, however it is still annoying. I also don’t think they will fix it or I will need to pay them to fix it. I also don’t like all these screws poking out as it will make getting a good fit for my wood fibre insulation difficult. Should I be annoyed, what would you do?

What was the alternative to standing seam you recommended. I think my preference now would be integrated solar for as much of the roof as possible and then fake plastics or rubber slates to the edges.

This makes a lot of sense. Wish I had a nice simple roof with no dormers.

Thanks, this is what I had in mind about. I did have an additional membrane over the sarking boards but I see how this is not helping. Vmzinc have a detail for this and they do not have a membrane over their sarking board but they do over the plywood. I agree I would not use standing seam again. My biggest dislike is the hard to repair factor. I have 4 flat roof dormer windows that will no doubt leak at some point, could be a nightmare waiting to happen

Im about to start building my ventilated deck. I prefer to handle sarking board vs large sheets of 18mm plywood. I noticed Vmzinc say you can use sarking board under their Zinc. Just wanted to know if anyone has used this method. How did it go? Are there any disadvantages? Some advantages I can think of are. 1. increased ventilation behind the Zinc. 2. About half the cost of Marine plywood, the best ply option, Still slightly cheaper than acceptable plywood. 3. No risk of delaminating 4. May be more forgiving if your 600mm rafter centres are not perfect. You could cut the wood back to the next rafter. Im not sure about this one. 5. Easier to see rafters to nail. 6. May be possible to do the job myself or with a little help from my dad. Disadavantages. 1. Wood thickness may vary a lot board to board. 2. The boards ends may split easier than ply 3. Less coverage per board and potentially more cutting/measuring 4. Badly warped/cupped boards may need to be discarded. Some boards may warp on the roof. Do I need to double nail each joist to stop them coming up as they dry?

EcoCocons Panels look good. This house was built with them https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/projects/detail/?cId=88

Yes I will be tapping the membrane to the foundation upstand. The folded up dpm or any extra bits of tape and membrane were meant to be extra barriers. Now that I have thought about it more I will revert back to the original detail of using just the membrane to stop the water getting through to the sole plate. Like you say keep it simple and try and do it well. Maybe I will monitor some choice points of the wall in times of windy wet weather to see if I can see any water getting through. An ideal solution would be a wire or some type of detector that could detect water at the sole plate. Then we would know to fix the membranes/window taping

Which option did you go for in the end?

I really like this idea but now I'm not sure I should do it. My concern is if any water finds it way to the bottom of the wall, the external membrane is trapping the water from getting out as it is taped to the upstand. There is however a possible path out as the gaps between the isoquick as quite large, some almost 10mm. These could work pretty nice as drains. If I put the tape marked in orange this will bridge over the gaps and stop the water. My next though was keeping these drains clear. I think I might have to prime the cut edge of the wood fibre board and run a length of pro clima 100mm wide vana tape over the edge to stop all the fluffy bits of wood coming off and washing down into the drain.

@Iceverge Im about to start adding the external wood fibre to my build. Im interested to hear if you still think stapling the dpm to the wall is a bad idea? I should clarify the dpm will be folded up against the racking board which is behind the wood fibre so it would need to get in between the wood fibre and the racking board which I guess would be possible. To prevent it diverting any water towards the sole plate I was planning on adding some pro clima tape to hold it against the racking board making it even more unlikely to divert water into the wall. If I could go back in time I would have maybe stapled it against the studs as this would be very unlikely to have water running down the studs. I didn't do this as the nails for the racking board would go through the dpm.

Currently leaning toward these Modified PU liquid rubber roofs. A very similar method to GRP but less sensitive to rain and temp during install and flexible once set. Looks like a better option than GRP. https://www.bmigroup.com/uk/ultima/

Many thanks Kelvin, Yes it seems flat roofer are hard to find and most people don't speak highly of their work. Ive been training myself to weld various single ply membranes but I would be able to buy most weldable single ply membrane made of stuff like PVC unless I do a course. I would be willing to do the course if they will let me.

Hi @Kelvin did you manage to find a Scottish installer?

157.414_DormerDetail.pdf Just received the details from the architect. First thoughts are it is very complicated for 4 very small dormer roofs and will be a lot of work. I don’t think the circular outlet has enough area around it to weld/glue too. There are also a lot of varying surfaces/angles and junctions in a small space. It’s annoying details like this are taken through the simplest part of the roof and do not take into consideration the more complicated areas like the upstand corners transitioning into the top of the upstand area. The upstand corners need to be detailed with a pigs ear or a remolded epdm piece this would be right in the way of the outlet. Then we have the issue of the area in the video where the pitched/flat and in upstand meet. A lot of these issues could be solved with grp. How does glass fibre cope with movement?

157.414_DormerDetail.pdf

Having a go at this in resitrix epdm. I think I need to cover both upstands in one go across the whole width of the dormer. Maybe GRP is the way forward, getting it dry enough at this time of year for GRP could be an issue. I try again with the resitrix and see if I can get it better.