Why can't a building be more like a car...

[MikeSharp01]

One thing I have learned from my work on site over the last few weeks. You cannot create a building in the same way you would create a car. The  modern car is created with parts arriving from all over the world using a couple of simple maxims - every part is make to a specification with tolerances, the cumulative effects of all the errors is so designed as to ensure the machine still works correctly. Such an approach enables assembly and the full interchange of parts, an idea first developed by the small arms industry to ensure that you could make a rifle without a skilled fitter. Put simply the building industry is still full of fitters and yours truly is coming slowly, well not so slowly, to the conclusion that fitting is the name of the game. I guess I could have worked it out when I realised I would need a pair of nail guns, nailing is not engineering is it!

 

I machined every component of the garden room to +/- 0.5mm and -/+ 0.1 degree on angles. Spent days creating an environment that would allow me to do it. The slab is level to +/- 2mm and square +/- 0.5mm and I tool the slab errors out levelling the sole plate. I took the components, studs, trusses and lintels out and and just assembled them in the virtual positional scaffolding created in the space above the slab with lasers, now replaced with string. Can I get the roof square (+/-2mm) - can I heck. If I can't I will have to cut the OSB sheathing to make it fit. Why is square illuding me? Cos wood changes shape in unpredictable ways, including engineered timber and even self levelling lasers are only good enough to get things within a couple of mm over 10 or so meters. My brother says get a good tape rule, a plumb bob, a battery powered circular saw and give up measuring with lasers, perhaps he is right. Still I have progress I guess. Ho Hum.