Daily Archives: January 11, 2013

week 21: setting a new standard for flat roofs?

Posted on by
Reply

In my professional capacity, I do a lot of roof surveys, particularly roof failures on flat roofs. But, rarely have I actually specified one. So, I was naturally concerned that the flat roof design should be a good performer and wanted a good quality polymer waterproof layer (not the usual asphalt). Our contractor recommended Poole Single Ply Roofing Systems who use and install  Cefil UK membranes. Having seen a small sample and had a talk with the installers, I decide to go along with their enthusiastic recommendation.

Roof membrane applied  velux roof window

Installed on top of 150mm Kingspan TR26 insulation, the grey Cefil membrane is installed in a true craftsmanship style. It takes a little longer to install than I expected it would, but realise much of this additional time is due to the attention to detail around the Velux window up-stands and over the parapet. The final proof will be when the roof is complete, but if all flat roofs looked as good as this, I know that my defect survey bookings would be down! As the owner of this new roof, I have to say that this is a more re-assuring scenario.

This roof membrane will continue across our rear extension/balcony area and will replace the existing garage roof.

week 21: a placeholder

Posted on by
Reply

Due to upgrade problems since just before Christmas, the recent entries you have read have been back-posted (actually I’m not sure what the correct time-related adjective is for this). But we’re now in the present. Week 21 following week 18 is deliberate and skips weeks 19 and 20 as the site was shut for two weeks over Christmas.

From a programme viewpoint we are behind. This has a lot to due with the wet and cold weather and a bit of over-optimism by our contractor as far as the original programme was concerned. I think the construction phase will last until around week 30.

Continue to enjoy and please continue to post your comments: more and more coming through. I am also pleased (and shocked) to see that this site now has some 38,000 hits from over 1000 individual visitors – thanks for your interest.

Happy geeking

Ian

week 18: new heating and hot water system

Posted on by
2

Heating at last

Working very long days, our heating engineer has now got the new heating and hot water system commissioned. We are re-using our existing, relocated boiler, but this causes some last minute problems – it doesn’t fire. After sinking some new parts into it, we finally get it going again. The house took quite a few days to heat up – the new radiator sizes are tiny – sized to cope with the proposed thermal specification of the house, which is a little way off yet. But we’re warm and dry: perhaps not energy efficient yet, but as the heating has been off for the whole heating season so far, we’ll care more about efficiency at a later time – right now, it’s the warm that matters.

The hot water system is an OSO Twin Coil cylinder. At present it is indirectly fed from the boiler only – the solar collectors will follow when the budget allows!  The heating is served by three zones: one per floor, i.e. each floor can call the boiler for heat – they don’t have to be heated to the same temperature at the same time.

The photo shows the cylinder and valve station just prior to wiring/commissioning. There is more to do: remove temporary pipework; install insulation on new pipework; install lower ground floor heating. More to follow on this installation.