Re-felting A Roof

Roofing in the rain is never much fun.

Luckily there's been a good team of us working on this roof and it's made the wet days go that little bit faster.

 The last couple of weeks we've been systematically stripping and re roofing a large roof in the village I grew up in. The house is a lovely old place, full of character and that character extends up into the roof!

The previous roofers (back in the '70s I'd guess) laid the felt over the battens - not your usual approach! All in all though the roof wasn't in a terrible state, we've had to add new valley boards to each valley and replace or repair a few rafters on each section of the roof before adding new felt and battens.

We've also been splicing the old fascia board and making new fancy barge board. It should all look pretty good when it's done.

Pine Truss

This week we've had to put a roof on to a large underground shed that houses the water tanks for the house I've been working on. For this roof we had to make two large pine trusses as the roof is to have Coraline sheeting on, so there will be no rafters only purlins.

Pine truss ready to go in

Made out of 9"x3" timber they are mortised and tenonned together with a large bridle joint for the top of the truss. They look really smart and should last many years.

Cut Roof On A Steel Frame

If you've been following the blog you're know I've been doing quite a bit of roofing lately.

This is our latest one (with the other carpenter on site):

The Orangery

Good view of the new roof

 Quite an interesting roof as the one side is fairly normal, except it sits on a wall plate we had to bolt to the steel and the top has to notch around the ridge beam.

Picture showing the top of the rafter nothced round the steel and ceiling collars

Small birds mouths with the end of the rafters trimmed to make fitting fasica easier

 The other side finishes into the existing wall, so a timber first had to be bolted along it (working out the height for this was quite tricky) and then the rafters cut to fit between.

Other side into the existing wall - supporting timber is bolted

Tight reversed type of birds mouth

Enjoyable roof again though. The outside details for fasica and bardge board are going to be difficult but I'll post about that when we do it. We've got the box gutter to put on tomorrow (where the roof meets the wall) before we start back on our large roof light installing the plastic frame.

Cut Roof On A Porch

In the UK we describe a cut roof as one you build from scratch, not using preformed trusses. These tend to be the roofs I end up doing and it's funny when I've spoke to other carpenters who avoid them.

Getting the first four rafters up and the ridge is normally the tricky bit

This week another carpenter and myself have put a cut roof on a rather large porch, it has quite a good pitch (40 degrees) and a wide overhang to allow for the stone work that needs to be built up under it.

Ceiling collars added to give the roof that triangulation it needs for strenght

Starting a roof like this is the hard bit, working out the angles, cuts and lenghs. We used a ready reckoner on this roof (a book with tables of values for different pitches), each working it out separately and making sure we arrived at the same answer (we did!). Getting the first four rafters up with the ridge is normally tricky (you could each do with three hand to fix and hold everything). This is the point where you need to make sure all your cuts are spot on before you cut everything else.



Front view of the framed out roof



Side view showing the gable ladder on the front to be supported by the stone work

Picture showing the eaves with soffit added and fasica but barge board still to go on

Once all the rafters were up we added the ceiling collars to strengthen it then work on cutting the rafters to the right overhang and adding a "ladder" to the front to carry the barge board past the stone work that's to go up.

Not bad for under two days work but still a bit left to finish off next week.