Flashing Fun

This week got us to the stage where we are ready for the roof! Tom spent Friday gathering supplies while I was at work, and we met at my work and headed off to get dinner before going straight out to the site. Friday night was another cold night, and frost sparkled on the ground when we awoke on Saturday. Tom snapped an icicle off the tap to fill the kettle, and the water was temporarily reduced to a trickle. However, we had been nice and cosy inside the caravan with our electric blanket and blankets piled high. After a prolonged cup of tea under said blankets, we reluctantly dragged ourselves up to start the day. The first job was to re-staple a small section of the building paper that had fallen down during the week. Then we started on the last layer of paper, after removing the battens we had tacked on horizontally to hold the existing paper in place at the end of last weekend. The third wrap went on smoothly, until we got to the final wall, the North Wall (aka one of the long 8m walls). This is when we ran out of paper in the roll. At this point, we had to try and resurrect the piece that we failed to put up nicely on the other 8m wall last weekend, which had been stuffed unceremoniously into the container. It was extremely crumpled and ripped in places when I dragged it out. We decided Tom would have a go at putting it up, and, if this was unsuccessful, we might have to go and get a second roll. Luckily, he managed to turn the paper so all the rips ended up being cut off, and smooth out the crumples sufficiently that it didn’t look too terrible once it was up!

The building paper remained mostly intact, apart from one small section which fell off…
The building paper was in a sorry state before we managed to smooth it out and staple it up (Tom pictured doing this – left)

Next, we cut out the windows and doors. This was to be done in a “V” shape to the corners, then the excess corners were folded back and stapled. Then it was time to make the sills waterproof using flashing tape. We had bought the most commonly available type of flashing tape, which, as it turns out, is quite hard to work with. It is coated with bitumen on the back, which, for no apparent reason seems to stick to the plastic backing at random points (usually when we were at a critical point in the taping process, or balanced precariously trying to tape the upper windows). We eventually developed a technique for hacking the excess plastic off with a Stanley knife when this happened, however, it made the process take a lot longer. If anyone is doing this process themselves, I would recommend splashing out and paying for mouldable tape (about twice the price, but folds easily around corners). When we had finished the first window, we mounted the support bar and popped the window in to see what it would look like. The support bar was extremely difficult to get into place straight and level. This will be a challenge when mounting all of the windows! However, once we had the window in place, it looked good. Tom talked about cutting some pieces of wood to make reveals. However, first, we had to waterproof the rest of the windows with the flashing tape. This took us right up to when we lost the light for the day. After dinner, Tom headed back out with his floodlight to start on the reveals. I was exhausted at this point, and decided to get a nice early night in order to be fresh for the following day. (Note: I have shared the documents we used for window waterproofing and window installation at the bottom of the post. The flashing tape we purchased also had comprehensive instructions on how to apply on the side – don’t do what we did and throw the packaging out only to need the instructions later).

Window number one ready to be waterproofed!
Tom contemplating the door flashing
Marking out the window ready for flashing tape, the tape has to come a minimum of 200mm up
Applying the flashing tape
Positioning the window into place

The next morning, we finished applying the flashing tape to the one remaining windowsill and the door frame. This we did first thing which turned out to be a very good thing – it was hot! Just like a classic tar road, the bitumen on the back of the flashing tape starts to melt when it is too hot, making a sticky mess. It had probably just started getting to this point as we finished the last of the flashing process. We also had literally just enough tape to finish the job – I happened to find a scrap piece of tape lying on the floor which turned out to be our very last piece needed for the corner of the door frame. Our 100m squared of building paper and one roll of flashing tape have worked out perfectly for our “zero waste” build philosophy – if we have planned as well with the plywood and can source the roof in a waste free quantity, we will be very happy with our efforts.

The finished flashing… note the very straight scaffolding standing to attention…

As we were contemplating starting the battens, Phil came up with his brother, Lawrence, who is a builder, and a friend, Mike. Lawrence immediately got stuck in with offering advice, as well as measuring up our roof space to price up some iron for us, which is fantastic! His advice was invaluable, including such crucial things as the fact that we have put the roof tensioners on upside down. He also advised us to put the roof on next, before the windows and cladding which we were planning to do first. This is for weather-proofing reasons – obviously the roof keeps off the rain, but it also puts extra weight and structure into the whole system which minimizes the risk of it blowing away. However, most of the work we have done got the seal of approval, which is a relief! Lawrence and Mike (who works in the industry) also had a look at our windows, and didn’t think Tom’s reveals would hold securely enough just being glued onto the front and affixed into the frame. After much discussion, the new plan is to fix them directly into the window frame, and fit reveals retrospectively. Although this means we will not need to use the support bars we ordered, this is about the fifth plan we have come up with for the windows so far, so it could all change again before the windows are in! Tom ambitiously stated we “would use the support bars in the next project anyway”. After our visitors had left, we continued with the process of fitting the battens on over the paper. Once again, this was a much more time consuming process than we thought – even with Tom continuously nailing while I cut and drilled the battens, we still didn’t quite get things finished before the daylight was once again receding. The last things we did before packing up the site for the weekend were to try and wind proof our paper again – we laid two large pieces of timber across the roof edge of the section we had not finished battening to hold everything down, and I then went around with some tape securing any seams that looked “dodgy” (aka could potentially tear if a strong wind blew around them). All in all, we feel we did an excellent weekend’s work – although the visual changes to the structure are minimal, we did some essential weatherproofing work which will hopefully keep us warm and dry in times to come!