Astrokev

Miserable day today ? . Bright but chilly this morning but I knew it was deteriorating quickly so didn't bother starting any work in the observatory. This afternoon the heavens opened and it just got colder. Instead I decided to be productive and started my tax return - yep it was THAT miserable! Can't see it improving enough to allow me to get the adhesive on any day soon, so will leave the EPDM held down with clamps and left over lengths of wood. At least I can check that the inside stays dry.

I gave up trying to use a roller when I did the warm room and just used a brush (which I then binned). It's just so damn sticky! (Mind you I did do the warm room in summer and it was baking. The adhesive was drying almost before it left the brush).

?. Can't complain there! freezing here too and raining most of the afternoon. Decided to just stay in the house until it stops - probably Monday I reckon. Hopefully it'll start to warm up next week, but I'm worried I won't be able to get the adhesive on fir quite a while.

Hi Chris. Absolutely. Feels good to be on the inside without being dripped on ?

Yes, it reminds me of last autumn, when I paused the work on the foundations around this time. It was months before I could start again!

Thanks Roger. I assume you're referring to the angled edges? Good spot! I do plan to put battens along these edges, but I needed to leave them off to enable me to screw the cladding to the eaves. With these battens in place there wouldn't have been room to access the top edge of the cladding. So, the order of events regarding finishing the roof are - 1. Paint the cladding. 2. Attach battens along the eaves. 3. Glue the EPDM. Thanks for your other suggestions. I have some experience laying the EPDM on the warm room, but the main roof will be more challenging I think!

Well, the EPDM is on! This morning was taken up trying to help my daughter with her Uni dissertation (drawing parallels between art and science!), so only found a few hours this afternoon to work on the obsy. I smoothed off all the joins between the jigsaw of OSB boarding, and rounded off the edges slightly, which took an age. Plus it was freezing on the roof! Then dug out the roll of EPDM from the back of the shed and nearly killed myself getting it onto the roof. Since it's too chilly to put down adhesive, and the creases in the rubber clearly weren't going anywhere, I followed @JamesF suggestion and will leave it loose on the roof until the weather is warm enough to stick it down. But at least it's up and, by definition, I hope the obsy is technically watertight. Hooray! At least I can carry on with other work - I guess the next job is making a door. Should be interesting ?

Thanks James. I'd considered putting the EPDM in place and then waiting for the weather to warm up. This will at least protect the roof and remove the risk of the tarp leaking (which it has a tendency to do!). To do this though I'll have to buy a few more G clamps since I only have 3. You seem to have dozens!

Gorgeous day today, once the horrendous heavy dew had burned off. As planned, I finished off attaching the OSB to the roof. After playing with a few options to support the ridge, I finally opted to screw batons along the length, chamfering one side to allow both sides to sit flush. This was a bit of a faff but the end result was fine and once finished I was glad I had done it. The ridge can now support my weight without any apparent movement at all. So, here are a few in-progress pics and the finished roof. This is now ready for laying the EPDM. However, the forecast for tomorrow looks dicey, with a reasonable chance of rain and dropping temperature. I'm not sure what the lowest recommended temp is for laying EPDM - I must check on the adhesive pot. It's possible there could be a delay ?

No pictures today, but I did manage to get a bit more of the jigsaw roof fixed down, leaving just a few more pieces either side of the ridge to complete. I'll hopefully get these done tomorrow, so long as another follow-up vets appointment with doggie McDogface goes to plan and doesn't bring any unwanted surprises! I need to think about how best to fix these pieces, since I've noticed that the OSB flexes slightly where they meet at the ridge, due to them not being supported directly under the edges (small flaw in the design there). I may need to add profiled batons between the rafters to reduce the flexure. This is probably not a problem, but if I need to go clambering over the roof once the EPDM is down, there's a small risk the flexure may delaminate the rubber slightly and just niggles my OCD and perfectionist streak ?.

This week he learned how to use a spoon (more yoghurt ended up on his face than in his mouth though). Next week I'm going to train him to shimmy down the tube of my 10" Newt to clean the mirror ?

As usual, I didn't get as much done today as I hoped. Never mind - I'm getting there! Due to an oversight on my part (who else's part could it be since I'm building the thing on my own!) a long length of left-over OSB from the warm room roof turned out to be not so long after all. Hmm. This required a bit of rethinking of which pieces of remaining OSB I could use to fill the remaining gaps in the roof. The finished coverage was more jigsaw-like than I planned, but managed to fill the gaps with no holes, so that has to be a good thing. As can be clearly seen, there is some finishing-off to do - trimming the edges and ends to make them fit, and screwing down, but nearly there. Doing my regular Wednesday grandson-sitting stint tomorrow, but may have an hour at the end of the afternoon when I can do a bit more. So, not quite time to get the EPDM out, but getting very close ?

Interesting James. I'm just at the £2,500 point, but that includes absolutely everything. Surprisingly (to me at any rate) is that the ironmongery - screws, nails, brackets and the like - is currently 11% of the total. The cladding came in at 16%.

House-chores soaked up most of this morning and then some enjoyable time with my daughter and lovely little grandson, who popped over to see us. So, only managed some time on the observatory in the afternoon, but was pleased to have finally started work on the roof covering. A few pictures of todays progress. Tomorrow is weekly shop day, but I'll hopefully finish off the gaps in the roof ready to start doing battle with the EPDM ?

Thanks mate. Feel free to pop over anytime - apart from Wednesdays (when I'm on grandad duty ? ) and this Thursday morning - otherwise I'll be out the back playing in the shed.

Yeh, know that feeling. Once my roof is on I'll be happy. I have a make-shift board to cover the outer door, so life should get easier once the roof is watertight.

…. and I've just taken the dog out in the garden, and guess what ?. The ground is soaking wet so we've obviously had a shower this evening. My BBC weather app forecasts a 13% chance up until 11, dropping to 1% at midnight. I knew I should've left the tarp on. Grrrr!

Good ol' weather forecast strikes again! It always amazes me that the 10% chances around these parts seem to happen on >50% of the occasions they're predicted! Perhaps I should start to do the lottery...

Sounds good. I will definitely be putting barge boards on the west and east sloping ends of the ROR. I haven't decided how to finish the south and north ends yet - options are to wrap the EPDM right round the edge of the roof and secure with a batten underneath, secure it along the edge with a batten or roof tacks - or maybe just leave it if it looks secure enough with just the adhesive, but I suspect I'll need something. Need to think that bit through some more - probably on the fly.

Thanks - yours ain't so bad either ? . I just wish I was a quicker worker! I'm in no great rush, but I have to say I'll be really pleased when it's finished now, so I can use the thing. There's lots of other jobs around the house mounting up!

Ah that's good! Yes, the contact adhesive is 'orrid. I've just thrown the brushes away at the end of each stage. Not looking forward to using it on the main roof but it does a pretty good job of fixing the edges. That said, I may still use battens, or similar, around some of the edges where I think there's a risk of it coming loose with time.

We decided to go and see First Man at the local Vue cinema this afternoon (highly recommended if you haven't already seen it!), so I only had a few hours this morning to plod-on with the shed. De-tarped the roof, and got soaked in the process due to some hidden pools of water lurking between the roof joists. Then put up the south end ROR cladding and the fiddly-bits around the corners of the roof. In so doing I discovered that the two north-end corner pieces catch slightly on the ROR rail support posts ? . I guess when I made the corner pieces I obviously didn't fully open the roof to check that they didn't catch. So, off they came, trimmed them back, re-painted and re-erected. Not really enough time to start cutting OSB so I decided to add another cladding strip to the north end beam of the roof. Not really needed, it just gives all four sides of the ROR a more even finish. In the pics, you can see the final gap between the ROR and the south wall, which is about 3-4mm. When fully closed, the ROR overhangs the south wall slightly, so I'm happy that no rain can enter through the gap. However, I'll probably still seal the gap on the inside once the ROR is finished. Reading @JamesF post in @LeeRich thread also prompted me to ponder on how much I've still got to do on the build to get it finished - OSB and EPDM the ROR (hopefully this week). Install flooring. Put up internal wall boards to make it look pretty! Insulate and board out the warm room. Make the outer door and inner door to the scope room. Install anti-vermin netting around the edge of the foundations to keep inquisitive mice/rats at bay. Install guttering. Install electrics - although I'll probably run my kit from an extension cable in the first instance (I want to run a ring around the whole garden, to include my son's shed, my tool shed, and the garden cabin. A bigger job that can wait till the observatory is operational). Plenty to be getting on with then! EDIT - You may also notice that the paint on the south wall has bubbled up in places. I think this is where I applied knotting solution before painting. So, either this wasn't fully dry before I painted, or the solution has reacted with the paint in the heat of the sun. Later in the build I will sand off the affected areas and repaint. A faff but hopefully quite simple job to put right.

Looking great James. I know what you mean being nervous about measuring and cutting the EPDM! I did the same and bought 1 piece to cover both rooms. Did you use contact adhesive round the edges, as they recommend, or just the water based adhesive?

Lovely out in the sun today. I finished dipping the ends of the cladding boards and then gave them a couple of coats of preserver. Most of the day was therefore spent waiting for the timber to dry off sufficiently to allow me to put them up. So, late afternoon I eventually managed to get both sides of cladding complete and installed. A few days extra effort from the last photos I posted, and the boards look exactly the same, but it's given me comfort knowing that all exposed timber has been well treated with preserver (it satisfies the OCD in me). The small triangle of missing cladding at the apex of the roof is intentional. I've decided to leave this as is, since this part of the gable-end will be covered by the beams which support the edges of the OSB on the overhanging eaves, and won't therefore be exposed or visible. Although I haven't put them up yet, I also fashioned end pieces out of spare bits of cladding. These will fit more snugly around the roof rails and track - more cosmetic than functional, but should tidy the ends of the roof up a bit. I'll put these up tomorrow. I also cut a length of cladding to run along the south side of the ROR. This will reduce the gap between the south wall and the roof to help keep the wind out. The plan is to seal the remaining gap with a length of EPDM running along the inner face of the south roof beam to keep wind and bugs out. This will become clearer when I fit it! Since we're promised a few days of dry weather, I'm going to tempt fate and take the tarp off tomorrow (was that distant thunder I just heard...). With luck I hope to start playing with the OSB for the main roof.

Looking great James ?