• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Ian’s new workshop. The Wonky Donkey. Final bits of insulation done!

Nice jig/gizmo, very handy when no one is at the other end to hold the measuring tape. Taking a little more off is good as the ridge board probably isn't perfectly flat, most likely a bow?
 
Ian you mentioned above local rules and screws or nails. Are building regs/controls relevant for a construction inside an existing building?
 
AndyP said:
Ian you mentioned above local rules and screws or nails. Are building regs/controls relevant for a construction inside an existing building?
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Unfortunately yes, can’t even put a shelf up without a permit in this state! Widely ignored of course.
There are 6 really fat galvanised nails that hold the hanger to the lintel, and 4 special 2 1/2” construction screws that go in diagonally through the side of the joist and into the lintel. It’s up to me whether I use screws or nails and this is the mixture I’ve decided on.
Ian
 
Then I had a little accident, I was carrying a 16’ length of 2x8 ready to be sawn to length and fell over backwards over one of my stepups and landed onto an offcut, luckily no bones broken but huge bruises and possible rib damage, hurt like hell for a few days.
BUT life goes on.
Another milestone, all 15 joists are now in ! My method of ascertaining the correct length worked very well I’m pleased to say. Only 3 of them were a fraction too long and needed a little persuasion, the 10lb persuader can be seen on the table.
Next it’s filling in at the edges with insulation and then 4 layers (6”) of insulation on top of the joists.
The end is almost in sight, yippee. Ian

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Wow Ian, we geriatrics must be careful when working alone, glad it wasn't serious. Maybe have the missus give you a hand when needed.
joists look purdy.(y) No worries about storing stuff above the 2x8s.
 
Geriatric ! Well there’s a first, I must be getting further on in years than I thought lol, but you’re probably correct haha.
Pam helping me? No I don’t think I will risk her being hurt she’s far too precious and her skills lie in other directions.
Yes good storage up there, and I can load it from two directions, I intend to install a hoist/lift in the other part of the barn, might even build an insulated room for bits of furniture etc so a way of lifting it up there would be useful.
 
Always loved simple mechanical things and this ticks all the boxes, a bit of woodwork for the platform, 6’ x 3’? End and back frames with ropes joined to an electric motor hoist that’s readily available here for very little money. Then a bit of a Shute/ guides to ensure that it doesn’t get trapped under the overhang as it comes up, there is a raised area on the top floor with hatches in the sides that was originally used for loading hay through that I can repurpose for this.
And it will be just the job if and when I buy a few planks of this and that, or the Ash from the dead trees in the garden to store above the workshop.
Ian
 
Sorry to read of you having that accident Ian - but good to hear you're recovering 👍. Also good to see the progress 👍 😀
 
After a very lot of very sweaty work nearly all the blocks of insulation are in to cover the headers/lintels

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And all 4 layers are down giving 6” of rigid insulation on the ceiling, I’ve been conscious of not creating ice dams so I’ve been careful over the soffits, ( no I hadn’t heard of the problem before either). After testing at ground level that it would bear my weight I gingerly put the first layer down and then each subsequent layer overlapping the joints in the first. Then I screwed it all down to the joists 6” underneath using the 7” screws, it wasn’t easy to find the positions of and then hit the joists but I persevered it wasn’t too bad in the end.
You can’t see them but between the rafters overhead was a minefield of rusty nails sticking through from the roofing stuff, hundreds of them, how I didn’t snag myself or gouge my head is a mystery.

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I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t really feel any improvement in temperature and I started to get really worried that I’d bought such old insulation that it’d lost its effectiveness even though Ai said such a thing wasn’t possible!
So I bought a small piece of new insulation from the big Orange shop and made up a couple of 6” cubes one from the new stuff and one from the old, I luckily had two identical digital thermometers and put them in the boxes and screwed the lids down.

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The first experiment failed as I waited too long before opening, so I redid it and put both boxes in the fridge for 2 hours.
On opening the boxes the temp had fallen from 72° to 43 in the new insulation box and 40° in the old. So although it’s not as good as the modern stuff I’m reassured that with the amount of insulation used all should be well.
 
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That is just with one layer of insulation? Do a test with the bottom layer as your floor insulation is and so on for the wall and ceiling.
You got lucky with not scraping your scalp with nails, me on the other hand will suffer. Or you have a thick head of hair.
 
duke said:
That is just with one layer of insulation? Do a test with the bottom layer as your floor insulation is and so on for the wall and ceiling.
You got lucky with not scraping your scalp with nails, me on the other hand will suffer. Or you have a thick head of hair.
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Well yes, but I’m confident that I’ve proved the old stuff works which is what I was worried about. Just have to fit door seals and block off the old lock holes and the room will be fairly airtight.
Used to have thick hair but I’m a bit thin on top now lol !
 
Are you intending to do something about all the old rusty nails coming through those boards that you had to avoid Ian?

I'd be having thoughts of putting/forcing some celotex type polystyrene boards on top them or boarding to cover/hide them by using some cheap boards attached to the rafters... future safety and all that... OR just leave a warning note, clearly visible, to ALWAYS WEAR A HARD HAT ⛑️ 😎
 
That certainly would be an easy fix! But I’ve definitely got better things to do inside my new workshop, yippee, shan’t be using that space for much, if at all.
Originally I intended to put the extractor up there but there isn’t the headroom now and I wondered if sucking the wood chips upwards might not be such a good idea anyway.
Ian
 
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