The roof frame goes on

Today was a tense day!
The roof was to go in by crane and as you would imagine, I was a little nervous about the entire operation.
Firstly there was a lingering access issue which even late last night lead me to call the client to discuss contingency plans in case it didn't work.
Even the owner of the crane apparently came by and visually checked the access and gave his nod (I only found out later on though).
Anyway the crane arrived and we had to get the frame element which was pre assembled in the driveway area turned over.

This is where my first shock was!

The elbows are not up to the force from the weight of these steel elements. The top frame got way out of square as it came back down and seems to have bent the tabs of the elbows that bolted to the pipes.

Actually after it happened, it was a no-brainer that this would happen. Stupid me!

The lesson here is to somehow temporarily brace this element if it needs to be maneuvered like this.

 Then the next problem. The crane arm was not long enough.

As I mentioned in the start of this post, my gut was telling me last night that this may happen, but everyone else was waving my fears away, well it happened!

There you can see we had gotten the crane as close as possible to the retaining wall of the garden. In the background you can see the Gardenqub waiting for the top frame. We measured about 15m range and the top frame weighs in at max 500kg. Should have been a snap!

But seems that since the ground is lower where the crane is parked and we need to get the top frame up higher to clear the trees, this was all too much. We were about 1 meters short!

 So Stump Sen. calls Stump Jnr. to get the crane extension out!

And this did it. Now we had range to spare.

 And here it is!

After screwing around with the cherry tree in the left corner (one of whos' main branches conflicted with the space which the top pipe had to now occupy) and the matter of getting all the corners in all at once, it got done.

The surgery on the cherry tree to make way for the pipe.

The power conduit was pushed up in to the vertical pipe in preparation for lighting. The client and I are still to discuss what kind of lighting to install. I have some cool ideas for this, just have to sketch them and figure out the technical details. These openinggs in the top of the uprights will stay open. Additionally the elbow units inside have M12 threaded holes into which other things can be mounted, for example a flag pole or even a small wind generator!

So there is only one more step left. The flooring!

This will be done over the long weekend this weekend.

The floor joists

The woodworking parter, Stump Holzbau AG came, delivered and installed the custom made floor joists today.
They are quite hefty items at 100x200mm
This is required so that they can span the entire width of the Gardequb with no middle support.

Here you can see them with black plastic water protection membrane over the top of them.
You may be able to see the splaying of the joists toward the ends so the joist hangers would not go lower than the 150mm steel square pipe elements which the Gardenqub is made from.

 

The end joists had to be made so that they were not 200 deep. Together with the 24mm flooring thickness would have meant that the end joists would extend below the metal elements by 74mm. This would have been easily visible underneath the metal elements and would have disturbed the optical cleanliness of the overall design.

So these joists are only 100x120mm and to compensate for the loss of structural integrity, they were bolted to the steel elements in 3 places.

The spacer you saw in the previous image is because of the joist hanger bolts which force the joist to be about 18mm free of the metal frame.

Here is another view of this bolt arrangement.

Here is a shot of the flooring on top of the joist. A heights are such that there is a nice flush finish to the frame elements.

A sample of the flooring and how it will end at the frame element.

The flooring is from a company called Megawood and it is a composite material containing 70% wood material. The client chose the wide boards with the wavy finish in a nice soft pre aged grey colour. This should look very nice once the frame element turns a more orange red rust colour.

Next step: installing the roof frame.

Back to finish the job

Well I'm back from a badly needed 3 weeks vacation of sun and beach in Australia.
I had almost forgotten what the Gardenqub was!....  well not really, but you all probably know the feeling when you have had a good vacation.

Thought Id share a pick from this vacation with you here...

Me and my son in Byron bay outside a hippy music shop. Do I look happy?

back to business now...

Its time to do the last lap of work to get this project finished. The final pices of metal that were not in stock before had arrived at my friends workshop and 2 days ago got the holes drilled.
So today I went and constructed the roof frame element ready for installation.

Here is the roof elbow (virtually the same as the lower frame elbows) ready to connect to the roof elements.

An elbow bolted together. I have not tightened the bolts to give me a little play room during final installation.

A close up of the square pipe elements connected to the elbow. Note the 5 mm gap in which the vertical element will go.

The back side of the elbow. This will be hidden by the vertical element.

The entire roof part of the Gardenqub. It is up side down here in the carpark and will wait till next week when we can install it with a small crane.