All been a bit hectic here over the last week. Couple of days down South last week to attend my mothers' funeral then back into the saddle. But looking back at the thread, I see that it was only a week ago since the last post. It seems like a month.
Watching all the online videos, the one thing that I've taken away is that they are all on rooves that are large enough for you to do one row of fibreglass at a time by walking on the part of the roof that has yet to be fibreglassed. You're also able to stand up straight! They also feature drip trims et al. But I have none of that.
For starters, I only have this crawl way down one side.
So what have I learned. For the benefit of others trying to do the same cockamamey approach, these are the lessons learned.
1) Buy yourself a couple of boxes of nitrile gloves. One size that you normally use (I use Large) and the other, the next size up. Apply a liberal coating of hand cream or body lotion on your hands and forearms.
Double glove using the normal size then over the top of that, the larger glove because trust me you will find that that outer glove will get ripped by getting stuck to things with fibreglass resin. By having a second pair, you can replace the top one as it gets ripped and without getting much fibreglass on yourself! Hence the body lotion application. The double glove also means that you can peel it off with all the sticky fibreglass resin on it, then go and do other things like mixing up another batch of resin etc. Trust me, you won't regret it.
Now go and buy yourself another box of each size as you will need them.
2) You will end up getting the basic unmixed resin on everything. It goes with the territory. I seem to get the stuff everywhere! Even on my computer keyboard and desk top. You accidentally lean on a spilled drop, it goes into your sweater/whatever and before you know it, it's got transferred to something else. Then from there to somewhere else. I've got resin on resin on resin :lol:
3) Wear your oldest clothes. I have little WIP to show you because if I told you that my jeans can stand upright by themselves by virtue of cured resin, you'll understand why.
On to battle ....
So I have to attack it bit by bit working off a ladder in the well or the Youngman staging platform. I taped up and fibreglassed all the joints in the OSB and also added the strengthening strips as suggested by Will. I also put tape and fibreglass resin into the corner between upstand and OSB. That was difficult as the tape kept wanting to pop out of the 90 degree internal angle. Try as I might, in some areas it just refused to go into the corner and stay there, no matter how much resin I put on. Tried stippling it in with a brush to little avail.
I soon came to the conclusion to not fuss too much, let it go off and then have a blitz with the sander to knock it back. Quantity-wise, I found that 500 gm of resin was enough to work with at a time and gave me time to do some tapework before it started to go off.
When I started, I'd bought a lot of roller buckets and I'd mix 500gm in one bucket, then when that was finished start up a new bucket and so on. The next day, I'd pull out hardened resin from however many buckets I'd been using. After several days doing this I came to the conclusion that that was pointless and that I could simply mix more resin in the same bucket. The resin at the bottom would continue curing but the new stuff would be at a different stage of hardening and unaffected by the stuff at the bottom. And so it turned out.
Mixing I used a set of digital scales purloined from the kitchen. They are not going back ! I used 20gm of hardener to 500gm of resin. That gave me a 4% mix which I thought should be OK for the low temperatures. Wrong....after several days, some areas are still tacky to the touch.
After faffing about with all this reinforcing tape over far too many days (well, lots of distractions here and there) finally came to laying the main roof sections. My Plan A was to cut the CSM (chopped strand matting) wide enough to go round over the rounded outer edge of the roof and also a little way up the upstand (belt and braces). Oh man, that was such a mistake. Same old problems getting it to stick in the upstand corner. Same problem trying to get it to stay stuck over the rounded outer edge. Meanwhile that resin is starting to go off and I've only done 1 sq m !
So Plan B....cut strips of CSM and resin them down the rounded outer edge. Forget the corners as they are fiddly and best left to another day. Forget going up the upstand. Just KISS. Also decided that the advice from the supplier was just plain wrong and that Winter hardener was required as some of the earlier areas were still tacky to the touch.
Even so, I still had some truculent areas that refused to behave
and a bit of a disaster area where the tarpaulin must have blown against it overnight and pulled away the CSM
But it's not all bad..most is pretty tidy like this.
OK..on the last laps now. Cut the CSM to just be enough between upstand and an inch in from the outer edge. A nice flat piece to fibreglass resin down. Just like a normal roof ! Winter hardener was just the job. Found out that a 2kg mix was enough to make good progress, then away to mix more and so on. Ideally I'd have a mate coming along behind me with the consolidating roller or mixing up another batch of resin.
Mmmm...that consolidating roller...I'm not too sure on its efficacy or maybe I'm just not doing it properly as some areas seem a little 'light'.
And I think I can see some small holes ...not enough resin perhaps? Not too fussed as there is resin underneath but I will probably put another coat of resin over the lot before I do the top coat.
But that's for another day as I've run out of resin.
Alright why didn't I go for EDPM ? Simple. It's grey. I wanted a white finish to match the rest.
Why didn't I go down the sensible route and use drip trims ? Again, they are grey plus they cost a bomb.
bscene-drinkingcheers:
