Large Garden Room Project – Part 2
Hi Everyone,
Had a few comments in the last thread asking for an update on the build. I’m now near lintel height at the front but a few more courses around the sides and back still to do.
A couple of points:
- Really regretting the brick I chose. They are Hampton Rural Blend bricks. I thought they looked great but in my naivety I found out pretty quickly that they are pretty hard to lay. They are really inconsistent, every brick size is different, some are bananas, some look great, others pretty bad. If I could go back now I would have chosen something nice and standardised.
- You will see from the bricks lower down that I changed the mortar dye after 5 or 6 courses. I wasn’t happy with how light it was. It does mean that I will have to rake it out at some point and repoint with the stuff I’ve used further up. The faces of brick could do with a bit of a clean as well which I’ll do once all brickwork is completed. The brick is obviously a lot dryer now than in the last post. There will be a shed against the right hand wall one day, so I may not bother racking that side out.
I’ve been thinking about how I’m going to do the roof. My main constraint is the 2.5m height. As of now, I’m at 2045mm height. I need a lintel across the top of the bifold capable of holding the roof and the weight of 12 solar panels. I was intending to build a “cold roof” but I’m now not so sure this is the best way. I would like to have the Bifold as tall as possible, and currently it is 1970mm tall. If I could go up one more course they’d be over 2m which is preferable. But right now I only have 455mm to play with for the roof.
I plan to bear the roof load on the outer skin, for reasons identified in the first post.
Could I switch to warm roof, but use joist hangers on the inside of the outer skin enabling me to go up further up with the brickwork? What I don’t want to end up with is a huge 300-400mm facia which often happens in warm rooves.
Failing that, If I stick with cold roof, does anyone know of a low profile (150mm) lintel suitable for the job, or perhaps an RSJ designed specifically for cold rooves with ventilation holes, so I could set the roof as low profile as possible. It might be that I just have to stick with a standard height lintel of 225mm, which would leave 230mm for wallplate, joists, osb and rubber. But In reality it wont be as close because of the birdsmounth in the wall plate. For anyone wondering the roof span is 4000mm, the bifold gap is 4400mm.
For anyone interested I have £5,633.87 in receipts so far, but some big items coming up. Hope to complete for just under 20k.
Think that’s everything for now, was really shocked by the great response on the last post, so hope you still like it.