Poles, Braces and Purlins

Much discussion has occurred, both here and “internationally”, about how to sort out the roof.

Like I said last post when I visited the site, the roof had been put up but still there were no provisions for bracing or diagonals. So after a lot of thinking and realizing that details are of little use, we spent the morning up on the roof, showing exactly where the new poles were to go, explaining their functions and trying to convince them of their necessity.

It is all more difficult when the roof-guy does not speak English, Tau helped us translate, and then Camille and I marked out on the walls, pole by pole whether it was no have a high or a low “A” and where the diagonals are to be placed. Like this there is less margin for error, but as soon as the posts arrive I will be sure to be there once again to be sure that they installed properly.

Apart from this work on site is carrying on as usual. We are still struggling to find stone to fill up “Matla’s craters” and preparation for the rendering has now started. The only other slight mistake that I encountered was that they forgot to pre-form the space for the pipes in the concrete (in the boys bathroom) but I’ve been told and believe that that will not be much of a problem.

Since we were up on the roof, we made a little mock up of the new solution for the connection of the walls to the roof. Before this detail was to be resolved by the wall plate and another piece of wood, it was a fine and elegant detail, but since the wall plate has been omitted (for reasons that I still cannot explain) I had to think about a new detail. What I’m trying to achieve is a crisp line separating the roof plan and the wall, this will now be done by a stepping back of the render. We made two tests and then Tau build us a small portion and it seems to work. Not as elaborate as the original but I guess that it might work all the same.

Driving back to the office I noticed that the demolition of Lydia’s house had started, so I stopped, asked and was not amazed when I discovered that Lydia had asked them to start but that they didn’t study at the polytechnic nor know whether they would get paid for it or not… I guess some things never change!