We got to be a bit addicted to watching the sedum grow while we had the luxury of scaffold to view it from. If you enlarge this shot you can see the droplets of water on the sedum, which get adsorbed into the pods on the ends of some of the varients and are used as a reserve for the plant and give it better resistance to drought. Indeed, over watering can encourage weeds and grasses that need more water than the sedum to survive.

 As the scaffold is taken down the down pipe for the gutter needs to be installed while we can stand on the lower level and the upper level scaffold has been removed. It takes about a full day for all the scaffold to be taken down. We bought this gutter system in Germany a few Christmases ago – like a lot of self builders we have been accumulating things that we saw that we liked before the building started, along with tearing out pages from magazines that had things we thought would suit the house.

Tomorrow the scaffold finally comes down. A bit nervous, have we forgotten anything? We hope not. Then the house can be seen in all it’s glory for the first time, albeit that the ground floor external wood stain has yet to go on.

With the scaffold out of the way we can then put the 4 metre long sliding windows in place.

 A last look at the sedum roof to check for any weeds. This is the last time we will ever have the luxury of being able to walk around the outside of the roof on scaffold planks to view how things are. Already each of the 8 or so varities of sedum are growing, some are flowering so we will put these up on the blog over the next few weeks to brighten things up a bit!

 Another thing to be fitted before the scaffold came down! 

This was quite a complex one. The stainless steel safety rail we made and put on the ridge of the house stuck out above the sedum roof, and with the house being in the middle of a field could have acted as an attraction for lightening. So we discussed the issue with a very helpful lightening conductor designer who told us what to do and what to use. So we have put two conductors, one at each end of the ridge, with one connected to the existing stainless steel safety rail with a further stainless strip. We could not use copper where there was any chance of it contacting the sedum as it would kill off the sedum roof covering we were told. So two neptune like forks at each end of the roof is what we have ended up with, plus 75mm square copper down to the ground where we have put more stainless rods into the ground. How many rods you need depends on the resitivity of the ground, which depends on whether it is sandy, clay or whatever.

Theres only a few days to go before the scaffold comes down so we have to make sure we have done all those little things that will be very awkward without it.

Here are a few. 

 We have fitted a bracket for a standard aerial and a dish. We have used stainless fittings wherever we are fixing to the Western Red Cedar to avoid steel rusting and staining the wood. So to avoid the steel brackets rusting with time and staining the wood we have put plastic packing behind the brackets. We have used brown co-axial cable and clips to reduce the colour clash with the beautiful wood.

We have also made a 6″ hole for the air inlet for a heat recovery system for the house. Making this hole through an 8″ thick log took an hour or two!

 Now the window headers go in. We have made the angle on the ends the same as the corner dovetails and made the header deeper than the original test window set up. On the bigger windows if we had not done this the headers would have looked a bit mean.

 We’ve got grass growing in the Sedum so before the scaffold comes down we will have to have a weeding session.

So since March we have revised the window fitting design, beefing up the vertical architraves and changing the header design so that it too is routed out into the log to get a better seal. Getting all the necessary parts for the 20 plus windows and doors has taken a while at the never ending queue at the joinery shop but at last they have arrived and we can get on with installing all the windows and doors.

 So this is the window in its lining in place with the header and vertical architrave areas machined.

  And here are the vertical architraves in place and the screw plugs awaiting shaving off and touching up with primer.

The header will go in next week!

 Now we are really moving forward as the upstairs windows go in. In a few days time we will be working on the ground floor windows and the scaffold can come down.