Where the sedum roll comes to the edge of the roof it is cut to length with the diamond disc cutter. You can use a stanley knife but you use a blade in a single cut because the fleece is very abrasive.

The crane lifts the rolls up to the roof and the usual crane sign language is used to lower them in to place and unroll it up the slope.

To overlap each 1 metre wide roll an overlap edge has been provided that generally needs rubbing with a block of wood to remove odd bits of sedum and create a straight line for the next roll to butt up to.

 End view of the sedum, which is grown on a fleece “carpet”. It is cut the day before and must be laid out today or it will die. Better get a move on then!

 Like most houses our site does not have enough space for an artic so the fork lift that lives on the back of the artic trailer has to bring the 22 rolls of sedum to the house for the crane to lift them up.

 We find the lorry a little lost in the village and lead him to site. Our sedum is in rolls on the artic trailer, in between rolls of turf for other customers. The blue thing on top is the frame to hang from the crane to roll out the sedum which is in rolls of about 300kg.

On the ridge of the roof a special fleece is laid to help hold moisture in this area prior to the sedum being laid on top.

With the articulated lorry bringing the sedum from Norfolk delayed on the M25 Dean the crane driver takes a nap.

To cut the sedum which is supplied on a fleece a diamond disc is used in an angle grinder!

We finally source some stainless steel clips to secure the irrigation pipes where they T off to go across the roof. As the irrigation system is buried under the sedum if a pipe came off it would not be good news. In front of the pipe is the stainless steel anti slip strip with it’s plastic saftey cover (to avoid standing on it!) removed. This digs into the sedum under fleece to stop it sliding down the roof.

A very good tip. Make sure your sedum irrigation system is well tested because when the sedum is installed, if the sedum is dry it can take 2 or more hours before you see any water coming off the roof because the sedum will absorb shed loads. If you don’t know if the system works properly you could get very worried waiting for the water to show. If like us you then leave it on overnight once the sedum is in place, such a long watering period means that even when you turn the irrigation system off, you will end up with the roof dripping down the guttering for up to a day! See later blog entries! 

Because our roof slopes at 22 degrees we are now having to fit a “leaky pipe” irrigation system so that in particularly long dry spells we can give the sedum some water during it’s initial settling in period for a couple of hours at a time.

Here is where the water pipe comes out onto the roof and branches off to the two sides of the roof. The grey plastic thing is a valve to allow the water in the pipes to fully drain when the supply is turned off.

The white plastic clips have turned out to be useless so will be replaced with some stainless steel ones before the sedum goes on, hopefully next Tuesday. 

Hopefully we will be able to recyle water from wet periods to water the sedum rather than use mains water which we did for this test.