Since our trial window in mid March we have procurred all the Western Red Cedar we needed to make the window and door linings, finalized the design and had it all machined at the local joinery shop, and the linings made up with mortice and tenon joints ready to install. We beefed up the width of the external architrave and have made the header the same depth as the log dovetail ends and with the same angle so it looks “designed”.

All the joinery has to have two coats of undercoat before installation and the log apertures routered ready for the architrave and header.

As the outside envelope of the house nears completion we have started to plan the interior in greater detail. The last pallet of materials from North America was full of log “siding” which is strips of Western Red cedar machined to look like the inside log profile so that we can use it as a wall finish on stud walls where we wish to increase the log effect rather than use plasterboard. So we have inspected all the siding and put the perfect siding in one pile, the average in another and the bits with ugly features that will require these lengths to be cut up in another. Then we can use any left overs for window headers.

 Today our sheepswool came from the Black Mountain Insulation company in Wales. We are using 2 layers of 75mm thick sheeps wool insulation under the sedum roof to get a similar U value as 100mm of conventional insulation such as Celotex or Kingspan.

It rains again this weekend which is ideal for helping the sedum settle in. Just like the irrigation system, when the sedum has not had any water for a while it is hours before any rain makes it’s way to the guttering. Once it does you get a slow trickly which makes it the ideal roofing cover for our low lying ground to avoid flooding. This will work particularly well with summer storms during dry periods as the sedum will soak up and store most of the water in it’s fleece carpet.

The sedum roof will need annual “maintenance” to check that all plants are healthy and to remove any weed growth that might compete with the sedum. So to comply with the safe working at hieght directives we have fitted a guide to limit the movement of a safety line when people walk on the roof to do this work. This top rail can be fitted now the sedum in place. The sedum should grow to a height of 75-100mm so this will eventually be more concealed.

So by 4pm after an 11am start the 185 square metres of sedum roof is covered and trimmed. Now fertilizer is sprinkled by hand over the roof and the whole roof sprayed with a sprinkler head for an hour or more to avoid the fertilizer burning the sedum. Because of this the initial watering cannot be done using the leaky pipe system but subesquent waterings can. And overnight we get some rain which is a real bonus!

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.