The brickwork and stone cornices were completed this week. Well almost. There was still the block work in the roof space which was being laid as the rafters went on. You have to have a sense of humour to work on a building site and you need another dollop of goodwill to all men when someone is poking a length of 4x2 up your backside. "Leave a rafter out so we can get that block work in" says the brickie. "Your trouble is you are too fat, any man that can't get into a 600mm opening needs to lose weight". replies the chippie. "I might be fat, but I can still sit comfortably in your mouth" comes the reply. Things quieten down after that someone is using a tape measure and that requires concentration.

There is a week's work for two men pitching the main roof. The rafter all sit on the steel framework around the top. The sunken area in the roof will house a pitched skylight often called a lantern or belvedere. This won't be visible from ground level but indoors it will throw a lot of light down into the stairwell. Modern houses, even if they are made to look old are all about light and big open spaces. This has to be reconciled with the ever more stringent energy conservation requirements. Glazed areas tend to lose heat quicker than walls or roofs. Double glazing and argon filled low emission sealed units are now standard but even these don't provide enough insulation to allow the kind of extravagant glass structures that you sometime see on Grand Designs. Having said that it you have a south facing glazed area then there is an argument to be made that you will gain more heat than you lose. The trouble is that you gain it when you don't need it and lose it when you really want to keep it in.

The roof tiles look like rustic handmade clays but they are in fact machine made and then just knocked around a bit by hand before being fired. This is described as ‘hand finishing’. The roofer were fairly optimistic about their task even when I suggested that there were more cuts on that one roof than you sometimes see on several roofs. They were optimistic because the price they had put in wasn't great and after racing along on the flat straight bits they ground to a snail’s pace on the hips and valleys. There just isn't any way of rushing it. Each tile has to be measured scribed and then nibble away. Now and again they used an angle grinder but by the time you walk down the battens pass the tile to the cutter and wait for it to be cut you can often do it in situ. The nibbler sits on the battens and takes off tiny pieces. Unfortunately some roofer (not these guys), let the small off-cuts slide down the membrane and accumulate at the bottom under the eaves tiles. When the moisture runs down the membrane and collects at this point you get a sludge which hinders drainage. The nibbles should really always run down on the tiles and not under them.

Integral to the roof tiling is the lead flashing which needs to be done as the roof is tiled. Lead is still a very popular material despite the fact that it costs a huge amount. A lead alternative is being used in the sunken roof areas and we will look at this in detail on the next blog. Hopefully by that time we will be in the dry and some of the internals can begin.