Ready To Raise the Roof

After getting the last of the rafters up, I put in the eave blocking. It is the board between each rafter right above the green sheathing on the outside of the building and essentially fills up that gap so when the roof is on, everything is tight to animals and birds. It was pretty repetitive work requiring lots of trips up the ladder.

Next I installed the fascia board to the ends of the rafters. This will provide a nice cosmetic look but will also allow us to install gutters at some point which will allow us to capture water for use in the greenhouse. As you might notice, I have to get creative hanging a eleven feet long board with only two hands and one ladder. I made a jig that I temporarily screwed to the bottom side of a rafter to help support one end until I got the other end lined up and nailed into place. 

To attach the roof panels, it will require me to have to reach across a four foot sheet without putting all my weight on the panels and perhaps going right through one. It doesn't seem safe to try to do them from a ladder or perches on a rafter and so with two long boards and a bunch of short scraps, I made a bridge to span from one side of the building to another and fits in-between two rafters. This should allow me enough stable footing to put in fasteners as required without putting a lot of weight on the greenhouse panels. Above I am testing it out to make sure it felt stable and it did.

Another shot from below. I plan on climbing the ladder on the outside of the building and then stepping on it from between rafters. There isn't enough space, or really I am just not agile enough to access it from a ladder inside the building and then get stood up in the small opening and height I have to work with.

A final shot with everything in place and ready to start applying the roof. Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty windy and ideally, I think it would be nice to have some help at this point. My brother (and family) is coming up for a week arriving tomorrow and my dad is back at the farm so between all of them, I'm hoping I can enlist one or more sometime in this coming week and just do it all in one go with plenty of help. Until then, I may cut a panel to size and make sure I know how it all goes together since this is my first time with working with flat panel multiwall polycarbonate greenhouse roof panel systems.