Roofed

 I had hoped to get some help roofing from my brother while he was up visiting but my youngest daughter suddenly ended up with a fever and a cough. Since she can't get vaccinated yet due to her age and only had the original alpha variant of Covid, we assumed it was Covid again, this time the delta variant. The tests came back negative for flu and strep but we had to wait three days for the Covid test results. They finally came back as negative, meaning she just has the average viral cold, thankfully.

So while waiting for the results and assuming I was perhaps going to end up with a break through infection, I spent my time applying the roofing panels alone. It wasn't the easiest process but it wasn't too difficult either and I just kept plugging away at it over two days and got it done. Just getting to this stage makes me really happy and hopefully will give me a burst of energy to finish the rest.

After the negative Covid results, my family came up and spent a couple hours helping me apply the fascia aluminum covering to protect the wood fascia board from the elements. Handling 12 feet long pieces of thin gauge aluminum is one of those jobs best done with about six hands. I'm sure it would have taken me most of a day with lots of clamps and trips up the hill for this or that to accomplish the same task. 

Next up, I need to finish siding in the gable ends with plywood and then water seal up the sheathing from moisture in case I can't get it sided until next spring. After that, I hope to start installing doors and windows to completely weatherproof the exterior.

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. 

Last Rafter

 Although it feels like a momentous accomplishment to get the last rafter fastened into place, I still have quite a bit of work before I can start adding the roofing panels. I still have to attach the fascia board so that someday in the future we can add gutters and perhaps a water collection system for use in the greenhouse. I also need to add some blocking to fill the gap between the top of the wall and the bottom of the roofing (and comprise the third build in purlin for support) and I have to flash all the fascia. Then I can start putting on the roofing material. 

Then I can finish siding in the gable ends, apply waterproofing tape at all the seams, install doors and windows and everything will be weather tight. Hopefully all this happens before snow flies.

Bountiful

 A week after our last visit to the garden, we returned to find all of the above. Probably well over 100 pounds of filipino upo, three baskets full of green beans, another basket mostly of tomatoes plus tomatillos, egg plant and okra and another basket of filipino sitaw (long string beans) and bitter gourds (those green warty looking things). 

It was way more than we cared to consume or preserve and so we sold all the upo to the asian store on our way back home. The three baskets of green beans, along with some bitter gourd, we gave away via social media and I turned the tomatoes and some frozen ones we had around into twelve pints of tomato soup ready to heat and eat this winter. I would have preserved some of the beans but we still have probably a two or three year supply already canned up. 

I did start some tilling though it is really too dry to really do more than chop up the green vegetation on top and the mulch a bit. My goal is just to till in the mulch a bit so that come next spring, it will dry out a bit quicker and allow me to work in the garden sooner, always a problem most springs. 

Seething Over Sheathing

 With the exception of the gable ends, I finally got the exterior of the building sheathed and ready for application of siding, windows and doors. It wasn't without problems however. When I was trying to calculate how many sheets of plywood I would need to sheath the entire building, calculating it made my head hurt. So I figured I would order what I felt would cover most of it and then estimate how much was left and order that. It only had a lead time of a week the first time around and I knew I could haul the remainder in the minivan to avoid another delivery charge. So I put up what I had, calculated what I needed and place a second order. 

The lead time on the website had changed from one week to three weeks but I didn't think that would matter as I had other places I could focus my attention on. But three weeks later on the last day of September, my order switched from being delivered on September 29 to just being on order. No notification except that change of the order status when I manually checked myself. So I called up the store and was told that the soonest they could get in the five sheets I needed was probably going to be around Thanksgiving time! They didn't know why and couldn't offer any alternatives.

I wasn't about to wait for another seven weeks just for sheathing so I looked at other (of the same name) stores around and found one about 60 miles away that had exactly five sheets on hand. I called down to verify first and then hit the road. About five miles from my destination and literally probably less than a minute ahead of me, a four car pile up blocked the road (fortunately nobody seriously hurt) delaying me by nearly 90 minutes but I was able to obtain my sheathing material. Back home I called my local store and canceled my order and got to work. I wanted to get the rest up so I didn't have to use spacers for my rafters to account for the thickness of the sheathing. Next, I am going to get back on the rafters and hopefully get the roof installed as soon as possible. Then I can put the last of the sheathing up, windows and doors and have a weather tight building. After that, I can rest easy.