raising the roof

I collected the roofing panels this morning, ten days later than promised, and this afternoon we started putting them on - two complete novices, Mikey and I, but it didn't seem to be too hard.



You can see that we have an over-long panel, the one on the right. We have one left over that is the right size, so we'll probably swap them rather than try to cut the one already fixed. The colour looks slightly different too, but that will hardly matter as almost the whole of the roof will be covered by the solar panels.



Mikey was invaluable: I couldn't have got them fixed by myself. The other parts of the roof (edge-pieces, and the ridge) should be a lot easier, though if Mikey is still here I'll try to rope him in again. The edge pieces will give us the extra couple of centimeters we need - had I known the size of the roof panels, I'd have made the roof to fit them, rather than just a bit too wide. I'd also have spaced the rafters differently. Virtually all of the coachbolts project on the inside (as they miss the rafters) and will need to be cut off with a grinder before I stab one through my head.

You can see that we were working until quite late ....



but it was surprising how quickly we got this main part of the work finished. I have to work out later how to get to the upper part of the roof to put in the final bolts. It can be done from a ladder on the right, but on the left the slope drops away too much.



The roof has been uncovered just a bit too long - the roofing felt isn't designed to be left exposed to sunlight, and it is already showing some signs of crumbling.

I don't imagine that professional roofers use clamps to hold the panels in place while putting the coachbolts in, but we found that it works, and really that's all that matters. And although we have a slight tilt by the time we got to the final panel, it's so little that they will pass pretty well for vertical.