70, Some flooring and Trimming.

During the past months, not all my time was wasted, tinkering with the Rotary convertor.
Two separate lots of decent secondhand chipboard flooring came up on eBay at reasonable "Buy it now" prices. It was just nicely enough to sheet the floor in the remaining ground floor rooms. It is only intended to be temporary and was lightly screwed to alternate joists. The permanent timber strip flooring, to avoid any possible damage, will not be fitted until all the major structural work is complete. There are thoughts, at the moment, going through my head of possibly laying some parquetry to the main areas, if this comes to fruition, the sheets will remain in those areas but will need to be further secured.

A couple of days was spent straightening the, now well seasoned, floor joists. The electric  planer found it pretty tough going and blades were replaced a few times owing to the hardness of the "Box" timber and the amount of ingrained dirt it contained. This was despite using brushes and compressed air to clean them as much as possible.

The Lounge room,on the East side was the first to be done and, with a good platform to work on, I was able to "Stud" the external walls. This framing is non load bearing and creates a cavity for power and communication cables as well as the plumbing. It also provides some space for insulation to be inserted, to prevent the stone sucking out the heat during winter. The extra wall thickness created, also improves the aesthetics of the window recesses.

The west wall, laid before the "saw" days, was constructed using formwork on the inside. Laying the stone against it caused the excess mortar to squeeze out and spread across the face. At the time, I couldn't see an issue with this "unseen" side. Subsequently, however, I found that much of it can break loose fairly easily and can cause problems when trimming the wall. Pieces would drop down behind the insulating paper, jamming behind the framing making it difficult to straighten.
The first hot day of the Summer, the Sunday 2 days before Christmas, was spent chipping off  the excess, in the relative coolness inside.

The wall, once cleaned, was much more pleasing to look at. In a way, it's a bit of a pity it will all be covered. The rows of bricks were placed to ensure a flat anchoring point for timber blocks, attached to the noggins for securing the framing. I wanted to get this done before the flooring was in place, cleaning up was easier, particularly along the edges around the bearers and the dust cleared better, falling to the ground.

Where it's at now. My current stocks of seasoned and dressed 70 x 45pine have been depleted, so the trimming of the Dining room, on the West side will have to wait for the time being.

With the fire season upon us, my attention has been diverted to the temporary roofing. I'm currently unable to fill the big hole in the front wall with the entrance door, but due to it facing south, it's not as concerning to me as all the gaps around the perimeter of the roof line. This may be the subject of my next post.

66, ...and in they go.

Before the windows could be installed, the vertical stone rebates needed to be trued and trimmed out with a jamb. The three earliest window openings, which I had constructed prior to the building of my stone saw, were made just wide enough to fit a window in snugly. Subsequently, I realised that a timber jamb would need to be fitted, in order to provide some method of securing the frame. In the photo above, the rebate on the right has now been shaved out to the required 100mm to accomodate a 21mm thick hardwood jamb, with the left hand side waiting to recieve the same treatment. The mortar joints needed to be chipped out before I could rough out the rebate using a chainsaw, with chisels and sanding blocks used for the final shaping. This wasn't one of the most fun, (or cleanest), jobs I have had to endure!

The 90 x 21mm hardwood jambs were glued and screwed to the limestone using 100mm galvanised, countersunk "batten screws". These were driven into pre positioned, Ultra Long RamPlug's, which were glued into cleaned, pre drilled holes using "liquid nails", before allowing a couple of days for it to set.
For subsequent windows I have found that a product called; KF2,  a Polyester Injection System, (picked up from eBay, of course!), offers superior holding power for the screws and I now set the RamPlugs in with this. It is, although, more labour intensive, with a pilot hole needing to be bored, using a masonary drill, into the cured plug.

Working on my own, I was easily able to manouvre the windows around on their sides using pipe rollers, however, getting them up the steps and into the front of the house was going to be somewhat more difficult. To achieve this, I jury rigged an pole, with a swivel coupling, to the scaffold frame. This was supported, using a chain, from a higher level. I positioned it so that an attatched electric winch would pivot between a point above the landing, which was about the same height as my van floor, and the centre of the verandah. This system worked flawlessly and once at floor level, it was a simple matter to roll them where required.

With the bottom of the window frame shaped to fit into the rebate in the stone sill, the plan for the installation was to form a table at sill height, lift the unit on to it, apply the flashings and mounting brackets, locate the timber sill into the opening, then lift the window up into position. What I didn't allow for was the internal stone arch, which prevented the side/angled bay windows from being tilted up in this manner. To compound the problem, after wiggling the window almost into position, I was reminded of another issue.
Some years back, when laying the stone sills for this bay, a stuff up, on my part, had me place them about 10mm too high. This error wasn't picked up until setting out the limestone quoins, which were adjusted to suit, to ensure that the lintels were all level. I had completely forgotten about this by now and, of course, these were the only openings not checked when calculating the window dimensions. So then, of course, the odscenities started!.

Following my 5th attempt, after much planing, trimming, adjusting and swearing, the first window was finally in, but I am more than happy with the result.

To secure the windows to the jambs, I made a number of brackets from 3mm stainless steel angle. These measured about 30 x 22mm and were about 20mm wide. The long leg was screwed through the ply backing into the inner lining and roofing screws, fitted through the other leg and drilled into the jambs, pull the frame firmly into the rebate.
I didn't notice until uploading this image that this particular mount was the one that needed to be rotated slightly, this was to enable a new hole and screw to be drilled into the jamb. With all the refitting of this window, at least one screw had to snap!.

63, Back pedal! Enough stone.

A couple of years back, I noticed, during my travels, a large collection of basalt rocks being uprooted from the ground and formed into piles on a property south east of Winchelsea. A closer inspection revealed that a large proportion of the stone was very clean with a fine grain. It appeared that it would be satisfactory for my steps, paving, verandah edging and anything else for which the honeycomb stuff wasn't suitable. The best part was that was only 20 minutes from home, at one of the nearest volcanic eruption points.
Following brief negotiations with the owner, I was given permission to remove as much as I liked, (with his preference being the largest ones!), in exchange for my cutting him "a couple of steps".
The collection of this stone was put on the backburner until recently, with many issues delaying the
procurement. If the truck was not out of action, the ground was too boggy or I was busy on something else etc. The latest hiccup in the saga was the death of the motor in the front end loader. It died about a year ago and the machine still rests, to this day, where it stopped, next door, waiting for a promised diagnosis from a diesel mechanic.
I had intentions of amassing enough of this stone, along with some more honeycomb stuff, to ensure that there would be plenty to finish my house with. We would then be able to dispose of the truck, it was costing nearly $1,500 a year for it to stay registered while spending most of it's time sitting in the yard. I had also booked some long service leave from work, to be taken in early December, 2011, with the aim of achieving this, hopefully in dry weather, before the truck rego was due in February.

With the loader out of action and not wanting to delay the collecting any longer, should the owners situation or mood change, I opted to take my generator and tools on site. There, I would split the rocks into manageable, usable sizes that could be transported home in the trailer.
The longest stone steps needed were to be about 1800mm long, (6ft), so that was my initial aim and started work on the largest of the rocks. I found that the stone was quite hard, more difficult than what I had previously encountered and my first attempts at drilling these proved futile. I then moved to the smaller one above, which was about 8ft long by about 4ft.

The drilling was a little easier on this stone and it furnished me with pieces long enough for 2 steps. The lump that fell off the near end was  due to an inherent crack. This sort of thing, as frustrating as it is, is a good side effect of splitting the stone rather than sawing it. Defects, such as this, are identified before too much work is done.

After the first day, I'm loaded and stuffed!. The near piece on the trailer was the smaller one, to the left in the upper photo's and weighed over a tonne, more than the limit for my block and tackle. The other two were were split from other rocks. The day was a long one and got off to a bad start when the generator refused to fire, despite having been tested the night before. A visit to a mechanic in Winchelsea had a faulty spark plug diagnosed and replaced. My hands became very blistered from the endless chain, when winching the pieces out of the pile to clear ground, (about 6 meters), and then into the trailer.
I managed to split a number of stones ready for loading, however some, such as the remaining piece from the previously mentioned one and another, of which the edge could just be seen to the left in the above photo, were going to be far too heavy for my equipment. If I attempted to split them further, I risked the possibility of them breaking across the shorter axis and rendering them useless. Loading by hand clearly wasn't going to be feasible.

Inquiries were made and the original contractor who had removed the rocks was contacted. He offered, for $100 a load, to send one of his blokes over with an excavator to lift them into the truck. With the offer accepted, I was back two days later with the truck. The first load included the bits that I had already split. One of these, the lump being loaded in the above pic, weighing about 3 tonnes, tested the machines capability and it struggled to lift it to this height without overbalancing. A couple of slightly larger ones were also tackled, but, for those we fashioned a ramp over a pile of rubble and drove them in.
The loading cost was well justified, with the more than helpful operator extracting the better rocks, previously marked by me, from the amidst the piles, while I was unloading the truck.
Four or Five loads were obtained, (my memory is failing me now), and I called it quits when we had taken the most promising looking stuff and I reckoned that I had sufficient for my purposes.. There was more stone accessible, but, the sizes were reducing. Unfortunately, when they were originally being dug out, many were split into smaller chunks for possible future processing. Larger rocks were still available, but they were becoming harder to extract, being buried far too deeply in the heap.

The stockpile at home, with the larger stuff over to the left and the first obtained lumps behind the trailer, on the right.

Also on the agenda for my leave was the collection of two loads of large flat slabs from a quarry at Ondit, near the northern shore of Lake Colac.When originally searching for a source of building stone, I had visited this quarry and although they had some suitable material, I dismissed it as being way too expensive. I figure that I now have close to enough good face stone to complete my house, however, my supply of material suitable for the cutting of "tie" stones was waning. These blocks needed a front to back dimension of at least 415mm, being the thickness of the wall masonry.
A year or so back I re approached the quarry operator and requested that any suitable slabs be kept aside. As the pit is expanded the upper crustal layer of vesicular basalt, (honeycomb), is removed to extract the finer grained material below. This surface layer often produces large, flat, parallelled surfaced evenly textured rock. Being from the same lava flows and located only a short distance from Warrion, where I had sourced my original stone, the color and appearance matched.
When I arrived there, during the week following the stone collection from Winchelsea, I found that the quarry operators had collected more than enough for me and stored them in a disused part of the workings. This was great, it allowed me to select the best of the best!. The hiccup was that the quarry were not happy to load the stone, having only front end loaders they would only load from the rear through the open tailgate, limiting the amount they could put in to 1 or 2 slabs. They did, however, put me in contact with a local contractor who operated a large forklift. Large?, it was massive with a 26 tonne capacity, capable of lifting the fully laden truck!. As can be seen in the above photo, a 2 tonne slab looked pretty insignificant, sitting on the forks.
The exercise didn't come cheap with the stone, at nearly $30 a tonne, costing over $600 for the 2 loads. The loading proved quite fiddly and time consuming with the limited maneuverability of the forks and set me back a further $150, at least I didn't have to also find cash to pay for transport costs.

The largest slab, taken in the first load and seen on the bottom, to the right of the truck in the above photo, was estimated at about 4 tonnes. The one on top is about 3 tonnes and the other 3 from that load were about 1 tonne each, the total load being just over 10 tonnes.
I should now have more than enough raw material for the house and can now channel more energy into actually putting it together!. For the remaining two weeks of my leave, my attention was diverted back to the rebuilding of my sanding machine.

39, Bay Windows.

With the arches completed it was time to finish the bay windows. With a total of 56 rebated limestone quoins, cut at 45 degree angles needed to complete them, a number of weeks was devoted to the shaping of these. In order to maintain the stability of the mullions during construction I formed rough corbels in the stones below and above the fifth course to support temporary, removable blocks.


The quoins in place on the West bay, ready for the installation of the lintels.


The lintels installed and the formwork and reinforcing in place ready for the pouring of the concrete stiffening beam. This beam is tied with the steelwork to the concrete above the arch.


The concrete in place, I could now move onto the East side bay.


Mid June 2008 and the Limestone work is completed on both bays.


For the amusement of the kids, (and myself!) I tried my hand at a bit of carving in one of the temporary corbels. These corbels and the bracing blocks will be removed later to make way for the window frames.


With the Limestone out of the way I then needed to prepare enough Bluestone quoins for the infill over the bays to bring them to the first floor level. A total of 25 were needed to complete this, requiring another prolonged monotonous stint in the stone shed, cutting an chiselling the blocks ready. By now I have had enough of the fiddly work and have firmly made up my mind not to continue the bay windows up through the first floor.

38, Third and final.

March 2008 and the bay window arches were now complete. I could make a start on my last arch, spanning the front door. This one was similar to the two I had done previously over the french doors at the rear, segmental with stepped extrados. It also needed to be rebated on the inside to accommodate the door frame, requiring stepped formwork.
The earlier arches I had constructed entirely of limestone, but now, having the saw, I was able to cut accurate voussoirs from bluestone for the inside.


The inside complete and the keystone inscribed with Edward, my eldest.


The limestone face now in place. I inserted foam strips at the base of each bed to ensure a rebate into which I can key the finish pointing.


The front wall, with the arches complete. From inside,


and out.

36, Back to the front.

The ground floor East wall, at the start of 2008, finally completed and ready for the string course. I could now make a start on the arches over the bay windows.


The arch formwork, made from mdf and melamine faced chipboard, propped in position. These arches, being elliptical, took a fair amount of working out and cutting. Using masonite templates, the voussoirs, each weighing about 75kg, had to be cut to a different shapes and angles. I chiselled frogs into the beds to help to key them together and it took a number of weeks for me to have them all prepared, ready for installation. The arch had to be assembled in one go, to ensure that it set as a single unit.


The completed arch, I was very happy with the result, it all went together without a hitch. The alternating textures of the blocks was purposely carried out.


Being one to do silly things on impulse, I couldn't resist having a go at carving an inscription into the keystones. There being three arches on the front wall, I decided to devote them, one each, to my three children. The youngest, Sarah, was to have the first.
All this work, ultimately, will be plastered over, a bit of a waste really but it creates a bit of amusement in the meantime.

28, Trolley drive.

The trolley drive mechanism mounted below the floor level.
I connected a 1hp 180volt DC motor to the reduction gear box, this being housed in the brown case. A chain couples this to the shaft in the recess. This shaft, complete with pillow blocks and bearings set me back about $75.00 from a junk yard. The windlass, fitted to the near end, I fashioned from a 4 belt cast iron pulley.
Another product of my regular jaunts to the junk shops was set of odd clutch set-ups, possibly off a shearing machine, picked up for about $10.00. These I re hashed to produce the pair of guide pulleys.
To prevent the overrun of the trolley I installed 3 limit switches to the rails, one at each end and an intermediate one that can be bypassed to prevent the roller door from impact.


The cable return pulley. I fabricated this assembly from scratch, adapting the sheaves from an odd pair that I had floating around.
The trolley has a central arm projecting down into the groove in the floor, the cables are hooked under this before rising to be secured at each end. I fitted a turnbuckle at one end, but this proved inadequate, requiring a tension spring to be added.

27, Electrics.

My employment at Connex trains in Melbourne afforded me the opportunity to be in the right place at the right time. The scrapping of a large number of Hitachi units as I was preparing to carry out the electrical work enabled me to rescue a large amount of reusable gear.
Enclosures, buttons, switches, circuit breakers, relays and contactors from these trains made up a large proportion of my requirements.


The main switch panel, constructed from the "PLC" box, fitted in the saloon area, behind the driving cab.


2 separate remote panels were made from enclosures located in the driving cab. The push buttons were from the drivers door and park brake controls.


The design and installation of the wiring took me about 5 months to complete and consisted of 240volt AC mains supply, 2 separate 180volt DC supplies for the for the trolley drive and head positioning, 24volt DC control for the aforementioned, 12volt DC control for the power unit. 6volt DC for the cooling fans and 3volt DC for the 2 speedometers, which were rescued from dead treadmills.

25, Shaping up nicely.

By December 2003 the bits were coming together beautifully . The fabricated bracket fitted snugly and gave good solid support to the arbour.
The hydraulic motor had to be bought new. At a price of $1500.00, I was starting to discover the real price of hydraulics. Very few hydraulic motors are capable of transferring 40hp at 600rpm, the optimum blade speed, so it was nigh on impossible to locate one secondhand. A perfect fit of the shaft into the arbour made me very happy and it then only required a collar to prevent it rotating.
I used inverted 30 x30mm angle iron fixed to 30 x 30mm square tube for rails, these were supported on 2 piece slotted brackets which I had made. I was able to shim and adjust these to ensure the rails were true and straight. I had all this hot dip galvanised to prevent any problems with alignments due to rust build up.
The trolley I made from 75 x 40mm "C" section. With a length of 2.1m and a width of 1.2m it was to give me a good work surface. This too, when complete, I had galvanised.

24, Some progress is made.

March, 2003. The floor was finally done. I completed this one section at a time, mixing it in my concrete mixer.
My son, Edward, is looking at the frogs that had found their way into the settling tank. As the roof plumbing was connected to our main water tank, I had some odd roof sheets laid out to collect rain water. The floor slopes toward the hollow on the right where the heavier sediment will collect. The water from here, via a raised drain, will flow to the settling tanks. The groove, central between the rails, is to accommodate the endless cable. This will be operated from a drive system positioned below the floor panels on the left.

This isn't what I had in mind when I started, I'm feeling, by this stage that I've bitten of more than I could chew! It's a bit late to turn back now.

I sourced a pair of axles for $100.00 that, with lengthening, would be suitable for the trolley.


Scrounging was unable to find me a suitable arbour, at least for a reasonable price, so I had to have this one made for $450.00. Thread was tapped to suit a large large lock nut which I had procured and a hole with a keyway was machined into the end to allow the hydraulic motor to be fitted directly to it.


I made a mock up of a bracket from mdf, on which to mount a pair of 75mm pillow blocks that I had paid $20.00 for, to establish the correct positioning of the saw. The tilt on the head was necessary as the pivot adjusting gear was damaged at the point where it sat vertical. This would have made it very difficult to adjust the blade to run true.

The bracket, shown above, which I cut from 1inch plate, tacked together and ready for final welding. I thought that my little 240volt welder might be a bit small for this and had it professionally done for $50.00.

The power source that was attached to the gearbox was a 240volt, 67hp, 230amp DC motor, as there was no way that could I could supply this power I needed to do a bit of head scratching.
My solution was to completely strip the guts out of the inside of the motor, leaving only the main shaft. To this I mounted a hub, machined to attach a motor bike chain sprocket. On the outside of the housing I fixed a frame to hold a standard AC mains supply, 1hp motor. A surplus 3 phase motor mounted in between serves as a support for a reduction pulley and a way to convert from belt to chain drive.
I later replaced the AC motor with a 4000rpm, 180volt, 2hp, DC motor, removed from an exercise treadmill to enable me to control the speed.