Thursday, August 23, 2007

Design detail: Eaves

August 23, 2007
The past few days have been spent preparing for rainy weather forecast for Friday. The roof has been sheathed, Grace TriFlex installed (basically building wrap for the roof), Grace Ice & Water shield at the perimeter, and all of the rafter tails added to make up for the missing truss legs. Small triangular shaped studs were tacked on to the top chord of each truss. This completes our clipped eave profile. Many old farmhouses especially here in New England utilized a version of this clipped eave as a means for preventing ice dams. Uninsulated interior spaces meant a lot of snow melt running off of the roof plane. A minimal overhang meant there was no chance for the melt to re-freeze on a much colder overhanging eave. The inspiration meets reality...our small overhang has been more than doubled by a truss mistake. Such is the messy business of construction. I actually like the proportion of the new overhang though and the critical detail for me is the creation of the knife-edge at the termination of the metal roof, it feels fussed over and direct.

East Elevation




South Elevation

Eave blocking installed

Now that the roof has been made weather-resistant, interior framing can continue inside. The ceiling space has been strapped with 1x2s which provides a place to fasten the sheetrock and will keep the batt insulation in place until the sheetrock has been hung.

Interior walls tomorrow, which will allow the electrical and plumbing rough-in to follow shortly thereafter. Do we really have 8 weeks until move-in?

Yeah, that might be a problem.



3 comments:

Eric Olson said...

Great work. Just found your blog and read the whole thing. Pure gold. Please keep up the great work. It's deeply informative and refreshingly pragmatic.

eric said...

Many thanks Eric...
I've secretly been peering at your catalog of ideas over the past few weeks as well. I've been feeding heavily on the permutations of modern housing options available today. We considered prefab early on but like many, found out it's not a solution geared to those with limited financial resources. We hope our house contributes in some small way to those seeking to do something non-standard using standard materials and construction methods.
...Eric

Eric Olson said...

> We considered prefab early on but like many, found out it's not a solution geared to those with limited financial resources.

Given the price of land this is kind of where we are right now too. I'm really curious to see how your project turns out.