As the title to this article suggests construction started in a different fashion to your average build at our latest project – Skyfall. The project is an architect designed private residential house with the client wishing to use an off site construction solution to build the super structure of the house. Streif was selected as the chosen contractor because of the inherent benefits of our closed panel timber frame system with large programme savings over traditional methods of construction and the ability to simplify what had become a complex design.
Here at Streif our main goal is to provide quality buildings quickly through clever design ensuring as much of our work is completed off site in our factory. However there are times when even our talented engineers can’t avoid the need to construct certain elements on site.
This was the case with the vaulted ceiling to the living room of our latest project – Skyfall. The roof design is a vaulted hipped roof with a lantern sitting at the top of the hip. Having run through the design with our engineers in the factory a clever solution was thought up which involved constructing the roof at ground level on site with all elements of the roof being precision engineered in the factory ready for piecing together once on site.
Works started with the setting out of the walls on which the roof structure would sit this enabled the glulam ring beam to be positioned accurately before being fixed together at each corner using metal flitch plates. The crown at the top of the hip which supports the lantern was then propped up at the correct level in the centre of the glulam ring beam to achieve the desired pitch of the rafters and hip beams. The hip beams were then lifted into position and fixed to the plates at each end with a number of bolts, all holes in the timber and metal were pre drilled in the factory showing the level of accuracy we are able to achieve. All infill rafters were then positioned and fixed and the ply boarding was screwed to the top creating an extremely rigid and robust structure. The roof was then covered in tyvek and fly battens to weatherproof the roof. At this point the roof structure was then craned to another location on the site and the living room walls were erected. Once the walls were installed the roof structure was lifted into its final resting place upon the walls with everything fitting to the millimetre.
As you can see from the photo collage below it was a very pleasing solution to the design and construction of a complex structure. Even if we may say so ourselves!
