Hot enough to fry eggs on the roof, cool enough to eat ‘em under it

We’re right on track, although I’m going to be slowing down over the fall when we get into the busy season here at Solace Homeworks. I won’t have as much time, unfortunately. The goal right now is to get the exterior (including siding) finished, as well as put the doors in and get the fireplaces going. Depsite the fact the toilets won’t be working, it’ll actually be a little bit usable. Right now, the outside is pretty much done except for the railings of the deck.

The metal on the roof is Galvalume, with a dull/shiny finish that reflects the heat away. It’s quite impressive how well it works, actually. I was up installing the two chase cap flashings on the chimney, for the wood stoves, and infact I got ill, it was so hot on that roof. It was about 100 degrees fahrenheit (40 celcius) and the combination of that shiny metal reflecting the heat up made it just stifling hot. As for laying down the flashing, it took maybe a half an hour and went fairly quickly, but I was just sweating. If you touched the side of the flashing, the metal that was getting hit by the sun would sizzle your skin, you could actually hear it, which probably had something to do with how fast we worked!

We did one and then went for lunch and hosed ourselves off and went back up. The neat thing is that on the black side of the roof metal (not as opposed to the shiny side) you could put your hand on it and it was fairly hot but you could still touch it… so it was a good example of how it was reflecting the heat away quite nicely. Sandy was inside the house, staining the windows, and it was quite comfortable inside. The roof is now totally covering all the windows and with the roof well insulated and the metal reflecting away the heat it’s working as it should, which is neat to see.

For the chimney caps we’re going with black. The chimney’s a special design that’s wood framed and metal capped to keep the rain and snow off.

The windows have a black exterior, the flashing and knee braces are black as well. You can see where the 4X6 goes across the wall and a brace that supports the beams of the walkway – those are the knee braces.

The colour combination is black accents with kind of a taupe siding. All the Sikkens and front porch cover details are kind of a browny teak wood. The colours are for the décor, which is one of my wife’s contributions.

The Art Gallery

My wife, Sandy, says she thinks there aren’t enough nice shots and too many of the construction of the cabin. Now I’m confused as to what this blog is about. Needless to say, these are some pretty neat pictures that she took the last time we were up. She was also brave enough to don a wet suit and jump in the water, which is quite cold because it’s glacier run off, but due to the hot summer weather is warm enough on the surface to float around.

 

A Picture Tells A Thousand Words

 

What’s neat about this picture is that you can really get a good idea about how the roof is going to shade the windows, during the summer. This picture was taken around 5:30-6:00 p.m. on a sunny afternoon. The roof overhang on the shed dormers, along with the roof extension and the walkway all help in minimizing the sun’s impact. The walkway hasn’t been built out as far as it will go, yet, so you’ll see there too we’ll get more shade on those bottom windows once that’s completed. Conversely, the idea is that low sun angles in the winter will hit the window for solar gain – based on our sun path charts

* For those of you following this blog and getting blogged down by technical speak, a dormer is a window at the top of the house, which can either be built in a gable (peak) shape or as I have it, a shed (flat) shape. Alright, class dismissed. Go on back to your BBQs…

Putting Up A Good Front