Progress Again

Whilst at the club on Saturday I received a text message – all it said was “Done”.

I knew what it meant – it means progress. It also means more work to be arranged. The Titan guys had been around in the morning and started installing my ceiling structures and some whirly gigs on the roof of my new soon to be train shed. It was humid and heading for a hot day, so once I had a chat I bolted down the the train club to do some work down their on the new HO layout.

Normally you don’t get ceilings in a shed, but after a particular Tuesday Nighters I attended, I got an idea for the storage in the ceiling. So while at Titan the other week I spotted some metal framing done up as a structure to put in at ceiling height to act as a simple shelf to cover half a bay of a shed. That way you can store stuff up high - what a great idea. I put it to the max and used that principle to put in a flat ceiling in the shed. So after a discussion with Greg at Titan, I ordered some whirlygigs for the roof to cool it down and enough panels to make a flat ceiling for the whole shed - and of course installation of the metal and gigs.

So the boys came down and installed this pile of panels (see last blog entry for some photos) and the whirly birds on the roof.

Here is the hole for one of the two whirly gigs:

And the external view of one of my brand new gigs:

Mind you there was a small problem. You guessed it – the door was too small to cater for the 2.7 m wide panels. But that’s OK, accurate measurements before delivery showed that the removal of the sliding and fixed glass panes would be sufficient to allow the panels through. But as Murphy is want to do, he made it that three of us had it wrong. That’s right, the original measurer Greg, myself and the factory blokes all got it wrong. We have measured from the outer edge of the door frame not from the removable parts…  Yup – no go. The frames just weren't going to go through the door. Bugger. Normally for a shed it is no problem as you have these big things called roller doors - not me, I have a small sliding glass door. But Grant the Titan installer fella that got there in the morning knew just what to do – he had after all also put the shed up and was a guru at this sort of thing. "Ya just rip down a wall mate!"

So he took down a third of the end sheeting on the shed and the wall behind it and in went the panels – no biggie. See, that's what you pay for - experts. Me, I would have attempted to cut the panels up and lessen their strength in the process!

So across the 6.76 meter internal span of the shed, there are 3 panels. Two are 2.7 m and one is 0.6 m. Yes you are correct, that doesn’t make up 6.76 m. You can see the 600 mm panel in the middle in photo below.

By the way, all the ceiling panels are bolted on with some nice big bolts. So they are going nowhere in a hurry. It also means the shed is now even stronger than before - I think I will now designate it my bunker in case of storms and quacks.

So, to continue with why the 3 panels don't add up tot he width of the shed: What you do is to space the 3 panels across the ceiling, thereby you have small gaps. You do need a gap at the wall ends on both sides as the panels will obviously not fit where the roof tapers down to zero - so a gap is required. Also, there is no need to have the panels all butt up against each other as there is no gain in strength, only a gain in cost.

The orange arrow below points to the ceiling panel and green to the tapering ceiling to the wall.

So after the text and after finishing up at the clubrooms for the day, I headed on past an ATM to get the fun tickets out to pay Grant the Installer and headed home via my usual fish and chips shop for a snack. So here are the ceiling panels in place.

So now the first order of business on Monday is to call the Sparky and arrange for him to come wire up the shed.