During last week I managed to get most of the final piece of cladding at the tops of the walls in place. All that remains now is a piece above the door and the piece below the flap in the southern gable, which I can’t do before the flap is completed because I want it to trap the strip of EPDM that will stop rain being blown in through the gap where the hinges are.
The forecast for this weekend was pretty miserable. However, Saturday wasn’t actually too bad so I decided to try to finish the end flap. The first job was to make a few adjustments to the fit, then get all the hinges on. I was planning on using large strap hinges, but I found some stainless security hinges intended for hanging fire doors on the Screwfix website and decided to use those instead.
To fit the flap to the wall I made up the supports that will hold the flap when it’s down. I’m not really very happy with them at the moment. They do support the flap, but they just don’t feel quite as stable as I’d like. I might have to revisit them later, perhaps to add some extra bracing or even another support in the middle of the wall. Once I had them in place it was easy to put the flap in the “down” position to fit the hinges to the top of the wall. As I lifted the flap into the closed position to check the fit again, the rain started. I think I need a small amount of adjustment at one end, but it will have to wait for dry weather.
Because I wasn’t quite ready to stop at that point I finished off by using up the offcuts of insulation that have been lying about the observatory for the last few weeks to fill the smaller spaces in the warm room walls.
A couple of photos with the flap in the “down” position:
By the time I took this one of the flap closed up I was starting to lose the light.
