The roof clamps and weather boards
The roof is locked down tight to the shed using 3/8" turnbuckles (Screwfix 8048) and
M10x70mm coach screws. The turnbuckle is attached to the bottom coach screw and hooks over the top one on
the roof frame. I J-B Welded a M10x32mm penny washer to the hex head of each coach screw which was
inserted through one of the large holes in a 60mm x 40mm x 63mm heavy duty angle brackets (Screwfix 2047)
fixed to the timber using TurboGold screws. These brackets are used to strengthen the wood around the
coach screw preventing it from splitting should undue force be exerted on the coach screws in a gale. At
the rear I had discovered that angle brackets prevented me from mounting the turnbuckles as at the front,
and so as you can see at the bottom of the page, the turnbuckle is attached to a corner post and rear
frame member instead of the side. A little wood needed to be shaved off the rear frame member to allow the
turnbuckle to turn. You may want to give more thought to this when building the roof than I did :-)
However, it matters little in the end.
The roof mounted and secured
Next is weather protection. As you can see above, there is now a big gap between the roof
and shed. At the front a 75mm x 75mm softwood timber was placed across the gap between the rails. It sits
on top of the door rails. This was fixed to the rails using two 160mm x 40mm x 63mm heavy duty angle
brackets (Screwfix 2047) on the inside corner. This wood isn't attached to the walls below only at the
ends to the rails so this needs to be stronger than two flimsier 100mm angle braces. With this in place
the front wall was now noticeably more rigid and the temporary piece of wood resting on the corner posts
(seen above to the right) could be disposed of. The door rails (which are already attached to the front
walls) will hang below this and need to be screwed up into it near the centre to stop the door rails
sagging in the middle under the weight of the doors. I didn't do this for some time and wondered why the
doors kept digging in and binding in the middle.
Front weather board
I then fitted a piece of 20mm x 194mm red pine across the front screwing it to the 75mm x
75mm timber behind. This was allowed to sit on top of the wall helping to seal it off. The height has to
be just right to fit underneath the rain drip/gable brace attached to the roof and not interfere with it
as the roof is moved away from the fixed weather board. I trimmed the top of this board with some surplus
pieces from the shed kit (remember I had some damaged parts initially which I kept) and also fitted some
other unpainted metal pieces below as you can see above. They are mostly cosmetic.
A side weather board
At the sides I screwed similar pieces of red pine board to the sides of the rails. These
have to fit under the eaves of the roof and again not interfere with it as it is rolled back. Measure this
gap carefully all the way along, don't trust it to be the same height. I again rested the board on top of
the wall. This doesn't completely seal off the gap around the top of the walls because the panels are
corrugated. In the end I just had to fill with pieces of foam rubber inserted from inside and then lots of
silicon sealer on the outside. You could also use expanding foam but it's a nightmare to work with unless
you've lots of experience with it. I found that the rain didn't penetrate here before I sealed it up, the
main problem was that this was the place where spiders entered the shed and made their homes. I was
overrun with them all summer and autumn until I sealed the tops of the walls at the front and sides.
Wheel guide and rear weather board
The back is different in that this weather board has to be attached to the roof and hence
move with it when it is rolled back. Again a red pine board was used but this time attached to the
underside of the roof rear frame member using the ubiquitous 100mm corner braces (what would I have done
without them?) You can see one of them on the right in the image below. This board is hanging from the
roof frame member but placed in front of it and under the rain drip/gable brace. The top of the board was
again cosmetically covered in surplus metal. The gap here, between the board and under the rain drip/gable
brace let in water the first day it rained. I again sealed this with two copious beads of silicon sealer
so that now the rain falls off the rain drip and down the front of the weather board instead of behind.
Making sure that this weather board was the right size took some time and many attempts. I
made it so it hung below the top of the wall behind it, that much was easy. But at the sides you have to
clear the rails on which the roof sits and not just as it sits there with the roof in place over the shed.
As I discovered the first time I tried to move the roof back, this board hit the rails in several places.
Don't assume the wood used for the rails was cut perfectly straight and level! Eventually a gap had to be
tolerated between the rails and weather board. Across this gap I placed some folded sheets of flexible but
quite stiff rubber (actually it was pond liner) stuck down on the board but touching the rail. They stop
the rain and wind but are flexible enough to tolerate the changes in the gap size as the roof is moved
back and forth. They aren't shown below.
Rear corner internal detail
In the above image you are looking at the left rear corner from the inside. The corner post
is visible in the centre to which the turnbuckle is mounted. On top of that is the wall frame going to the
right for the rear and to the left for the side. On top of the side frame is the large rail which
disappears out the back. On top of that is a roof wheel attached to the underside of the roof frame. The
rear part of the roof frame has the coach screw to which the turnbuckle is attached when the roof is
locked down. Going across the top of the image is a corner diagonal brace of the roof frame. On the left
behind the wheel is a side weather board and across the centre to the right is the rear weather board
attached to the rear roof frame member, you can see a corner brace on which it hangs on the right. You can
see the gap where this meets the rail. Got that? :-)
What about that 'fix' I mentioned earlier. When I moved the
roof back and forth it never returned to the starting position. In fact I could see it slightly swing to
one side about half way back and I attributed this to one or more wheels pointing slightly to one side.
I'm only talking about a few millimetres here, nothing as drastic as the roof falling off the rails! But
this was enough to cause the roof to scrape along the side weather boards in places and for it to be at a
slight diagonal when pulled back into the closed position. Remember the roof has to pass between the
weather boards which at the sides extend under the roof eaves. This was repeatable every time. So what I
needed was something to guide the wheels, to force them to stay on line. I used aluminium L-shaped
extrusions (B&Q sell them) screwing them down on to the top of the rail with the outside edge of the
L-shape hard up against the wheels as seen above. In the image above captioned "Wheel guide and rear
weather board" the wheels pass on the other side of the wheel guide. This solution works perfectly
and in my case one guides the roof outwards and the other side guides it back to the start position. It is
a good solution and cheaper and easier to do than other methods (and I had designed a lot in my notes
initially.)
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