Welcome to Builder Bill's Wrinkles.

Table of contents for this page. Using a chalk line | How Not to Treat a Hammer | Am I a bit of a rough old sod | Mixing Epoxy Resin | News and Trends | Green, Eco Friendly, Sustainable, Energy efficient. | Insulpaint | UnderDeck Ceiling System. | A reader's roof addition question. | Skylights, Solar Tube etc.

Chalk line

The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  So we pull our string lines as short as possible to get them straight.

Quite often though it is a bit of a pain transferring that straight line to the material that you want to mark and then cut.

Enter the chalk line.

• The very first chalk line that I saw was a lump a white chalk bigger than my fist that was scored with grooves.
• We rubbed the chalk along a line, until the string was loaded up with chalk.
• The line was stretched tight between two nails.
• Lifted slightly off the surface and then allowed to flick onto the surface to be marked.
• Result, a dead straight line, marked on a floor, a wall or a ceiling, by one man.
• Nothing else required.

Of course we've got it easy these days, we can get them already packaged in a container (usually shaped like a plumb bob) with a wind up handle and a hole for filling up with powdered chalk.

The chalk powder comes in various colours, I usually go for the blue one.

Here's a tip.   Be very careful where you use the red coloured chalk!   It mostly is'nt chalk at all but some form of red ochre, and it is hard to get rid of.
If you use it on say plasterboard or anything that is going to be painted, be warned, the colour can bleed through a few layers of acrylic paint and really spoil you're day.

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How Not to Treat a Hammer, and what to do if the damage is already done

Looking at the face of my claw hammer the other day, I noticed that it had quite a few dimple type marks in the face of it.   What a bummer, how the heck did I do that?
The only thing that I can think of is I must have been belting at some masonry nails, or that the manufacturers have taken to using softer steel for the face, which I doubt.   My hammer is a steel shaft Estwing which is only two or three years old.
There is an old adage "Never strike two hammer faces together".  The reason for this is simple, the face of a hammer is hardened steel, usually far harder than the thing it is striking.

The trick for the makers of course is to find a balance between hardness and yet not getting the face so brittle that it will chip.  So it is the brittleness that can cause pieces of the face of a hammer to fly off if you strike two hammers together.

Thinking about it now, I think that I know how I did the damage to my old favourite.  I used an old rotary hammer chipping chisel to chip off some daggy concrete.
A standard hand held cold chisel has a hardened tip with the body and the end of the chisel that you strike with the hammer being more malleable.
Tip: Keep the tip cool when grinding it otherwise you lose the hardness.  Just because it is used for rough stuff it is still a chisel, and as such you must preserve the quality of the steel.
The end of the old hammer drill chisel is of course considerably harder, and as such probably at least as hard as the hammer that I was belting it with.
Soooo.. Something had to give.

Here is a photo of the drill and bit that I am talking about.

A recipe for bent nails and black thumbnails

Rubbing the face on a cement block

Like new again, well not quite.

So, the moral of this story is use the right tool for the job.  I should of course have used a standard cold chisel for the chipping work, or better still I should have fired up the drill itself and done it properly.   Again, why the heck did I use a claw hammer when I had a couple of perfectly good lump (club) hammers in my trailer.   Just too lazy to go and dig one out.

Anyway I am stuck with it now.  The dimples are not all that bad, and I guess with time, what with use and a bit of extra cleaning of the face they will get less of a problem.

"What's this cleaning of the face ?" You may ask.

• Well every time I start a nailing job with my claw hammer I check the face to see that it is clean.
• A bright shiny face is what I am looking for.
• A dull or worse still a face with gunk or sticky stuff stuck to it is a definite "no no".
• Any crap on the face of a hammer will only make it easier to bend nails, so anything that stops that has got to be good.
• What I do to clean the face is find a flat bit of concrete and holding the hammer in the nailing position I press the hammer onto the concrete and swirl it around in a circular motion to clean the face.
• The face of a good hammer is always slightly rounded (convex), never flat. If you are buying one at the store look out for this, as a flat face on a hammer makes it almost impossible to use.
• So to keep the original curved face of the hammer intact I also roll the hammer forwards, backwards, and sideways as I am doing the rubbing.
• You guys that are indoors, working on joinery etc may be shuddering at the thought of rubbing the crap off the face of your pride and joy on a rough patch of concrete.
• Easy, put a bit of fine wet and dry sandpaper on a flat surface such as a steel saw bench, and polish the face of your hammer with a little bit more finesse.

Of course I would'nt do any of this if I had one of those framing hammers with a profiled waffle type of face.   I have never actually used one of them.  If you have one drop me a note and let me know if they are any good.

Here's a tip about masonry nails.   They not only can stuff up your hammer face, but worse still there is a real potential for damage.  Quite often we use them for formwork, where we shoot a timber down to stop a prop from moving say.  Often after stripping the masonry nails are left embedded solidly in the concrete.  The trick is to give them a couple a sideways belts with a hammer back and forth and they usually snap off.  Always wear eye protection when doing this and don't do it near anyone else.  These things are so tough and yet so brittle that when they do snap they fly like hell.

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I suspect that you may be forming the impression that I am a bit of a rough old sod when it comes to using my tools.

I must admit that I am not one of these people that buy tools for their own sakes, and treat them with reverence. I buy tools for one reason and one reason only, to do a job. In the end it is the job that counts. That's what pays the bills.

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Mixing Epoxy Resin

Flat bottom and parallel sides make this discarded milk carton excellent for measuring small quantities of epoxy.

We use liquid epoxy resin for a number of jobs, as a surface protection etc.   One job that I have used it for a lot is for embedding starer bars (rebar) in slabs for blockwork, or fixing hold down bolts.

The resin comes in packs, with two components, resin and hardener.  Sometimes these are mixed 1:1 and one I used a lot was 3:1, that is 3 parts of resin and 1 of hardener.

The type of milk carton on the right is what I look for when I am mixing small quantities of liquid.

• The flat bottom and parallel sides make it very convenient to get your ratios spot on.
• Say we are mixing 3:1 epoxy and hardener, and we want say about 300ml (half of the container full.
• Get a stick (your mixing stick) and lay it on the outside of the container.
• Mark out your total amount required mark on the stick.
• Either with a tape measure or a guess, mark the half way mark then half of that again to get two marks, one of them represents 3 units and one represents another 1 unit.
• Put the stick in the container and fill up to the 3 unit mark with resin, fill the rest with hardener to the top mark.
• Mix up, without even lifting the stick out.

Easy peasy, no measuring cups, no cleaning anything (except the rim of your containers before recapping), just discard when finished.

Caution, don't use things like cut off plastic drink bottles with rounded bottoms or tapered sided drink cups for this trick, unless of course you do a dummy run by putting measured amounts of water into one first and marking your stick at the two water levels with a pencil.

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Green, Eco Friendly, Sustainable, Energy efficient.

These and many more like them are the buzz words and have been around for a long time, but they do seem to be gathering a lot more momentum these days.
Acronyms (or rather the organisations behind them) are sprouting up right left and centre.
The GBCA (Green Building Council of Australia), The BRBA (Buy Recycled Buisness Alliance), NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating System) are examples of what I am talking about.

The BCA (yeah another one, Building Code of Australia) has for a few years now had provisions in it for all new construction to be energy efficient, and It lays down the minimum requirements for insulation values for walls, roofs, windows etc.

The government of the state of Victoria are bringing in laws that will force homeowners to comply with the BCA energy requirements for all alterations and additions to houses that require a building permit, however small.   Alterations that are greater in size than than half of the original volume of the home, will require that the rest of the house will have to be upgraded too.  Now that's tough, you want to build an 80sqM extension to a 160sqM house you have to upgrade the lot.  Maybe just go for 79sqM eh!  (There are exceptions allowed in some cases).

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Insulpaint

A paint company is working with two universities, QUT (Queensland University of Technology) and Curtain uni in WA.
In simple terms they are developing coatings which not only reduces the heat loading on the building, (reflective white paint on walls and roofs), but also these same coating can absorb pollutants, enabling runoff water to stored and drinkable, or in some cases help to solve "sick building syndrome" problems.  They solve the problems and dirt and other build up that reduce the effectiveness of the coating system.

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UnderDeck Ceiling System.

I had a question a few weeks ago from a reader, who wanted to know what his options are regarding making a high set, timber deck (gaps between boards) waterproof, so that he could build a shed underneath.
I suggested that the best way was to pull up the boards and fix Say 16mm compressed cement sheets, with or without ceramic tiles.   Or that he could fix underneath a metal roof sheeting like Trimdek, with a slight fall to the floor joists.   I've seen this done, but it is less than ideal as crap builds up in there, not to mention vermin.
It seems that there is now a solution to this problem, UnderDeck by Hunter Building Products.  it consists of a series of joist panels and gutters that collect and lead away the water.  It can be unclipped for easy cleaning, or for retrieving lost valuables.

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A reader's roof addition question.

The original house

This is part of my reply to a reader's question, about adding an extension to a house in Washington state.  She had done a great bit of design work fitting in a new dining room and bedroom into the area, but she was puzzled by the roof options.

This version shows a large scale alteration to the existing roof.

One of my design philosophies is to either make it "look like it grew there" or if not make it look completely different.  In other words make a feature of it.

This is an option with a simpler construction,

This I a bit of a compromise, and I guess it would be OK looking (it is at the rear of the house).   Now we get to the point of these sketches here in this section.

SolarTube or Skytube fixed in a steep roof

When you do additions that turn external walls into internal walls, you lose amenity in some rooms.  You lose light and ventilation from doors and windows.
One way to make those enclosed rooms a little bit better is to fit skylights, skytubes or as I have drawn int the above sketch, a dormer window into the roof.

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Solar Tube etc.

The Aussie company Solar Tube uses TDD's (here we go again, Tubular Daylighting Devices) which have for years made very cost effective units that bring natural light into rooms.  These TDD's are a lot simpler to fit into a roof space than conventional skylights and unlike some skylights they don't require the roof structure to be modified.
Of course in this day of green energy saving measures, things like these are advancing in technology rapidly.  The domes can filter out up to 99.9% of UV light.

There are on the market now, systems that recieve light in a roof collector, and then transmit it via fibre optic cables (down walls, along floors, around corners) to the room where it is needed.  The light comes out of what can apear to be standard ceiling downlights.

All of these system manufacturers make claims of significant energy saving, particularly in commercial premises.  To me though, and I've fixed a few skylights over the years, the change that happens to a previously dimly lit room when extra daylight is brought in is always well worth the effort.  It just feels better.

All for now
Cheers.

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