Hovis builds a garden office*

Ouch. Hope you're healing up well and return to maximum strength soon

Roof done! I'm so happy to have gotten to this stage - no more faffing around with gigantic tarps every time there is a sign of rain.

The epdm went down really easily, I think it helped it was a warm sunny day, the rubber was easy massage around to get rid of wrinkles. THe only part I'm not so pleased about was flashing the skylight. Dispite my hardest efforts I could not get rid of a few air bubbles, and the glue is so strong its not possible to undo it. I'm hoping it might slowly dissipate down somehow, or maybe I can prick it with a needle and it will seal itself. Need to do some research.

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Is it a pent or flat roof?

I think it would technically be classed as flat, but it has a 6 deg slope

Interesting! Water run-off. Smart.

Curious, what's the difference in inches? (silly question, just testing your knowledge of your build)

The height difference? It's 0.5m, so 20 inches or so.

One thing I never considered is the very large and fruiting pear tree that overhangs the front left corner of it, have had a few near misses from dropped objects, but assuming I make it through that alive, in the future they are going to roll down to the back and fill up the gutter.

looks great.

After umming and ahing for ages over which ridge cap, i finally finished my roof, including all the trim. Feels good…

edit: boards/string in pic are so i could shimmy along roof, fixing the ridge with out putting all my weight on one area.

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Put mesh over the gutter. Water falls in, pears roll over.

or collect the runoff to make pear cider

Moar sensible

Clever man

I was planning on setting up a water butt to collect the rainwater, it only makes sense that this should be a cider barrel.

Looks great, smart idea with the OSB and the string.

be a cider perry barrel

FTFY

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The roof looks great, I would leave the bubbles as they are. I'm not sure if it would be possible to reseal it with a hot iron and towel, I would be worried about the wood getting wet.
I saw some upcycled water butts at the Makers Central Exhibition, the oak barrel ones looked great.

Thanks. Yeah I emailed the technical people at the roofing store I got it from and they said it looked fine and that the air bubbles would probably dissipate on their own with time.

The water but is going to be in the deepest darkest depths of behind the building so I'll probably just get a cheap plastic one tbh. I've heard they can freeze over and crack over winter so need to think about that. I haven't ruled out running a drainage pipe and digging a soakaway in the garden.

The blue plastic ones tend to be thick, but I would recommend a metal tap rather than plastic.

How durable is larch out of interest?

Pretty durable. We have it in our garden but also cladding the outside of part of our flat.

I went for larch because it's harder than cedar (the hardest of the softwoods) and I prefer the colour/look of it to cedar. As you probably know it ages to a nice silver colour. If you pick up a piece of larch and a piece of cedar of the same dimensions the larch is noticeably heavier as it's more dense.

We used Siberian larch because it's better quality (fewer knots due to the colder weather) in 21 x 38mm planed all round pieces. A few of these have warped slightly but that's literally a few out of a hell of a lot of larch - our initial order was 1000m and we had to make another one too. Bought it from Vincent Timber in Brum who I'd recommend.

When I did all this I hadn't really seen a larch IRL. Have done since and they're beautiful trees, was in Herefordshire recently and they're planted all over the place for ornamental reasons so they get really high.

Bear in mind that larch needs stainless fixings due to the tannin in the wood. If you use non-stainless it will eventually stain.

Larch fencing it is!

Awesome, thanks for the comprehensive info. I'll remember to get stainless fixings. Do you have an pictures?

Bear in mind that larch needs stainless fixings due to the tannin in the wood. If you use non-stainless it will eventually stain.

I understand that you can use silicon-bronze or copper fixings too (if nailing), like with cedar. Both of those are likely to be cheaper than SS, and IMHO they look a little nicer too.

I would use stainless steel wood screws that are self drilling and self tapping countersunk versions, maybe something like these: https://www.accu.co.uk/en/745-pozi-countersunk-wood-screws

Yeah except get torx obvs.