Another Job Done

Here is a picture of our most recent extension (almost) finished. By now the electricians should have fitted the outside lights and the kitchen should be fitted. We should have some photos of the fully finished product on their way soon!

It's been a very enjoyable job, with many unusual challenges. I'm very pleased with the end result, and am very proud of the hard-work put in by all the guys who worked for me. A special mention goes to my long-suffering right-hand-man Calvin who stepped up to the mark during my long-weekend away (my only time off this year!) and the morning I spent in St Albans Minor Injuries after spectacularly spraining my ankle on a step ladder!

Aaaarg! No internet!

Well, if you hadn't noticed there haven't been many updates recently!

A lot has been going on, we finished the extension in our last few posts, some pictures will follow.

As per the subject of this blog we are awaiting a new phone line and broadband to be connected on the 7th of january, quite how I'll survive until then I don't know!

For now we will continue enduring the cold weather and finish the feature wall we're currently building.

Merry christmas to all our customers and hopefully there will be many more pictures and posts to follow in the new year.
Larner Construction. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Knock-throughs

We've arrived at the knocking through stage of the job, and it's proved to be one of the most difficult steel configurations we've done. The engineer has designed a steel goal post construction quite different to the norm. Instead of resting the main beam on two vertical columns, the main beam slots between the verticals and bolts through into them. At first I thought this seemed like a strange idea as in my mind there seemed far too much weight resting on 8 bolts. That was until the bolts arrived!

Having discussed the idea with the building inspector he explained that this is becoming a popular design. The engineer 'bods' think that the weight is more evenly distributed on the steel by bolting through, putting less stress on the join between the vertical and horizontal beams. Far be it from a lowly blue-collar worker like me to question them!

Initially I thought this configuration would be easier to install as the main beam is shorter than the width of the room, and just had to be hoisted up in-between the vertical beams and then bolted. In fact it proved to be very difficult and time consuming as the distance between the vertical beams had to be exactly the right size to the millimetre. This is quite a task when lifting steel beams which weigh in excess of 200kg each!

Eventually we located all the beams with the help of a "Muba lifter" (as seen in pictures) and plenty of pairs of hands. The bolt holes lined up well with a bit of encouragement, and the rest of the packing was done as standard.

It's always a big sigh of relief getting the main beam in, it's a fairly dangerous job and the materials are very expensive, so any slight errors in production can prove costly and cause major problems.

My glamorous assistant installing the velux!

Larner Construction. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Half pyramid / pallisade quadruple hipped roof!

We finished framing the carcass of a particularly complicated roof today. The roof is on an extension which we are building in central St Albans. I'm sure to post some more pictures / info about the job as it has many unusual features and complexities. Most of these complexities arise from the two 45 degree cants which form the shape of the building, a kind of semi-decagon.

Most of the cuts had to be done with a hand saw (the old fashioned way!) due to the steep angles. We enlisted the help of our friend Mike, a well experienced carpenter, to set out the roof. There are times when bowing to the superior expertise of more specialised tradesmen is essential to the smooth running of a job. Even Mike was scratching his head a few times!

I hope to post more pictures of the job as we go on, most of the brickwork is obscured by scaffolding at the moment, so will wait 'till later to photograph it.

Most complicated  roof I've seen in a while!

Welcome to the new blog!

So, this is my blog! My name is Luke and I am the proprietor (pretentious title I know!) of Larner Construction, a family run builders based in St Albans, Hertfordshire (UK).

The idea of this blog is to provide information about our business, to give a glimpse of the day-in-day-out running of the company and to provide information about domestic building works in the UK.

Stay tuned for photos, information, nerdy technical details and hopefully some witty, satirical anecdotes about life as a cheerful (usually!) home-counties builder!

For now you can visit our website at www.builderstalbans.com for more information and contact details.

Luke