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Garage insulation.

My client wanted a four berth garage fully insulated with a polythene lining, sheep's  wool as the insulating material and the entire garage finished with tongue and grooved boards.  At a later date, it would be necessary to make adjustments to the door openings in order that the doors (imported from America) could be fitted.

Photo above:  The finished garage.

Photos 1 & 2 below:

Above L/H photo, insulation going onto the lower back wall of the garage - cut and wedged into place. R/H photo, a thick polythene  lining is added by stapling with stainless staples.  This will be covered by 15mm x 110mm tongue and grooved cladding. 200 sq metres of it to be precise. If I never see another piece of T&G cladding I shall die a happy man!

The insulation is made from low grade sheep's wool and is 100mm thick. It is easy to handle and unless you have an allergy to lanolin,  causes no  handling and or breathing problems (although a face mask is advisable) . The down side is that it is remarkably difficult to cut. See below.

Photos 3  below:

The garage with insulation on the back wall well underway. The photo  also shows the pile of Thermafleece and my good old - got it on Ebay -  bandsaw.

The band saw is important; the blade  does not have teeth per se;  rather it is scalloped like a bread knife - albeit one travelling very very quickly. In  effect  the saw slices rather than  cuts the wool easily and effectively with virtually  no "swarf". I understand  that such blades are widely used in the "butchery trade". Without it we would have been well and truly stuck. The only alternative would  have been to hack away at the wool  with a "Stanley knife" (aka box knife in USA)  - goodness knows how long that would have taken.

To get hold of such a  bandsaw blade,  Google for "Starret" and you will find that they can make up such a blade to fit any bandsaw of any size....

Photos 5 & 6 below:

Below left, the back l/h corner up to the first horizontal beam.. Below r/h, looking up to the roof, the r/h end a few days later.

Photos; 7 and 8  above : The left hand  end of the garage with the cladding cut and fitted around a substantial piece of air conditioning pipe work.  This is not any old garage, study the last photo carefully for a better idea.

Photos;  9 and 10 below :

With the insulation in place it was necessary to reduce slightly, the width of the door openings to match the width of the garage doors and to provide support for the door runners.  The wood is "air dried English oak". 

The garage doors were imported by the customer  from America.  Apparently,  the glass windows and the running mechanism  combined,  contravene  just about every regulation that those nice people in Brussels have managed to dream up on the subject .  In short, you cannot buy doors like these in Europe.

The tricky part here  was to rout out the new oak- see above -   so that the new timber   would fit from behind up and against the existing curved piece of bracing oak. To do this a template was produced  from the curved timber and  the router then followed the curve of the template in order to achieve a reasonable fit. Needless to say not every curved brace was the same...

Below 11 centre picture shows the timber in place and coach bolted to existing timber. These holes were later plugged. Plugs were turned up on my lathe.

Photo 12 below far right  shows the new timber shaped up to fit up and against  the stone plinth.

Photo 13 below left.... As I put in the timbers for the doors, the door fitters fell in behind me.

Photo 14. below right.  Constrained by the slope of the roof, some neat  engineering to support the back of the door runners;  comprising a cantilevered  support for the rear end of the door  tracking mechanism.

Photo 15 below. Four of the  seven finished garages, on an autumn  evening .

Now then   gentle reader, if you have studied the pictures carefully, you may have noticed a:  Porsche Cayenne, a Ford  GT40 and a Mclaren SLR sitting  in the garages ? A Ferrari 420 was out the day the picture was taken.

While it is always a delight pleasure to create something  in wood, having to move those cars in and out of the garages every day was sooooooooo much better.

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