The roofing begins

Now that I have my full complement of tongue-and-grooved ply, I thought I'd make a start on the dwelling roof. But before I could start that, I needed to make safe the space around the walls since I'll be trafficking around here quite a lot.

First off, I needed a safe platform at the corner of the building above the battery / pump room - not only to install the roofing, but I'll need it when I come to put the Hebel in place. A few 90x45 bearers and the top (scrappy) sheet of ply and bingo, a safe work space.

Now, the first sheet of ply I lifted onto the roof using a ladder - if only to see if I could, or whether I needed another system.

I need another system :)

I did get it up without injury or mishap, but I'd not like to lift 40 of the buggers this way, so I spent a few minutes exercising the brain.

What I came up with is a very similar process to that which I used to skid the trusses up to the top plates - a couple of long 90x45 lengths anchored to star pickets, but this time I included a couple of "stops" to allow me to rest during the lift. These are just offcut blocks nailed to the skids at an angle, resulting in a "sawtooth" which allows me to slide the sheets up easily, but once over the block they won't come back down.

The rest was left to the trusty ratchet straps :)

I managed to get about half of one side of the roof done today, but neglected to take a photo of the work-in-progress. You'll just have to wait until tomorrow :)