Shed build - help

Been quite busy late. Couple of posts incoming....

First, the door. I previously made a frame from construction framing timber, which was a terrible idea, and hung a cheap B&Q door. It looked bad and didn't close properly.

Whilst taking a break from Shed things I made a chicken coop, partly using plywood joined with glue and brad nails. It was a nice experience, so I decided to continue the experiment and make a door frame and door out of plywood.

Now, plywood comes in various grades. The "WBP" and "Marine" grading actually applies to the glue layers, not the wood plies. Marine is the same as WBP except that it is guaranteed to be free of voids in the glue layers.

The marine ply you can get from builders merchants is usually not proper boatbuilding quality, and that's mostly down to the wood used in the plies. Some of it is "hardwood faced", but as soon as you cut it you're through to the softwood plies and that can cause issues. For that reason it is often marked "not suitable for cutting" or some such.

So I decided to go for Joubert Marine ply from paneldespot (http://www.paneldepot.ie/sheet_ply_marine.html), which is Okoume hardwood throughout, and I've laminated it myself with Titebond II, which is worse than the glue used in the plies themselves but ought to be OK.

I haven't decided what to finish it with. I have some outdoor satin varnish, but for now I've put on a couple of coats of Danish oil.

Anyway, the plywood allows me to create interesting features, like the removable "locking module" which I can slide out if I want to change the arrangement of locking things.

Making a door and frame with acceptable tolerances in a opening which is out of true in every conceivable way is hard. There are various wood shims which will eventually be covered by some combination of tape, filler, glue and cladding.

I ended up with 2-3mm clearance on all sides, with consistency within 1mm on each given side. It's fine.

The requirement for the locking mechanism was "convenient security". I want to be able to get in and out without keys, and know that if the door is closed then casual robbery is impossible.

So in July 2019 I punted some money at an Indiegogo crowd funded smart lock called "Fido", which arrived in November 2019.

It's controlled with a smartphone app called "YEEUU", and a company of that name seems to be trading sort-of through Facebook and indiegogo, but I don't know whether it's actually for sale at this point.

There are fobs as backup, but the usual way is thumbprint recognition. Yay, the Chinese government has my thumb prints! But it works.

Here's a video.



The door obviously isn't finished yet, the proper stops still have to go on and I need to fill the void on the right with insulation and add the last sheet of ply, fill the tops and bottoms, and add draught stripping.

The odd split/recessed design on the front serves several purposes: it shelters the electronic lock from drips, and it allows 100mm woodfibre insulation over about 2/3 of the door area whilst keeping the lock-side to about 50mm which means it doesn't catch against the frame when opening, and allows "normal" locks to be fitted.

Oh, and I added a Nest doorbell which does remote two-way video/audio, face recognition, intruder detection and stuff. That's wired through a bell transformer.

Full size pics on imgur https://imgur.com/a/stAnpqi

listermint wrote: »

On that im at an array wall of ones the same as you. Seen many variants used on builds on youtube and the likes, push strips, double strips, single strips.

I think if i recall the restoration couple he used a nice clean one on his Oak door that he built himself, looked really professional and clean.

Ah, at about 5:50

edit: no, this attempt looks like a failure, must be another vid

So I finished the door this weekend and tidied up some electrics, in between pulling ceilings down in my house. Too dark for pics when I finished today. WINTER IS COMING.

It turns out that the expensive and beautiful D-section EDPM rubber "brush strips" are unsuitable for use on door stops because they're so elastic that the door bounces off them unless you slam it.

So I ended up using the cheaper EDPM foam strips. LOL.

Still have the threshold and top stop to make.

It all works beautifully, like some kind of plywood fortress, but this is the first and last door I'm ever making. :pac:

It's a big week in Shed world and I thought I'd write a post to get my head straight.

The triple glazed IGUs (insulated glass units) for the French doors and picture window are being manufactured as I type this, and I've materials arriving to make a floating mezzanine floor.

Figuring out how to make windows has been one of the more demanding aspects of this project.

Putty is a thing of the past except for heritage projects, there are various "glazing systems" used now, which use different permutations of hybrid sealants and adhesive glazing tape.

I am going for something close to the Hodgson "D3 Drained Security Glazing System", which uses adhesive tapes under compression to provide a watertight (and hopefully airtight) seal, and sealant only for the frame joints.



It's critical to ensure that water doesn't collect around the base of the IGU even if the seals fail, as that will cause the unit to fail, so I'll be drilling holes through the bottom of the frames, draining to the outside behind the cladding. This is made possible because I made the frames such that the glass is located "outboard" of the walls, with the battened cladding ultimately coming out flush with the frames.

The glass will be located and supported by hardwood blocks which come in various thicknesses. I have them all, they're cheap and should be handy for general shimming jobs.



I think professionally made windows use glazing pins to locate the glass, but I'm not planning on using those. This may prove a mistake.

I have a set of of vacuum lifters from Screwfix plus some super tough glazing shovels to help manouvre the IGUs, which are absurdly heavy. Both the French doors and picture window have a a 6/14/6/14/6 specification (6mm glass panes with 14mm warm edge spacers), so 18mm of glass in total, and the picture window unit should weigh close to 100kg.

The tape is interesting. It's quite high density and to achieve a watertight seal it requires 20% compression, which requires 1.1kg of force per cm2 of tape, which works out at about almost 800kg of force. Yeah, so that seems like a bit of a challenge.

But interestingly, triple glazing is relatively cheap. I'm getting about 3.5sqm and it's only costing about 700 quid.



As for the mezzanine floor, that's going to be made of 3x3 PAO sandwiched between 9mm birch ply with plenty of blocking to spread the load. I have no idea whether it will be stiff enough, but I'm planning to incorporate a floating structural ladder anchored to the ridge beam to help out.

It should all be over by the end of the month, bar the cladding. Hopefully I will still have all my fingers.

I am deep down the rabbit hole here. If anyone has any tips, I'm all ears.