 The Arts & Crafts Eco Project has moved on a little further with a 'new hat' for the new showrooms to be, we have recently finished installing a new Kingspan (Olive green) 115mm insulated composite roof on the pre cast "Atcost" concrete portal framed building which was originally built in the late 1970's on the 4 acre site where The AC Eco Project is situated. The building has been unused since 1979, & an Environmentally friendly approach is to bring this building back to life rather than demolish it all & start again. At the end of November 2011 Marcus Flute who owns SEC Scaffolding from Beccles a very old friend of mine & a group of high spirited chaps arrived on site & started erecting scaffolding around the building, including a 7 metre slope I had designed with 2 x 6M planks laid against the bottom of the slope so the old roof sheets would glide gently down & not snag on the scaffold fixings. Once the scaffolding was completed early in December 2011 my youngest son Theodore & I started removing the old roof with a few friends turning up here & there a long the way for a day or two & it took us just under a week to remove all the fixings & roofing sheets & carefully lowering the large old sheets down the slope with two men using ropes, a very safe way to get the heavy 3M x 1.1M sheets down, stacking them away to sell on at a later date. While this was going on we took delivery of 300 metres of 4" x 2" tanalised pine beams in 4 metre lengths & fixed them to the tops of the concrete purlins with the hire of a very handy scissor lift, we managed to get it stuck in the mud a few times but the hydraulic legs were very helpful & in no time at all with a few shovels of dry earth & some boards placed under the wheels we were away again. It took us just over three days to fix all the beams into place on top of the purlins which is exactly the time we had to complete that part of the job finishing just before 8pm under a clear star filled sky with the aid of a couple of spot lights. We tidied up & after dinner, some good old Steak & Ale pie & cheesy mash we had an early night (yet again) to be up at first light to get ready to start installing the new roof sheets. Earlier in the week I went to my local garden centre in Holton which is just up the road to see if anyone could help with lifting the roof panels from the trucks, I spoke to a chap on the counter called Terry who passed the message on to the owner Neil, Neil called me back & jovially said ''that wouldn't be a problem at all I look forward to it''. When the first of the two trucks arrived on cue just befor 9am on the morning of the 12th of December I phoned Neil & within five mins Neil had trundled up on his trusty old tractor with fork attachments, & a couple of hours later it was all unloaded into place around the building, & the two lorries were long gone. It was the very first time I had met Neil that day he arrived on his tractor beaming from ear to ear, he was absolutely brilliant, & we hit it off immediately, & had a good old chin wag over cuppa. The roofing team consisted of myself, my cousin Robert Zanetti an old school civil engineer no nonsense genius, classic car enthusiast, budding Eco warrior (he'll kill me for that one :) with a fountain of knowledge & wisdom whom directed the roof installation (& paid for it !), my nephew Simon an oilfield engineer, floor specialist & occasional antique restorer, & my sons friends, Drakee & AK the jolly duet, & also to get things started John Lewis MD of 'The Steel Building Co Ltd' (whom supplied the roof) was with us for the day. Together we put the first 7 Metre sheet up onto the scissor lift & then hoisted it up, & between us man handled it up onto the scaffolding & onto the purlins which was pretty tricky & felt a little hairy even though there was a safety net below us. We spent a great deal of time getting it into the correct aligned position using a fair bit of thumping, jiggling, tweaking & tickling to get it to sit perfectly between the top & a bottom plumb lines, which really was the most important part of the job because a few mil' out to begin with is a long way out at the other end which is 23 Metres away ! We hoisted a couple of more sheets up & butted them into place, made some minor adjustments & fixed them, then we hopped over to the other side getting the first sheet up & into place to start that side off & with another full day completed, we were ready for the crane (from Wavetrade in Lowestoft) which arrived the next day on the 19th Dec, & a very cold drizzly Monday morning it was. The crane driver Peter drove the crane into place while the five of us remaining moved some sheets around & got everything ready to go. Peter did an excellent job lifting up the remaining forty three, 7 Metre long composite roof sheets into place, while we managed to get just enough fixings into each sheet to hold it into place before the next sheet was ready & waiting hovering above us, it was non stop for eight hours with one very welcomed cup of tea & a scoffed on the run cheese sandwich while we moved the safety nets across to work on the other side. Regardless of the wet weather all of us soaked to the bone with no feeling in most of our extremities & a few out of control slides down the new wet roof ending in a heap at the top of the scaffolding to roars of laughter (myself included) I must say it went exceedingly well indeed & my cousin Robert then had a mammoth drive home that evening to Devon so we said our goodbyes with some banter & laughter. It was a little while before myself, Simon, Drakee & AK thawed out that night but after a steaming hot bath I regained feeling in my finger tips & with some hot food inside of us it wasn't long before we all turned in for a well deserved kip, to be up again before first light to finish the drilling & screwing of thousands & thousands of fixings into place, it was certainly a mountain & not a mole hill. We took much care to remove all the metal debri from the drilling as left to sit on the roof with a little rain in the mix it will instantly start to rust. The final fixings took us most of the rest of the week to complete, then a couple of thousand special fixing caps to be pressed into place over every single fixing to preserve the heads & seal them which was the final mile & a little like applying icing on a cake. With some horrific weather, frozen icy mornings, which didn't thaw until just before the sun went down on most days, rain & then more rain, making it a tricky slippery process most of the time but at least we had no high winds which would have stopped the job in it's tracks yet the guys pressed on, always in high spirits with some hilarious moments, thanks guys you made it happen ! We completed it a couple of days later than we anticipated late on the 23rd of December, followed by a well deserved celebration night out drinking the kitty dry 'twice', it was a very special moment thanks again. Drakee & I worked most of Christmas Eve finishing it off & I made a few adjustments & screwed down the final fixings to the roof by noon on Christmas day ! It was a very sunny day, with clear blue skies & not a cloud to be seen, a little Surreal for Christmas day, 'working & sunshine',,,, but I felt on top of the world (or roof) when I screwed & capped the last fixing into place ! The next stage for now is landscaping of the remaining three acres starting with the planting of 500 'British' trees consisting of twenty different species including twenty five different fruit trees which I will be supplied by Emma Mayo from the Woodland Trust who are the UK's leading conservation charity a great source of knowledge & information specialising in native trees & some non native trees that have been here a very long time. The Woodland Trust will supply 500 'British' trees at a very low cost indeed to owners of two & a half acres of land or more, the only thing you have to do is to decide where your going to plant them ! There website is - www.woodlandtrust.org.uk thanks for reading this I hoped you enjoyed it & I hope to hear from you too.... I will let you all know how the planting goes & the next part of the build. All the very best Tony & the boys ! Click on pictures to enlarge 
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