The stage we're at June 2007

It's all systems go at the moment. The roofers are here, all the old slates stripped off, re felted with breathable membrane, slatted and sun tunnels going in. The Velux windows are piled up in the hall waiting to be fitted and the steel UB's (RSJs in old money) should be arriving today. The roofers have been as good as expected so far although they have miss calculated the openings for the velux and will have to correct this to get the means of escape low enough to comply with the regs.
I asked the roofing company to install the UB's as the longest is 5.2m and weighs 160kg, they recon they can do it and so they've got the job. I have worked out way I can do it from the inside as a plan B. I'm apprehensive about this part of the works, getting it up there, man handling into position, and fitting in to the party wall, there plenty of scope for things to go wrong. I'll be glad when they are in.
Prior to the roofer starting I've been cleaning up the 50mm of accumulated dust and debris from between the ceiling rafters. This job is a nightmare, the dust is 75% black soot I get hot and sweaty, down at the eaves I've got 18" of space to work in so its a long, uncomfortable, slog. I've also never had so many showers in a week. One thing that make this a little easier is the vacuum machine I invented a while back. I could explain this in another post, but for now I'll just mention that that Dysons do loose suction power especially when they blow up so Im now running on Kirby power which is working well.
After the cleaning up and shifting of 15 rubble sacks of dust, oh and all the old unrecyclable insulation, I've been fitting chicken wire over the the ceiling rafters and the latte and plaster ceiling. This is a requirement of building regs to hold up the Rockwool flexi slabs that have to be put down to get the half hour fire resistance. I've done this on the offshot part of the roof and up the eaves on the rest of the roof. I need to get the wire meshing as far as where the UB's are going to be tonight.
The pictures I'm going to post will show this in more detail.