Angles

There has been a slight problem with the positioning of the valley timber for the junction between the main roof and the front gable. The plans, viewed looking straight down from above show this timber meeting the wall at the point where it turns through 90 degrees. This is therefore where the builders put it. However, when it came to time to lay the rafters from the ridge down to this valley, it only works on one side. The problem is that the wall plate, on which the lower end of the rafters sits, is at a different height for the two parts of the wall.

Best illustrated, I think, with a picture :

Note how the timbers from the main roof, on the right, meet the valley timber nicely, but the ones on the left are too high.

When viewed in plan it looks something like this :



i.e. the valley timber and two walls all meet at point 'a'. The way it should be done is to open out the angle of the valley timber so that the gable roof overlaps the main roof slightly :

You can see how this would work in the existing gable, where this has been done in a much exaggerated way :

Note that there is a triangle of render in the corner of the overlap. I always intended to hack this off to expose the stone underneath. Now I know that this is not possible. The reason it is there is because there is no stone underneath. It is actually light-weight studwork as a result of there being no supporting wall below.

Hopefully, because the overlap will be so small on the new bit, we will still be able to have stone there. Builder seemed to think so anyway !

Hope that's clear. Comment if it isn't and I will try to clarify.