Framing the roof

Summer seems to end more quickly whenever you have a roof to build and this one was no exception. The race was on. The cold Autumn rains were winning.

The ceiling boards went up, we squared them and began working the rafters...and not the camera. This is the only picture of the entire roofing project I could find.

On top of the ceiling boards went the vapor barrier (6mil poly). The 2 x 6 rafters were next. I considered using 2 x 8s or10s and with that added space more insulation could be used, but...this is a sauna, not a home. Our wood stove will be used to create massive amounts of heat quickly for relatively short periods of time. We won't be living in this building where the heat would need to be conserved. So in the end I used 2 x 6s and 6" fiberglass insulation. I did lay a 6" strip of ridge vent mesh from eve to ridge on top of the insulation for venting, aluminum eve and ridge vents were also added. On top of all this went 1/2 plywood sheathing, a tar-paper product ( I can't remember the name of the stuff) and finally the shingles. Oh, and yes we framed in the chimney and installed the roof jack and the insulated chimney to the stove.\

(UPDATE: November 9, 2008 - We've learned that you should NOT put lots of big stones in the top of this stove. By big I mean the size of a grapefruit. Lots of stones (perhaps 10 gallons ,suck up tons of heat and render the stove inefficient. Once we removed the vast majority of these and only used about two gallons of stones the sauna heated up great. We are considering adding additional rigid insulation (2") on the interior of the ceiling of the steam room and then covering it with cedar to speed up the heating time. Right now it takes about an hour to get the steam room to 140* F.)

Now, the last step to prepare for the first winter was to make a temporary door and install the three windows. Using some left over 1/2" plywood and 2x4s the door was a snap. The windows also went quickly. The cold and snow were next, and the long wait for spring began.

I think I should mention here that all of this work was being done on weekends and by this time we were all getting tired. Using a calendar it became clear that at this rate it might be 2027 until the project was complete so we vowed to take two weeks vacation in the spring and get it done.