How To: DIY Garden Roof – Quick Epoxy Fix?
Given a holiday week with poor weather and changed circumstances I once more took up the tools and materials that I love so much. In an effort to keep at bay the maintenance and DIY tasks on our 110 year old cottage. The summer house in the corner of our garden needed a new roof and replacement of the rotten roof beams.
If you’ve used WEST SYSTEM® Epoxy on your boat, then you’ll understand. For this kind of task no other glue or coating will create a sense of profound confidence that epoxy does.
The 3 softwood beams were assembled with WEST SYSEM 105 Epoxy Resin®, 205 Fast Hardener®/406 Colloidal Filler and then triple coated using 105/207 Special Clear Hardener® and 502 Black Pigment.
Why WEST SYSTEM?
WEST SYSTEM Epoxy is particularly useful for repairing ‘end of’ plank structure that has rotted and needs to be readied for some form of metal fastener.
People may not consider this totally standard or even acceptable practice on a boat but for a summer house that’s not crossing the Atlantic, it’s just a perfect time saver.
I simply used WEST SYSTEM 105/205/406 epoxy.
One combined pump stroke of resin and hardener and the same volume of 406 Colloidal Silica instantly yields peanut butter consistency that I could apply to the rotten wood and then ‘shutter’ the adhesive with scrap wood wrapped in Sellotape and clamped in place till the next day. A perfect foundation to accept the screws that secured the roof beams without the need to replace a whole plank.
I sheathed both sides of the 12mm hardwood faced ply roof panels with 280g/m² woven glass, 75g/m² glass tissue, and WEST SYSTEM 105/206. All the glass fabric came from my scraps bin. Then textured and prepared the surface by peel plying the sheathing. Next, allowed it to cure for 48 hours. This made it ready for polyester flocoat application to both the top and underside. I actively engaged with the handling qualities of polyester gelcoat with wax in styrene (Flocoat). This ensured its strong bond to the epoxy by thoroughly curing and meticulously abrading the surface or applying peel ply.
I tacked the vertical return on the front of each roof panel in place with G5® adhesive, filleted it with WEST SYSTEM 105/205/403 epoxy, and sanded it upon curing before beginning the sheathing process.
Considering everything, the results were great.
I’ve made a post box, fixed window frames, garden posts, drain covers and even made a clear coated clothes prop.
I have found WEST SYSTEM 105/207 epoxy, either for clear coating or pigmented black, has exquisite brushing characteristics, amazing gloss retention and very good UV stability, despite being out in the UK weather.
What Materials Were Used?
4M 280g Twill Glass Fabric 9 ( Style 743 )
Quantity used for this project was about 2 A packs in volume of epoxy and just a few scoops of filler, 20 grams of G5 and a small percentage of black pigment. I salvaged all the glass from my scraps box, which would have otherwise been discarded.
By David Johnson
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