Roof question.

G'day all,

Bit of a funny question this time. I'm making a garden arch for climbing roses. Each side frame will be 1200 long and about 2m high, with 3 large rails to stop any sideway movement. The 2 sides will be 1800 apart. The roof will consist of a hip rafter (might get these names wrong, so bear with me) with 4 rafters on each side of the hip going down at 30 degrees to connect to the top of the rails with a birds-mouth. At each end I will fix a facia to the rafter - these will meet at the top at 30 degrees. I will put a brace across between the facias to give it sideway strength (like a trussed roof), and nail some metal strips across each roof panel to stop the hip moving back and forward. I need to put a federation style finial at each end too. Lastly, the rafters will support a few battens and the sides will have a grid of the same battens to support the roses. I've attached a picture which shows basically what I plan.

The stirrups are already in the ground (which slopes down from front to back and right to left - another story). The side frames are cut and waiting for painting. I'm building the roof structure in the garage with a mock-up of the top rails clamped to my work bench, so I can get the angles, lengths, etc correct without clambering up ladders. I'm going to pull everything to bits after i'm done and paint all the surfaces before putting it all back together like a kit.

The only thing that worries me is how to get the roof on once its in place in the garden. I will have the 2 sides bolted to the stirrups and clamped together so they don't move too much. Once I get the hip up with at least 2 sets of opposing rafters I'll be ok, but I'm blowed if I can figure out how to get this up. I'm using hangers (mini grips) to connect the rafters to the hip, so I can screw them on at ground level, but they don't give much support if I start banging the roof around while I try to lift it high enough to put it on the sides. I can see my self messing around with lots of braces and supports until there is enough there to support itself, but I wonder if there is some easy or practical way to do this?

As always, any help appreciated.

Cheers,
Adam

PS. I know the perspective in the picture looks odd - it was all hand-drawn, if you know what I mean.

Attached Thumbnails http://www.renovateforum.com/attachm...1&d=1243830371



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