[Jargon.005] Tracks for sliding doors: J vs U

We visited Hume doors, one of the door suppliers for our builder, early February this year. From that visit, we learned that there are 2 types of door tracks (above the sliding door) for sliding doors: the normal one and the heavy duty one.

The normal track looks like a "J" shape and the mechanism above the door only has one wheel. The heavy duty track looks like a "U" shape and it uses 2 wheels instead and is normal much stronger.

In the Hume doors showroom you can see all sorts of doors on display, and they even have one set of each sliding door, with all the covering removed for you to easily compare and understand the differences between the two. The photos below were taken from that trip.

First is the normal "J" shape track, viewed from the bottom, you can see that there's one piece of track.

From different angle, you can clearly see how the single wheel connects to the "J" shape track.

This is the heavy duty "U" shape track, from below, you can see there are 2 tracks installed.

This photo wasn't very clear, based on the "J" shape one above, just image there's another wheel on the other side, sliding on the other half of the "U" shape track, and that's roughly how it works.

[Jargon.004] Roofing Terminology

As we are in the roofing stage, to make it clearer for everyone, I have added this post to explain some of the roofing terminologies been used. The following diagram is from Metal Roofing Source.com, you can find further explanation of all the terms in that web site as well.

[Jargon.003] Mortar Joint Styles

I got these information from this page on Austral Bricks web site.

As shown below, it tells you the different mortar joint styles you can choose from. But not all of them are available though, like our builder only allowed 3 of them: ironed, struck flush and raked. The one we chose is ironed.


This photo also from the same web site shows you the differences between flush joint and raked joint.

[Jargon.002] Sarking and Anti Ponding Board

Our builder told us that, because we are using "Terracotta" roof tile, we need to install "Sarking" and "Anti Ponding Board". This post is to talk about what I found about these 2 Jargons...

What is Sarking?
I found this definition of "Sarking" from the internet: "Sarking is a reflective foil laminate that is installed inside roofs. It has many benefits including weather proofing, insulation and reduction of dust and sound". The image below shows what it looks like:


The drawing below is from this page on greenhouse.gov.au, it clearly shows how the sarking are installed under the roof tiles. "RFL" stands for "reflective foil laminate".


The next image shows how sarking been installed: start from the bottom, with some overlapping when installing the second one. This is to ensure that if there's any water, it flows down to the gutter.


What is Anti Ponding Board?
So "sarking" is not that hard to understand, it took me a while to work out what is "Anti Ponding Board" used for.

The most simple and easy to understand explanation I found is from harmonyrooftiles.com.au: "The boards are installed to support sarking and ensure that any water collected by the sarking is correctly discharged into the eaves gutters."

The drawing below is also from the same page mentioned above from harmonyrooftiles.com.au:


The drawing below is from this page on bristileroofing.com.au.

So this "Anti-Ponding Board" thing is installed at the edge of the roof, and under the sarking to allow waters collected by the sarking to discharge into the gutter.

I remembered one of the Clarendon sales strongly recommend not to install sarking. Her reason is, if there's a crack somewhere in the tiles, it will be very difficult to work out which is the cracked tile. Because the water will run all the way to the gutter because of the sarking... Hang on, what are you talking about? That's one of the main reasons for installing sarking: to prevent leaking water from damaging my roof/ceiling! I would certainly prefer to have this extra protection than water damaged roof/ceiling!

[Jargon.001] Timber frames and ceiling

If you are like me, who doesn't know much about all the technical terms/jargons used in the construction industry, it can be quite painful understanding what the trades person said or explaining to someone what you tried to do. So I think it would be helpful to start collecting some diagrams/drawings that clearly show what some of the terms actually mean.

Let's start with the followings:
These 2 are from Boral:


This is from greenhouse.gov.au click here for the original page