Its taken the two of us about 12 working days. We have had to "commute" so not started each morning until nearly 9am, and left by 4pm, so if we had stayed nearby I figure we would have got another couple of hours in each day and shortened the job so could have saved a couple of days perhaps.
In case anyone who wants to do something similar stumbles over this thread I have some suggestions:
A decent lifter. We used something called a Niftylift. Its electric (battery charges overnight) and can be manoeuvred from either controls at ground level or from the platform. Made it easy to get a pane of glass (or glazing bar etc.) out of the roof, then shuffle along to the next one. I came across this by chance, I was expecting to hire a Genie Lift, but they are far more capable than we needed and twice the price to hire. Niftylift worked out at about £ 200 per week.
Ratchet Ringspanners. Lots of the 10mm aluminium nuts are within "channel" where there is only a tiny amount of "turn" space available. An ordinary spanner would take forever, but the ratchet ones you can wiggle backwards-and-forwards furiously with only the tinniest amount of play. Many aluminium nuts rung off anyway, but the nuts run free for the first part of their travel, then jam-up on the corroded threads.
The ones I have are Britool Expert. I decided I needed some quality ones that wouldn't fray! I'm a little bit in two minds about the combinations-sizes approach, it definitely works just fine but I have to check which side I am using rather often! (Basically each ring has difference sizes on each side, so each spanner fits 4 different size nuts, which is jolly handy of course, although the sizes are not sequential! Just 3 spanners gets you #1 = 8, 10 & 12, 13; #2 = 9, 11 & 14, 15; #3 = 16, 17 & 18, 19. As it happens 99% of the bolts were 10mm and 13mm, so I just had one spanner in my back pocket :)
Cheapest I found was at FFX £ 45 - supposedly a £ 40 discount, but I'm always sceptical of anything like that, presumably no-one pays full price!
Britool Expert E111115B Quadbox Spanner Set of 3 in Toolroll
I also have 18V rechargeable battery drill / screwdriver, impact driver / screwdriver, impact wrench tools (3 separate ones). All three were useful although I find the impact driver the least used (given that I also have an impact wrench which I find just amazing when undoing nuts / bolts no matter how stubborn they are). The impact driver can be a bit violent for undoing screws and I find the drill / screwdriver better for that (variable toque setting and the trigger provides some control too). I have a "torsion bit holder" which supposedly absorbs some of the initial torque and prevents the screwdriver bit ripping the guts out of the head of the screw! but I'm in two minds about that too. It definitely works, and works well, but it lengthens the business end, and is a bit wobbly, so trying to engage it on a screw head, one handed, at arms length reach!! is difficult. When a second hand is available to align the bit then it works well. (Supposedly it prolongs the life of the screw driver bit too, which I can believe, but I wonder if I've been "had" by marketing hype?!! In the last couple of weeks we've undone buckets of screws and if I had had to buy an extra bit, or two, it wouldn't have made any difference overall ...)
Makita B-28531 Ultra-Mag Torsion Magnetic Bit Holder
Personally I don't use the Impact Driver to remove nuts. I do have sockets with hex-ends, which will fit the Driver, but when a nut gets stuck in the socket (often) you can't poke anything in to dislodge it, whereas with an open socket (as I use on the Impact Wrench) it is easy to take the socket off and give it a poke - but I find the nuts in the impact wrench sockets generally fall out when I just knock the end of the socket on something nearby.
Transport of everything back-to-base needs some consideration. We haven't taken the A-frames to bits, which will save a bit of time on re-assembly. They are 21' 6" long (and 3' 3" "high") so it needs quite a big vehicle. Might be worth hiring the longest stretched van for the day, to get all the loose bits back. I'm brining all of those bits back on a flatbed, but the "Extra Long Wheel Base Van" from Thrifty is £ 85 for the day and has a 4.3M cargo bay 1.9M high (so perhaps 5.25M / 17' "sloping) which I think would get pretty much everything except ridge bars - the gutters would be a bit borderline. Tipper truck, with H-frame so that they can be loaded up-and-over the cab, would work too and is probably cheaper than a stretch van, but won't take the 20' cross bars [used on the A-frames]. Problem with a tipper truck is how you strap down the aluminium if it is sloping up-over the cab as it obviously has a lot more "bend" then steel etc.
The glass we have put in pallet boxes, and put a strap around them for good measure. Luckily there is a forklift on site; I had a quote for £ 600 for the day from a haulage company that would transport everything for me. Their vehicle would have a grab to load / unload pallets ... but I figure that is a much higher cost than my local man with a flatbed :) (I doubt selfdrive would do as I don't think an ordinary licence would get a long enough flatbed, but I might be wrong on that. A Scaffolder's flatbed would be ideal)
Good gloves.
Father Christmas treated myself, and Mrs K, to some Gold Leaf leather gardening gloves. My hands get cold in double quick time, so I have the Winter Touch ones. My hands have stayed warm (Thinsulate lining) so they definitely work for me. I don't have a solution for really wet days. They got soaking wet on one very rainy day, luckily a Friday, and I stuffed them with newspaper and wrapped them too, to dry them out "slowly-ish" which took most of the weekend. They didn't go completely stiff, but it took them a couple of days to loosen up again. My only solution would be to have 4 pairs and only use them for a couple of hours each on wet days, but that's a bit extravagant! They have stood up really well to a fortnight's continuously handling of glass, metal and general working - lots of pulling them on & off to use fingers to remove a nut, etc. They are reputed to last well (in return for their higher price) and with a bit of looking after I can imagine that the adage "
Best quality is the cheapest" will prove to be true.
http://www.goldleaf-gloves.com/wintertouch.htm
Mrs K has some Soft Touch gloves. They fit really tightly (by design) and are good for fiddly work (personally I never wear gloves when gardening except when handling things that make my hands dry out, like bricks and paving slabs, glass and thorns).
http://www.goldleaf-gloves.com/softtouch.htm
They don't look it in this photo, but the leather does wrap around the finger tips "well" - more so on the Thumb and Index finger, which is what [Mrs K tells me!] is needed for weeding. The backs let the hands breath.
Santa Clause also bought Mrs K a pair of Tough Touch gloves to stop nettles etc. stinging her wrists
http://www.goldleaf-gloves.com/toughtouch.htm
Personally I use the cheapest
Deer Skin welding gauntlets that I can find. It is rare for anything to pierce them and they are a lot cheaper than the Goldleaf Gloves. I also have some Welders Sleeves (suede-type leather tubes, with elasticated ends,to protect all the way up your arms) when working with brambles / tall nettles.
