OK I got the splitter finished and in place this weekend.
Didn't get a huge amount of time in the end but I had most of Sunday to get on with the job. One thing I wanted to sort out was a method to keep the flexible ducting in place. With a bit of thinking I came up with an idea. Soil stack pipes are 110mm diameter and are attached to the side of houses with large pipe clips. I figured that with a bit of tweaking they would work for the 100mm flexible duct. I bought a pack from ScrewFix and I came up with a method. I actually didn't use the holes at the base of the clip. Instead I drilled clearance holes from the side of the clips. This allowed me to screw them directly from the side directly into a couple of joists and allowed me to secure them so the ducting would be flush with the top. It also made it easier to close the diameter down to fit the duct. All in all this worked really well: >>photos<<
Before that I unscrewed both joists in between which the splitter box is to sit. This allowed much better access to the area. I then cleaned up all of the plastic duct and fittings before attaching everything. Using the same clamping method I positioned the box in situ held up by the quick clamps. I used adhesive to join the rectangular duct together along with self tapping screws in the sides. I then used duct tape over all the joints - better to be safe!! To attach the flexible duct to the box inlet I ran a bead of clear silicone round the two connectors and pushed the duct in place. A couple of cable ties back to back were then wrapped round to keep it in place and to top it off, lashings of duct tape...I don't think these are going to come off! As mentioned earlier the pipe clips were hooked over the ducts and screwed against the joists. This worked extremely well and ensures that the ducts stay put when I'm stuffing mineral wool around them.
Rather than have the box sitting directly on top of the ceiling drywall timbers I decided to have it sit on silicone. So before screwing the joists back in place I ran large beads of silicone sealant into the corners where the box would sit and gradually ease the joists back into position. This worked really well and you can clearly see that the box is a good 1-2mm off of the timber:>>photo<<
The only other job I did was to mark the position for the multicore feed into the garage. I bit tricky because the two buildings have a foot or so between them and the front walls are staggered by 50". So this involves deducting wall thicknesses etc. before I finally committed to drilling anything. Oh well, I ran the long series drill through the garage wall (double skin breeze block/brick) and that was that, I'll need to complete the job next time as it was too dark to work outside on the roof of the outbuilding to complete the drilling. >>photos<<
That's it for the time being anyway. I'm off to Germany on Tuesday until Sunday so there'll be no building for a while.