Sunday, February 10, 2008

New Roof: The cause!

The female PO stated that the reason the extension went on the front of the house was they were tired of clearing out the huge pile of leaves that gathered there in the autumn. The extension was the cause of the leak (see previous entry about demolishing it).

So I was dreaming of this huge pile of leaves for the compost pile all gathering themselves without any effort.

You can imagine my disappointment when this is what we got:


Yes. That's the entire pile. Everything that gathered on the porch.

That is the reason for the entire roof replacement!

New Roof: Day 1

The crack of dawn (7:46, December 27th):



Unloading the tiles:

Getting that truck into the driveway was interesting. The driveway is one car wide all the way to the curb. The road is only just over two lanes wide. That they managed to only flatten about a square foot at the end of the driveway is quite impressive, but took a while.

Up to the roof


at which point the constant cold drizzle caused them to call off for the day as it wasn't safe for them to be on the roof and they'd be letting the rain in.

New Roof: Day 2, Part 1

7:48 am, waiting for the roofers to arrive, you can see the mess of the old roof in front of the piles of tiles on the roof.


8:03 am, unloading tools as the sun comes up and melts the frost on the ground, and more importantly, the roof.


8:13 am, and it's already getting difficult to get outside the front door.


"Oh my god! It's full of stars!"

(actually that's the underside of the roof, with all the little nail holes, not a giant obelisk orbiting Jupiter).

8:18, stripping off the roof, the sun is just getting above the treeline


8:21, the sunpipe domes sitting on top of their boxes:

Why are these out in the back yard when it's going to be hours before they are ready for them? Because the garage door was rapidly disappearing behind the pile of roofing tiles.

8:39: The front side of the roof is almost clear and they are starting on the back.


9:17: As they started on the back, I climbed up the mound outside the front door to survey the damage to the roof. Can you spot where the leak was?

About a third of the way up the roof, near the top of this image, there's a triangular day spot. That's not a shadow, that's a hole. One of the roofers but the scraper blade through the roof it was that rotten.

9:18: The mound I was standing on to take the previous shot. You could just about get in the front door.


9:18: The front of the house


9:19: The back side is completely clear


9:20: Just part of the far side to go

New Roof: Day 2, Part 2

9:29: The light shines through... illuminating the mess under the roofing boards.


9:29: The somewhat tidy attic in the dim light from the window.


9:34: Taking one of the rotten boards out.


9:46: The underside of the above board.


9:50: Surveying the damage

Removing the boards meant I could stick my head out through the roof to look at the damaged area and see how extensive it was. It could have been worse. The beams look bad but were actually fairly solid.

9:50: A slightly wider shot with more visible damage and a leg to give you a sense of scale.

The beams are 16 inches center-to-center.

9:50: A detail shot of the damage.


10:00: Meanwhile, on the back of the ranch:

The far side of the roof was spared the attentions of the previous owners so was in fine shape. Annoyingly so was the roofing they took off on that side, it just wasn't worth attempting to keep when they were doing the rest. (It had another 2-5 years of lifespan and the roofers wouldn't warrantee any of it if they did a partial job).

10:24: Putting in the replacement boards.


10:24: The rest of the crew had the front under sheets on.

This is the part that actually keeps most of the water out. The lower edge is a different colour as it's an ice shield as well.

New Roof: Day 2, Part 3

10:30: The back seam doesn't look good either.

This was also not a surprise, it matches up with the water damage in the kitchen ceiling.

10:35: So off comes more boarding.

The facia piece is also damaged, but it's not structurally significant and will dry out once the rest is repaired.

11:09: With the board on the front replaced, it doesn't take long to get the underlay on.

The ice protection goes up the valley too.

11:43: Marking off the hole for the larger of the two sunpipes.

This pipe was the most problematic item of the whole process. The larger pipe only just fit between the roof beams (14.5 inch clearence, 14 inch tube), and the instructions were just complex and unclear enough to confuse the roofers.

1:06pm: Shiny domes for the sunpipes waiting for the roofers to finish their lunch.
As they arrived about 15 minutes after I got up, that was fine with me.

1:09: The new shingles start going on the roof.

The edges are the tricky bit, once they had the overlap right they were very quick.

1:23: Fourteen minutes later, one guy has done about half of that face of the roof.


1:23: and the foreman has done over a third of the front slope whilst still keeping the rest busy.


1:26: The far side is coming along, and you can see the hole for the bathroom sunpipe.


1:59: In goes the dome for the bathroom.


2:05: The back slope is almost completed.


3:33: The front is almost done, except for the recalrant dome.

The guys at the top of the valley are putting in the last of tiles on the new ridge vent on that side. The guy on the ground was obviously the lowest in the heirarchy - he spent the entire day cleaning up the old roofing material and moving it to the skip.

4:27: All done, just cleaning up.


Early morning some time later, the final results:






... and the new roof makes the back look even worse. Once it's warmer painting that is high on the list of things to do.