Fixing the Roof

Before-

the front roof was tar and gravel

it was about 20 years old and leaking

it had not been cleaned in forever, so grass was growing on the roof

the skylights were original, single thickness

there was no insulation

only 1 downspout was working (hence the pond seen here)

To compound matters, the termites had been working on the boiler room roof for years. There were spots that if you had stepped on them, you would have gone thru.
HERE's a sample of their handiwork- that was originally a 2 x 6 board...

Anyhow, we caught a week of good weather in December and decided to go for it.
All the bad boards had to be replaced, so George ripped them all out.
Then he found some recycled boards over in East PA...

...and was able to get most of them down before nightfall

The other fun part of the job was that all the skylights had to be replaced- since the new foam roof was up to 2" thick, the old skylights were too low and so had to be raised up. Also, the new skylights were 3" bigger than the old ones... so we decided to just build new redwood boxes for 4 of the 5 skylights and install them.
HERE's the new and old skylights...

Then, foam day! On Friday, 3-dec-05, Keith Nokes from Custom Craft Urethane and his crew showed up and gave us a new roof.
This is a pretty interesting process

first they removed all the old gravel and stuff with a massive vaccuum cleaner

then dry the whole mess with portable flame throwers

then spray the polyurethane to a depth of 1.5 - 2". this stuff expands instantly and is hard to walk on in 1 minute

then spray the entire surface with the sealer coat

then he gave me his bill and said to call him in 10 years!
The new roof is watertight and much (5-10 degrees) warmer... Thanks, Keith!

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