That Darn Roof

Yesterday was Day 2 of work on That Darn Roof for this summer. On Day 1 we set up the ladder. Yesterday, Lisa went up to the roof and hauled up a broom, rake, and other tools for cleaning the moss from the roof. After a little while, she came back down and we went to the hardware store and bought a wire brush because the broom wasn't cutting it -- even in the summer sun, that moss was holding on tight. A pity I didn't realize we would have needed the large wire broom I have down in California -- I could have brought it with me when I drove up. Here's some excerpts of how the afternoon went.

After about an hour of scraping moss under a pounding sun -- it was very warm here yesterday, and won't be much better today -- Lisa had to call it a day. She just barely got down from the roof, and was trembling with what looked like signs of heat exhaustion. Even with the safety lines and harness, this work is very stressful. I'd volunteer to do it myself, but we're concerned that the roof might not support my additional weight.

The plan is, once we get enough moss cleared, for Lisa to nail down wooden strips -- you can see the first one in this video -- and staple plastic to them, then apply goop to that to try and keep the water off of the damaged section of roof when the rains return, which won't be too long from now.

More About the Roof

When I went to lunch, I noticed that That Darn Roof was still in the shade of the giant redwood tree, and suggested to Lisa that she might want to do some work there now. So I took a long lunch and she went up there for an hour, shifted the ladder that's on the roof over a meter to the left, and scraped more moss for an hour. While she worked, and while she didn't need me, I clipped brush and piled it in the hand-cart for eventual disposal in the "coal seam" landfill area.

In the process of doing this work, she discovered yet more holes in the roof near the chimney. Upon coming back down from the roof, and taking stock of the rate of progress and the fact that I have to leave by mid-day Saturday, she decided that the original plan to cover the entire roof was too ambitious. We went to the hardware store, bought some specialized sheeting for roof repairs and some roof-repair goop that can only be used in hot, dry weather like we're having now. The new plan is to try and do something just to the approximately three-meter-wide space down-roof from the chimney, and the area immediately around the chimney itself. With luck, she figures she can get the lathe strips down later today, and maybe even get the plastic sheets stapled into place. However, before she can do that, she plans to take the leaf blower up there and blow most of the rest of the moss that she'd loosened with the wire brush off the roof.

I had to go back to the "office" and work later today on account of the long lunch. That's okay, though, because she needed time to cool off and decompress after the hour on the roof, and she won't want to go back up there until later this evening. The long days here mean that we can work until almost 8:30 PM. Also, the weather is slightly cooler today than it was yesterday.