Roof: What Next
Lisa says that we've completed everything she set out to accomplish during my trip up here this month, so anything else we accomplish in the remaining days is a bonus. She has decided for now to not put down any White Goo on the sections we covered already and to instead concentrate on the rest of the north roof.
Before going topside last night, Lisa went up the lower ladder and applied a patch of roofing fabric to the "notch" in the roof. (See it in context here.) There's no roof goop on it yet; she plans on covering it with the leftovers from the next task.
Before we can apply anything to the roof, the moss has to be cleared. While this picture doesn't look that good, it's massively better than it was two years ago. List took the leaf blower and the large and small wire brushes topside and swung over on the rope to start scrubbing away at the moss. We had sort of hoped that the relatively hot, dry summer we're having here in Mehama would have made the remaining moss brittle and easy to remove. No such luck. Lisa scrubbed and scrubbed, and finally managed to dislodge some of it.
Unfortunately, she found that in some cases, when the moss came off, it took the upper layer of shingles (which had rotted under the load of damp moss) with it. At least once, a sheet of shingles slipped out from under her feet, obliging her to do some fancy footwork and hang on for dear life to the safety line. She cleared this area near the kitchen chimney at the west end of the roof, knocking away the rotten layer of shingles and revealing a layer of damp shingles underneath. She hopes that this layer will dry out today so she can move forward on the next planned step.
Something not so obvious is that the areas of roof with roof fabric and/or roof goop have considerably better footing (once dry) than the basic shingle roof. I would have thought the opposite, but Lisa assures me that it's much easier walking on the treated sections. Also, even without the roof fabric, the goo makes the shingles stick together and hold up better. So her plan is to apply the Gray Goo directly to the sections of the west end that she's managed to clear, concentrating on some obvious gaps, like these areas with the rotten shingles. It won't be as good as the full-blown three-layer treatment (fabric + two types of goo) on the east end, but it's much better than nothing at all, and we just don't have time to go through the full treatment on this end. Preserving what we can here should make it easier to come back when we have time again and can take the time to lay down lath to which the roof fabric can be attached.
Before going topside last night, Lisa went up the lower ladder and applied a patch of roofing fabric to the "notch" in the roof. (See it in context here.) There's no roof goop on it yet; she plans on covering it with the leftovers from the next task.
Before we can apply anything to the roof, the moss has to be cleared. While this picture doesn't look that good, it's massively better than it was two years ago. List took the leaf blower and the large and small wire brushes topside and swung over on the rope to start scrubbing away at the moss. We had sort of hoped that the relatively hot, dry summer we're having here in Mehama would have made the remaining moss brittle and easy to remove. No such luck. Lisa scrubbed and scrubbed, and finally managed to dislodge some of it.
Unfortunately, she found that in some cases, when the moss came off, it took the upper layer of shingles (which had rotted under the load of damp moss) with it. At least once, a sheet of shingles slipped out from under her feet, obliging her to do some fancy footwork and hang on for dear life to the safety line. She cleared this area near the kitchen chimney at the west end of the roof, knocking away the rotten layer of shingles and revealing a layer of damp shingles underneath. She hopes that this layer will dry out today so she can move forward on the next planned step.
Something not so obvious is that the areas of roof with roof fabric and/or roof goop have considerably better footing (once dry) than the basic shingle roof. I would have thought the opposite, but Lisa assures me that it's much easier walking on the treated sections. Also, even without the roof fabric, the goo makes the shingles stick together and hold up better. So her plan is to apply the Gray Goo directly to the sections of the west end that she's managed to clear, concentrating on some obvious gaps, like these areas with the rotten shingles. It won't be as good as the full-blown three-layer treatment (fabric + two types of goo) on the east end, but it's much better than nothing at all, and we just don't have time to go through the full treatment on this end. Preserving what we can here should make it easier to come back when we have time again and can take the time to lay down lath to which the roof fabric can be attached.