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old man on a roof

Started by grouch, May 13, 2017, 11:29:58 PM

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grouch

Quote from: Ox on May 16, 2017, 04:10:06 PM
Love the country engineering and safety factors.  Roof looks great, too.
Thanks!

Quote
5 cylinder turbo diesel Mercedes - reported to be a 500,000 mile engine with proper maintenance.
That's the one. It has bad injector knock until it warms up. I've tried replacing a nozzle, but me and flat copper washers have never gotten along. Now it blows bubbles around the base of that injector.

Quote
Where did you get the fittings to put your dome together?  It's very interesting to me... I'd like to know more about it.  Plans?  Just put together from your mind?  How strong?  If you covered it would it hold up to a couple foot deep snow load?

No fittings -- I crushed the ends of the conduit with an arbor press, drilled, and bolted.



Plans (sorta):

3V dome calculator.
I used 4.875 ft in the C position so I could get 2 pieces of each type from a 10 ft stick of EMT. (The C struts are the longest). That's 4 ft 10-1/2 inches center to center of the bolt holes. Add 3/4 inch to each end and that makes the cut length 5 ft even. I used a 1-1/2 inch diameter disc of mild steel to crush the ends in the press. Made for a stronger end than a squared crush. BTW, I used a 2 ft cheater on the bar of a HF arbor press and it didn't flinch.

Conduit Dome Tips. That has a wealth of info, including assembly diagrams.

As for strength, I can hang from any of those nodes without sign of bending. That 3/4 inch conduit would likely bend if I tried that between nodes. I wouldn't worry about a snow load on it. Tarp, canvas or plywood triangles, I think it'd hold up fine.
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Ox

Cool!  Thanks very much for the info.  Your half round crimping makes sense and I doubt I would have thought of it.

K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without
1989 GMC 3500 4x4 diesel dump and plow truck, 1964 Oliver 1600 Industrial with Parsons loader and backhoe, 1986 Zetor 5211, Cat's Claw sharpener, single tooth setter, homemade Linn Lumber 1900 style mill, old tools

grouch

Crimping and drilling all those ends took the most time even though I set up jigs for each operation. I cut them in batches of 10 by banding them together with hose clamps and using a metal cutting bandsaw. It needs some kind of cover now.
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grouch

An ominous looking cloud


Ugh. Glad I don't have to carry any more rolls of that roofing felt up 2 ladders and then the roof.


Felt all stapled down. I used a pneumatic stapler -- Surebonder something-or-other -- for this job. Got tired of having to buy a new slap stapler (hammer tacker?) every time I needed to staple felt, plastic, whatever.




I thought I had a picture of the fall harness, but couldn't find one. Here's a full crop from that last photo:

First time I've ever used one of those things. That rope clips to the back of a harness. It won't stop you from falling; it just "arrests" the fall so you don't have that possibly fatal sudden stop. That assumes you keep the rope grab caught up with you so you don't end up with enough free rope to hit the ground.

It interfered with working far less than I expected. It was well worth the price of having it while I was working on the east side of the roof.

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Ox

The hammer stapler you mentioned reminded me of a funny story:  I was helping the old man years ago roofing the small carriage barn, now used for parking his car and mower and firewood.  We were putting down the felt for shingles (I hate shingles but couldn't talk him out of shingling this and the entire big barn) and he was swinging that hammer stapler all over the place random like and I saw a wrinkle in the felt as he was getting to that area and quick swiped at it with my hand to flatten it and in perfect unison my hand and that hammer stapler met in the same place.  I quick pulled my hand back and looked and laughed.  That big old 1/2" staple was completely embedded in the back of my right hand, pushing the skin down hard and made it look funny.  The two prongs of the staple had missed the tendons, but were straddling my middle finger tendon just perfectly.  Well, almost perfect, I think it nicked that tendon a bit.  It was so tight in there I couldn't get ahold of it to pull it out so I had to use a utility knife blade to get under it.  Just two dots of blood and not much pain, but felt funny there for a few days when I used my fingers which made me believe it might have nicked that tendon a bit.  No infections.  Good story to tell if I remember it when I'm old on my porch rocker.

I'm enjoying following your project with your pics.  Thanks for taking the time.
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without
1989 GMC 3500 4x4 diesel dump and plow truck, 1964 Oliver 1600 Industrial with Parsons loader and backhoe, 1986 Zetor 5211, Cat's Claw sharpener, single tooth setter, homemade Linn Lumber 1900 style mill, old tools

grouch

Ow. That hurts me just reading your description. Good that you can look back and laugh at it, though. We all tend to ignore any injury that doesn't stop us from working, but that's not always a good thing.

Puncture wounds, especially, can go rotten in a hurry. Everything on the outside is suddenly pushed to the inside and trapped there. (Google cat bites if you want to see some horror stories).
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grouch

Couple of details I left out before:

The fiberglass rods I used at the start to separate the sheets were scuffing both the underside of the sheet I was dragging and the top side of the next sheet in the stack. I switched to clamping a piece of cardboard to the tail of the sheet of roofing and slipping another piece of cardboard under the mid-point. Lifting the upper end to drag it left only cardboard in contact with the remaining stack.

The clamps were some little plastic ratcheting squeeze clamps that my wife had bought sometime, somewhere. She has this habit of buying little tools for me on a whim. Sometimes she gets junk; sometimes she finds jewels.

These little clamps (you can hide one in your hand) looked pretty useless to me at the time she brought them home. They were perfect for this task -- didn't scratch, applied only as much pressure as I wanted to squeeze, the handles held the very end of the metal up off the next one, and they slid off as the end of the sheet came off the end of the stack.

Another detail I forgot to mention before is that I swept that shingle roof with a shop broom several times. It was like trying to walk on BB's. The amount of loose granules scattered over the roof was pretty amazing. Sweeping made walking more comfortable whether or not it makes any difference to the roofing felt.
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grouch

There were wind gusts the day after that last photo. That was only the 2nd day the weather didn't cooperate. Revised my chicken ladder from one that hangs to one that stands -- feet of the ladder against the bottom rail. Got 3 sheets screwed down when the gusts died down. Got 4 sheets plus 16 ft of ridge vent the next day. Since the ridge vent is aluminum, I put a strip of self-adhesive flashing on the bottom so it and the steel roofing wouldn't fight over who gets to turn to rust fastest.

Dreary sky, threat of rain. Halfway point on the west slope:




Weather had changed a bit since the start:


The ramp is empty:




Only half the ridge vent up, the rest is covered in plastic:


Can't use the fall protection kit if you can't anchor it. The ridge vent was installed from the chicken ladder. Late dew kept me twiddling my thumbs for a while on 2 mornings.

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grouch

Some disassembly required. Top rails from the roof, rest from below.












Let it rain, sleet, snow, hail or drop custard pies from the sky; I'm off that roof. With a 40 year warranty, I shouldn't have to repeat this. Let the next guy deal with the sliding board.

I still have to do trim and the two other roofs, but those are R&R by comparison. I've already made hillside legs for a section of my scaffolding. That will go up on the north 6:12 roof to do the gable trim, then I'll adjust it for 5:12 pitch and set it on the south deck roof to do the gable trim at that end. (North is left in the above photos).

Done with that worry.
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Ox

 smiley_beertoast Well done - you don't mess around - kickin' butts and takin' names...
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without
1989 GMC 3500 4x4 diesel dump and plow truck, 1964 Oliver 1600 Industrial with Parsons loader and backhoe, 1986 Zetor 5211, Cat's Claw sharpener, single tooth setter, homemade Linn Lumber 1900 style mill, old tools

grouch

Thanks Ox!

I was just reviewing the thread to see if I'd left anything out and saw your reply. (In the house stretching lunch to avoid going back out in the heat).
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Ox

Yeah - it's darn hot right now.  I can swing it up to about 83 or so but when it's 92 it's just too much for me.  Can't breathe good, I'm a born sweater and will sweat while I'm shivering and so I just get dehydrated while guzzling water and salt.  Just too much, can't hack it.

I can't believe how quick you're doing that job, with all the scaffolding and everything.  It'd take me twice as long, easy.  When I said well done, I meant it!  It was quick and it looks great.  You'll have no worries until you die I reckon.  40 year warranty don't mean it'll fail at 40, just that it'll still look new at 40! I'm betting it'll do 100 years pretty good, maybe with a few coatings like the old barn roofs.
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without
1989 GMC 3500 4x4 diesel dump and plow truck, 1964 Oliver 1600 Industrial with Parsons loader and backhoe, 1986 Zetor 5211, Cat's Claw sharpener, single tooth setter, homemade Linn Lumber 1900 style mill, old tools

grouch

It's 92f where you're at today? I'm gonna quit complaining. It's 84 here, fairly nice in the shade with a breeze. Just the sun cooks my brain when I get out in it.

I started raising the posts 2016-09-21 and took 'em down 2016-11-12. Most of this was a one-man show. I had better weather than any reasonable person could hope for -- rain and wind stopped work 3 days during that whole period. The rest of the time had mild winds up to 10 mph, most days just 5 mph.

That ramp was the easiest, quickest and safest way I could come up with to raise 23 ft long x 29 gauge roofing that high without kinking, single-handed. You wouldn't believe some of the hair-brained schemes I came up with and thankfully rejected. The idea of a long ramp came to me one day when I was kneeling by the grapevine looking at the roof, thinking about the job. I noticed I could just bend down a little and sight flat along the slope from eave to ridge. If I can't bring the stack to the roof, bring the roof down to the stack.
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Ox

Hillbilly engineering.  I'm a hillbilly too, just not smart enough to do what you did.

Somehow I got mixed up and thought you were doing that job now, not last year.  It don't matter, the well done still stands.

Yeah, it was hotter here than in Texas today and yesterday.  One of those weird things that happens now and again in the north.  Thank God tomorrow will be back to the high 60s.  I can hack that just fine.  Got some sawmilling to do and I'm behind 2 days now cause of the recent heat.  Good thing I ain't getting paid or I might get fired!
K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without
1989 GMC 3500 4x4 diesel dump and plow truck, 1964 Oliver 1600 Industrial with Parsons loader and backhoe, 1986 Zetor 5211, Cat's Claw sharpener, single tooth setter, homemade Linn Lumber 1900 style mill, old tools

grouch

When I do the rest of the roof, I'll update this thread as it goes on. The blinders and tunnel vision are over. :) I wish I could adequately describe the relief felt when that last section of ridge vent was screwed down. Normally fall is the rainy season here. Every day I expected rain to set in and last until winter. I wasn't even reading FF, just listening to NOAH weather radio.

I wish I was only behind 2 days on *anything*. Got in some mowing after moving that arch experiment. Didn't get finished. Hoping to get the arch blocked up before the heat gets bad, and finish mowing late tomorrow. In between, maybe I can saw a little.
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