Up On the Roof

         When this old world starts getting me down
         And people are just too much for me to face
           I climb way up to the top of the stairs
        And all my cares just drift right into space
            On the roof, it's peaceful as can be
          And there the world below can't bother me...

                                   "Up On The Roof"
                       (Gerry Goffin and Carole King)

Finally, we have a roof. It's seemed like an eternity, but our roof is in place after two more days of moving panels, prepping them and lifting them into place, Jerry Ellis' crew has slid all the panels into place and screwed them down to the rafters. It was quite a struggle so this post might take a while...

Actually, most of the struggle was with the weather. About three inches of snow fell on us last week so we postponed the second truckload of panels until Monday. We had covered the entire roof with long sheets of plastic that ran up and down the roof slopes.

Starting yesterday, I began removing all those snow-covered plastic sheets and, of course, the snow that was on them. By the end of the workday Monday, here's what it looked like.

The plastic had been removed from the two south-sloping roofs (not shown) and the easternmost section of the north roof. There were still many snow-covered square feet to go.

The south-facing roofs' SIPs were placed by the end of the day, but I'm getting ahead of the story line.

The previous post discussed the problem we had getting the loaded truck into the driveway. In preparation for the second load, last week we shoveled the driveway, and helped by two days of on again-off again rain, most of the snow was gone. Then the driveway was covered with tarps to protect it from the predicted snow. On Sunday Sandy and I shoveled and pushed the snow off the tarps and dragged the tarps themselves off the driveway. Once it was all cleared we dragged the tarps back on because yet another snowfall was predicted.

That snow came Sunday night but was fortunately just enough to cover the tarps but not hide them. On Monday morning I dragged the tarps off the driveway again and spent a half hour or so shoveling and scraping the county road at the end of the drive.

The crane arrived and was set up at the house and we waited for the second trailer-load of SIPs. By the time it arrived the installers were also in place and we all went down to the road to see if the truck could get in. Even as the driver stopped on the road above the driveway, the truck slide a few more feet downhill. He was not very optimistic that the truck could back the trailer into the drive. It wasn't a really large truck, but a larger one, pulling a trailer, could not make the required turn.

As the driver was about to pull down the hill past the driveway so he could back it in, it occurred to me there might be a possibility he could just pull it in straight, so the drive wheels would be on gravel when the trailer came off the road. I checked with the crane operator to see how far the truck would have to get and be sure there was enough room at the end of the drive to get there.

We concluded that it might work and that it had a better probability than backing in, so we went for it. After a few tries and more than a few back-ups for aligning the trucks wheels, the truck had pulled forward enough to be reached by the crane. Success!

Next began the process of lifting the panels from the trailer onto the "lawn" area. This took longer than we'd hoped because the panels come in bundles and the bundles are mostly too heavy for the crane we had so they had to be "broken" on the trailer and the panels moved one or two at a time.

When this second load was off the trailer we took three trailer trips back to the end of the driveway to bring the rest of last week's first load up to the house. On the first two trips panels were loaded by brute force. By the third trip the panels were too low to the ground and too heavy for four of us to lift by hand, so the crane had to be moved down the driveway to load the trailer and then moved back into place to unload it onto the piles of SIPs.

Finally, a half hour past noon or so, we were ready to start lifting panels. So we took a lunch break. ?!

Here you can see the stack of panels, one in the air and the crew on the roof awaiting it. This panel went on the top of the third bedroom.

The panel on top to the right is just sitting there waiting its turn.

The holes that can be seen in the sides of some of the panels on the pile are where the nozzle is inserted to pump in the insulation. Between each hole is a thin black line that shows where the segment dividers are. There is a small number at each hole that tells the machine operator how many seconds to leave the nozzle in for that particular segment. Pretty slick, eh?

The two south-side roofs were completed on Monday.

Today the large roof that slopes down to the north was completely installed. This shot shows the progress about half way across the building from east to west. The thin panels can be seen awaiting their turn to be covered. They look pretty uneven at this point, and they are, but they will be tacked up onto the bottom of the SIPs with small brads to get them smoothed up.

And here's what they look like from the inside. Notice that some parts of the ceiling are not covered with the thin panels. These are areas that will have "normal" ceilings - the bathrooms and the utility room.

This view shows the second bedroom above and the larger bathroom to the right. There will be a wall between them of course.

And finally, here's a view from an angle that hasn't been shown in any previous posting, looking through the trees to the east of the house. The panel in the air is the last one to be installed. A few minutes later the roof was all in place.

The crew took about an hour to finish screwing down the SIPs, nailing down tongue edges where panels fit into groves in adjacent ones, and filling holes with insulating foam. (At least one hole and sometimes two are drilled into each panel to hook them up to the lifting cable.)

Finally the ball is entirely in our court. Much is left to be done, but it can now all be done on our schedule. Doors and windows will be delivered on Thursday.