The roofers turned up early this morning on time ready to go. It might take a few months to get a quote and then several months to get a start date over here, but once they start they really get going. No chatting, cups of tea, or pacing about scratching heads, they just launch straight into the job. Within an hour the scafolding was up and the two guys were up and ripping slates off like a couple of sugar low maniacs.
The scafolding is just 'hung' on the wall with extension pieces nailed to the rafters (chevrons), which were exposed by just smashing a hole in the slates. There is no support/legs onto the ground, the whole thing just floats off the side of the building. You can see that they strip a 'ladder' up to the ridge then work across and down removing the slates using the existing woodwork for support. Note: No gloves, hard hats, harnesses etc. A fairly cavalier regard to personal safety.
One interesting thing was the 'special' tool each of them carried. You can just see it in the tool belt if you zoom in. It was a sort of combined axe, hammer, crowbar and lifting tool. I'll try and get a close-up photo later.
By 16:30 the roof had been stripped of slate, de-nailed and the old lattes/roof battens (linteaux) had been removed, also a couple of rotten rafters had been replaced. There is now a couple of large piles of broken slate and wood pieces for me to remove.
Whilst this frenzy of activity was going on I had to construct the new roof section over the dormer windows (lucarnes) and deal with a delivery lorry loaded up with slate, velux windows and wood whilst the guys were at lunch. At one point I also had to go shopping to the local timber merchants get some 200mm by 60mm section to replace some rotten soffits (sabliere) – I mis-read the quote and thought they were being replaced – and some nails. Of course none of the nails I had were quite the right size!
The roofers were very, very helpful and explained how they needed the new roof timbers built in order for them to fit the tiles. I had recess my timber the width of a roof batten (about 8mm) on the inside of the window frame edges to allow them room to hang the tiles at the side. They also pointed out that new timber had to be packed and padded correctly to ensure that the old and new sections 'blended' into the roof shape correctly.
The only fly in the ointment was the length of the timber I had brought. I had planned on running the timber from the top of the window frame to the first purlin (panne), however the roofers thought this would be too flat. I did do some research and discovered that the minimum slope for a slate roof was 4 in 12 (about 18 degrees). My slope was slightly steeper than the minimum but often it's best to go with expert practical knowledge. They wanted to use longer lengths of rafter to reach nearly to the second purlin, but, and here's the fly, all the wood I bought was too short. I'd bought 4m lengths and cut them in half to get them in the car.
Fortunately, we comprimised and agreed that putting a batten a little above the purlin and then running the rafter so that the 2m length intersected with the original roofing rafters would suffice. Hopefully the photo explains it a little better.
So it's been a hectic day, and most probably continue that way, with me fitting in my carpentery jobs in between their stripping and fitting the slates.
brittany
renovation
