Dealing with Problems. (Roof Part 5 of 5)

There were a few unique situations that I ran into.

Back to the drawing.

The first was where the house section of the roof on the left met the garage section of the roof on the right.  Where those two section meet, you need to install a valley.  Diagonally cutting the sheathing was horrible.  Diagonally cutting shingles for the valley was horrible.  Valleys are horrible.

I used a w-valley, a piece of metal flashing that directs water that hits it from the section of roof "above" it.  It made for interesting tarping, because I had to have enough tarps, and layered in such a way that any rain would run down behind them.

Speaking of tarps, I had only mentioned using screws on the first section.  Obviously, you don't want to use screws to secure the tarp to new sections of roof.  In that case, bundles of shingles work wonders.  I would generally have 10 or so bundles (~75lbs a bundle) at a time on the roof, holding down the tarp.  The obvious place to put the bundles is on the corners, but often you'll want them in multiple places along the tarp, as well as in the center.  The bundle in the center makes it much more difficult for the tarp to become a sail.

75 pounds for a bundle of shingles is pretty heavy, especially when you're talking about getting it onto a roof.  The 4x8 pieces of sheathing themselves are around 70-80lbs, too.  Behold: The home made shingle elevator!

I made it with a couple 20' 2x4s, a bunch of scrap 2x4s, some casters, and a Harbor Freight 120v winch.  It served me well, hauling over 4 tons of roofing supplies up, so that I didn't have to.  Everyone made fun of how slow it was, but it was still faster, safer, and better than trying to it myself.  Before I built it, I somehow assumed I was going to take it down off the roof each night.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  It was way too heavy and unwieldy.  I did, however, remove the "cart", and cover the winch to keep the rain off of it.

I only moved the shingle elevator twice.  Once to the front of the house when I started, and when I got to where I needed to work on that section of the roof, I moved it around the corner to the back of the house.  It sat perfectly on a section of the porch roof.  The entire time the elevator was on the front, I was thinking of the best place for it in the back.  I lost sleep over it, because I didn't want to place it on the new shingles and damage them by walking over them while carrying wood or shingles.

Moved around to back of house.

The final unique situation was with the 3 roof protrusions. One plumbing vent stack, one furnace/water heater exhaust pipe, and one electric service conduit.  The electric service conduit was only 5 years old, replaced when we did our kitchen.  We went from a 60-amp service to a 200-amp service, so everything from the electrical panel to the weatherhead needed to be replaced.  That left us with a nice, fairly new boot on that.  The plumbing stack had an old, old lead flashing that wasn't very water tight.  It had dried out caulking, mastic, whatever.  I had gone in a few years and duct taped a towel around the pipe to catch any stray water that came into the attic.  That got a nice, new boot too.  The existing gas heating exhaust pipe and flashing were in rough shape.

The rope is where the tarp was tied off to.  I put more trust in that rusty pipe than I probably should have.  Thankfully, it's a common brand of B-pipe that is still sold today.

While I had that section of the sheathing opened up, it was a perfect opportunity to pull the old pipe off and replace it.  I don't have a picture of the new flashing in place, but it's just as shiny as the new pipe.

One of the reasons I saved that section of roof for the last was because of the roof protrusions.  I obviously can't tarp over them, that's dangerous.  For the heating vent pipe and plumbing vent stack pipe, I carefully measured and cut holes in the tarp, and reinforced the edges with tarp tape.  That allowed me to put the tarp on over that section without blocking the pipe.

Old rusty pipe and rain cap.

The electrical conduit I wasn't concerned about, since it doesn't go into the attic space, it just goes through the roof and down the side of the house.


The final unique situation I ran into was on the very last section of sheathing that I was replacing, on the back side of the garage.  I tore off the shingles to find the following:

Newish looking 1x6 boards, meaning some repair was done sometime in the past.  Whether the repair was good or not, remained to be seen.

Well, poop.  That isn't good.  Two rotten rafter tails.  After consulting several websites, I determined I could cut them out, and "sister" in some replacement rafter tails.  I had a spare 20' 2x4 from the shingle elevator I built, so I went to work cutting and nailing them in place.

Good as new!  I doubled up the one on the right just to be safe.

If you're paying attention, at this point you should be going, "Hey, you replaced the soffits, why didn't you see that from underneath when you replaced them?"  Two reasons:  1) This section along the garage already had aluminum soffits, which must have been installed probably back in the 90s (80s?) when the screened in porch was installed.  2) Because of how the screened in porch is constructed, I'm unable to get in and replace the fascia or install the fascia cover.  It's possible, maybe even probable, that we'll be tearing down the screened in porch next year and replacing it with a fence.  The porch is showing its' age, and the way our house sits back on the lot, our porch is like a stage for the rest of the neighborhood to see.