A Proper Roof

Happy New Year! 

Things on the house slowed down a bit in December but have picked up rapidly now that the holidays are over. Roofers have been working hard to get a proper roof on. Fortunately they’ve had unseasonably warm weather with some days reaching 40°f. 

Pedro & Noe are the flashing artists. That’s a 40’ ladder and two people with nerves of steel.

The first bit of stone arrived.

Noe & Pedro working on flashing.

The shingles are frozen and stuck together by ice so they keep them under a tent with a couple of heaters blowing on it to thaw them out.

Pedro cutting a piece and then bending it on his bending brake.

On Friday morning the boring crew showed up. They are boring a 700’ hole for water and power. Our original house had well water which was one of the things that appealed to us. Well water is much healthier and tastes better than the chemicalized water from our city. Unfortunately the well location conflicted with the house and we were not allowed to drill in a different location so we’re having to switch to city water :-(.

Hole at the end of the driveway waiting on the drill head. You can just barely see the boring machine at the other end of the drive.

He’d bore 10’ and then they’d use their locator to determine where the drill head was and how deep. They’d mark each location with pink paint. They needed to stay at least 7’ deep to provide sufficient frost protection so that the water pipe doesn’t freeze.

Steering is interesting. The drill head is a slightly curved plate attached at an angle (photo below). To go in any direction (right, left, up, down) he’d turn the shaft until the plate pointed in the direction that he wanted to go and then he’d drive it forward as far as possible to establish his direction and then he’d begin drilling and hope that it kept going in the right direction. He said that it naturally wanted to go left, away from our driveway since the soil under our drive is compacted and the soil farther away is not.

Success!

Spool of 1.5” water pipe and 2 gauge electrical wire ready to go.

I thought it interesting that he used a Leatherman for this large screw pin on the shackle that attaches the pipe & wire to the drill head.

Along with the water pipe we’re pulling wire for power at the end of our driveway. Normally 12 gauge wire would be large enough but given the distance we needed heavier wire to reduce voltage drop. If they’d dug a trench to lay the wire in then 8 or 10 gauge would work but since they’re pulling it they had to to go up to 2 gauge so that it’d be strong enough not to break.

They’ve pulled about 400’ at this point.

The pipe is only available in 500’ spools so they had to weld two together. This jig holds the two bits of pipe being joined.

After getting the pipes in they used this machine to abrade the ends. It has a head on each side and when done insures that the ends are perfectly straight and perfectly aligned with each other.

Next up is heating the two ends. After about 10 minutes the heating plate is removed and the two pipes are quickly slid together and pushed against each other to produce a welded butt joint.

The result. It surprised me that a butt joint like this is strong enough but they pulled another 200’ and it held up.

It’s 3:00, pipe is pulled and the sun is beginning to set, but Pedro and Noe are still making good progress on the flashing. Here they are working on the saddle and chimney on the south side of the house that is for the Family Room fireplace. Doing this right takes a lot of skill and patience.