Well I ripped my entire second floor off this weekend, I have some work to do before the framers arrive next Mon. I put a big blue tarp over the entire second foor. I had to cut a hole in it for my chimeny to stick thru. I duct taped it around the chimney then cut some grooves into the mortar and slided some flashing into the grooves. Then siliconed the top of the flashing to the chimney. Basically it was like counter flashing it. the weather is calling for a late day storm Thurs. Any advice to help my downstairs survive? No jokes please I’m a little worried.
Craig
Replies
Some suggestions which might be obvious:
- a tarp which is laying on the ground or torn off and flapping in the breeze isn't going to keep your house dry. Anchor it well enough that you think there's no way it's ever coming off, and then go around again and add more!
- a flat tarp never kept anybody or anything dry. Like all roofs, a temporary tarp roof needs to be pitched to work. Buddy down the street from me learned that one the hard way- the 2nd floor of his house turned into a big tarp-lined pond for a while, then the tarp became a funnel collecting rainwater and dumping it onto his main floor through the inevitable hole in the tarp- worse than no tarp.
- make sure the rainwater has somewhere to go other than your basement, if you have one!
- If you're not stick framing, have the trusses laying on site, checked and correct, before you tear your roof off. Oops- maybe too late for you, I guess! Otherwise, like buddy down the street, you may be waiting a long while through many a storm before you get your roof on. Buddy lost his entire main floor and basement finishes.
- keep lots of pots and pans on hand!
- frame it and get a tarpaper roof on there pronto. Don't bother taping the sheathing seams- just go for it and tarpaper the lot. Glue the seams with a bead of roofing cement as well as cap nailing at strategic locations. Do a good enough job attaching the tarpaper and you can put a proper roof on at your leisure.
Good luck to you!
First, bear in mind that a tarp can rip and blow off completely. Every movable thing of value that would be damaged by water should be moved out of the building.
Ideally the tarp should be tied fairly tight, but not flat. Rig some temporary slope into it. Even just boxes and 2x4's to make a ridge will make the water drain off as it arrives, rather than building up.
-- J.S.
Craig,
I do lots of second floor addtions with people living in the houses. Did my own last fall as well.
The best advice I can give you regarding tarping, is to do everything you can to make sure the wind can't get under the tarp. That's where all the trouble always begins.
Also don't rely on the grommets (sp?) in the tarp for hold downs. The wind just laughs at them and they tear out. We always roll up a piece of strapping (1x3) in the tarp edge a couple turns and then nail through that into solid framing.
Try very hard not to leave any loose corners of the tarp that the wind can grab.
Seriously consider laying EPDM rubber roofing down over your new sublfloor and then framing the rest of it on top of the rubber. We just did this on the add-a-level we wrapped up last week. It worked out awesome. We never had to tarp the job again and we had about two weeks of open time with lots of late day thunderstorms. We didn't lose a single piece of sheetrock down stairs.
Talk to your framer about the EPDM if you're going to have some extended open time. The cost of the rubber was more than offset by not having to pay for the labor involved with tarping every night. It's not a good fit for every job, because some jobs (like my house) only have about three days of open time so we fought the big blue beasts instead. But on one that's going to be exposed for a week or more, it's a no brainer.
If you do go the EPDM route, let me know and I can offer some other tips we came up with on the last job.
awsome
The rubber roof idea sounds good, but for me is not gonna really work. I've layed the tarp down flat over the deck with long lengths of 2x8's all around the perimeter. I'm still living in the house below. I can't take anymore stuff out of the house downstairs. I guess I'd better come up with some type of pitched roof to help shed the water. How does the rubber roof work? Do you glue it all together? How big are the rolls it comes in? Sorry so many questions but now you have me thinking..........
10' x 50' rolls. We glue the seams, but not the rubber to the deck. After the roof is dried in, we just went around and cut along the plates. And it works great.View Image
with the tarp laying flat you better be ready to either get up on top with a sump pump or have a spot picked out to sacarifice. if need be you can cut a hole in tarp and let water run into a kids plastic pool and then pump from there. 1" rain,flat tarp, fun times....... larryhand me the chainsaw, i need to trim the casing just a hair.