I’ve been blathering on and off about a wild roofing job I did earlier this summer that I took to calling “The Roofing Job From Hell” because everything we did on that job was seventy-eleven times harder than it shoulda been. I finally got the photos back (I ain’t gone digital yet in the camera dept.), and here’s a few with some commentary.
The main issue in this job was access: the roof itself was 25 in 12, a true A-frame chalet built about 30 years ago that was recently bought by a doctor looking for a weekend place up here in ski country. The doc is the first owner in many years to have any dough to put into the place; previous to him the house has been owned by a succession of ski pros, patrollers, and other low-income types. First thing he did was jack it up and put a basement under it; then he had us come in last fall and rip out and replace the entire rear wall. It was, of course, non structural, so it presented no issues other than aesthetics. We were supposed to do the roof after that–but winter caught up with us and nobody in his right mind does a tear off and re-roof up here in the winter. By the time we finished the rear wall in late October, we were shoveling a couple of inches of snow off the scaffolding and scattering ashes on the platforms each morning….
The original plan for the roof, as conceived by the HO, was to build a 2×6 crib (on edge) on top of it, foam it, and cover that with some industrial steel siding he’d picked up cheap. We checked out the cost of foaming; it turned out to be unreasonably high so we found a manufacturer of rigid polyiso foam board (Atlas Roofing) and special-ordered 180 2×8 sheets 3″ thick. We went through a few different plans on how to place it; finally it was decided to use 2×4’s on edge as a vertical rack, lag-bolted in place between each row of insulation. The stuff came in last fall while we still thought we had a chance; fortunately my yard was willing to store it over the winter for us at no charge–I don’t want to think of what might have happened to it sitting under tarps for 6 months in the HO’s side yard 40 feet from the main road throught the village.
The weather this year was weird; we finally started this job on the day after Canada Day, hoping for our usual hot and dry July to get things done under good conditions. We didn’t get it. We got hot–but not dry. There were something like 8 rain days we couldn’t work during the three and a half weeks we were on this job. And tarping that monster was worse than doing the actual work. My biggest tarp is 30×40, more than big enough to cover half the house. But sitting up on that pointy ridge and manhandling the bloody thing almost caused me to go back to working in an office. Shinnying back and forth yanking that tarp around I got the worst case of sewing machine leg I’ve ever had. I rigged window-shade rope pulls on it so we could haul it up and down from the scaffolding level after the first time, but there was too much crud in the way and it didn’t work. After two days of this misery, I hauled down the tarp and put up poly sheeting: a lot lighter, easily as waterproof if not more so, and at only 10 feet wide per section it was a hell of a lot easier to handle. The first side of the roof was the hot side; as a result 80% of the tarpaper shredded as we stripped. But on the shady side of the roof we were able to preserve almost all of the black paper when stripping the shingles, and so we had less worries. We only had to sheet the portions that had been insulated each night. (See ‘Roof 1’)
We were able to set up stepped scaffolding to give us a level work platform even with the edge of the eaves on each side. For stripping, we just roof-jacked our way up the roof using 60-degree roof jacks and 2×6 planks. We set up ladders off the main scaffolding to get up and down to the roof jack level. Moving the jacks up the roof took two of us a solid half hour each time; that was one of the many manoeuvres that caused the job to take so long. (see Roof 2)
Once the roof was stripped we started laying up the 2×4’s and the insulation. The 2×4’s had all been pre-drilled; one of the crew set up a work station and gang drilled the 14-footers on 24″ centers with a long auger in a half-inch Makita drill. It took him about half a day to drill them all and stuff the 6″ lags and washers into the holes. We used a pneumatic impact gun to drive the lags into the roof deck, which was made of 2×6 T&G roof decking. I had to be very careful not to overdrive any lags; the inside finish of the house was the underside of the roof decking; no interior insulation or ceiling whatsoever existed, and the HO liked the look of the v-joint ceiling and structural beams of the A frame. (I actually burned out one impact gun during this phase–damn near 600 6″ lags into dry red pine–which gave rise to the post about Campbell Hausfeld’s parts policy last month; I finally got the part, BTW.) See photo Roof 3.)
As we got further up the roof, we attached roof jacks to the 2×4’s and were able to set a 20′ ladder on the jack plank to give us rake-to-rake access without moving the big 30 footer every couple of minutes. To prevent any mishaps with ladder feet kicking out from the 2×6 jack planks, we reversed the feet and jammed them into the space between the jack plank and the roof. See photos roof 4 and roof 5.
Just so you get an idea of what it was like up there, see Roof 6.
BTW, I forgot to mention that even using 60-degree jacks, the roof was so steep that the planks were still sloping away from the roof just enough to be really tiresome. To remedy that, we shimmed out the foot of the jacks by setting them on the furring. If no furring was available, we just inset a piece of 1×3. This brought the jack planks dead level, and was so much more comfortable to work on it was hard to believe the difference. See photo Roof 7.
Once we had the 2×4’s bolted to the roof all the way up on one side, I installed a ridge board to them to give me a place to land when we did the other half of the roof. We had found that the insulation board, special order that it was, was not cut exactly uniform width–the supposedly 24″ wide boards varied from 23-5/8″ to 24″, so we knew the rows on each side of the house wouldn’t necessarily line up. This ridge board also gave us a solid support for the metal cap that had had to be specially fabricated to cover the ridge and seal using foam inserts. See photo roof 8.
I’ll continue in a second message box so this won’t get truncated. All the photos will be in this message.
Dino
Edited 9/1/2003 3:30:34 AM ET by Dinosaur
Replies
Finally, we could start installing the metal. As I've said a few times here and there, I have an intense dislike for modern metal roofing. This job did nothing to alleviate that; in fact the number of times I hollered 'NEVER AGAIN!' from up on that roof surprised even me. In the first place, this stuff was intended as wall siding for industrial applications: the standing ridges were almost 2" deep in section. The supplier had specified screws through the ridges, and the HO ditifully bought 3" roofing screws. The metal itself was also half-again as heavy as the thickest gauge metal roofing I had ever worked with--my nibbler just barely got onto it--and there was no way in Hades we were going to punch 3" screws through that stuff with the screw gun. Every screw hole had to be pre-drilled--although toward the end of the job I got tired of the boys breaking 1/8" drill bits and bought a couple of sharp punches and told them to be careful. That worked out pretty well. Of course, the screws had to go into the furring, so each row had to be measured and marked on the ground. The lap had to be punched on the top sheet first down on the ground, then re-punched through the first hole into the underlying sheet up on the roof.
On the first half of the roof, we went with standard practice and 'shingled' the 8' sections of steel up the roof, doing one vertical row at a time. It was hell. We used a 30' ladder and had to keep raising and lowering it, and moving it sideways as we completed each row. This was probably the biggest PITA of the whole job, if you don't count trimming the swiss rake (later for that). When I got to the second half of the roof, I decided to try something different: I shingled DOWN the roof, slipping the 8" underlap beneath the upper sheet each time. I was able to do this by screwing the top three rows of screws into the strapping as you normally would, but deliberately 'bridging' the bottom row--running them down snug to the metal but holding the sheet off the roof so the screws didn't penetrate the wood. That way, they held the bottom of the sheet off the roof enough to let me slip the next sheet underneath. Since the overlap was 8" and the bottom row of screws was 12" up from the bottom edge, it worked out perfectly. There were only about three or four sheets in the whole second side of the roof that required us to use roofing bars taped to 2x2's to jimmy the lower sheet into place. Once the lower sheet was in place, I just put the screw gun back on the bridged screws and ran them into the strapping, and both sheets socked down tight. Shingling down meant that we went laterally across the roof, one row at a time. Once the first (upper) row was in place, we foamed the ridge and capped it so we'd never have to go back up. See photo roof 9.
Because the individual sheets of steel were all 8' long (more or less; they ranged from 93-97 inches), I only had to reach up about 9 feet to screw each sheet in place. I'm over six feet tall and have almost an 8 foot reach--but I needed just a little bit more to make that. I jigged the foot of a little 5' wooden step ladder I always have in the truck so it couldn't kick off the 2x6 jack planks, and it was perfect. It was light enough to move with one hand and it really speeded things up. See photo roof 10. You can't see it in the photo, but I also screwed a 2' cross bar to the back of the ladder so it would bridge a set of ribs and stay steady.
The last problem we had to deal with on the steel was cutting the angle across the ribs for the swiss rake on the chalet. There was no good way to do this, and it's one of the reasons I dislike this type of material. The pneumatic nibbler was a pain, getting stuck on the up-side of each rib and wandering all over the place; there was no way I was going to cut that all with aviation shears; and finally I had to fall back on the metal roofing blade I carry in the circular saw case. This is half brute force and half finesse, and it's (to me) an unsatisfactory solution. But I didn't have the factory jigs nor a hydraulic slicer, so it was the best we could do. We smoothed the rough edges with a grinder as much as possible.
The only way to get a half-way decent looking straight line on that swiss rake was to cut the four individual pieces close on the ground, and then trim it in one shot to a chalk line once it was up. This had to be done from a separate scaffolding set up in front of the house. We had to use 30" wide scaffolding because of the narrow deck in front of the house, and there was no way to tie it on to the house because of the swiss rake itself. So I guyed one side to a tree in the front yard and toggled the other side through the front door by placing a section of 2x6 across the inside of the door frame and tying the guy rope to that. It worked, but I won't tell anybody I was ready to do any tap dancing up on that thing. See photos roof 11 and roof 12.
Finally, the thing was done. I was tired, cut and scratched just about everywhere by the steel, way overdue because of rain and the enormous amount of time every move took, and unsatisfied with the details of the job even though I knew it was the best anyone could do given the materials I'd been supplied. But not one drop of rain got into the house, no lags penetrated the finish ceiling in the house, and nobody fell off that bloody cliff and busted their nut. And when I backed off a few dozen feet, it didn't look bad at all. I was especially pleased with the hand-cut rake boards I'd cut and installed. When the customer showed up the next Saturday, I dropped by to find out how he and his wife liked it. They wrote me a check on the spot and included a nice bonus because they were so pleased. Whaddya know? I was so surprised, I forgot to take any photos of the finished job.
Questions, comments, insults?
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Edited 9/1/2003 3:32:14 AM ET by Dinosaur
Dino- Good looking job. Thanks for sharing.
I've got 2 tips that may or may not have helped.
1) Get some 90 degree roof jacks. They're a little less periless to set ladders on like you were doing and they feel a whole lot better when you're standing on them on a steep pitch.
2) You might want to consider using a boom lift on the next job you get like this. I've done similar jobs by myself with one of these machines. Climbing up and down and moving setups becomes a non-issue. I can't really tell from the pictures if you had the room or terrain to get a machine in there.
I've got a few 90-degree/2x10 jacks that we use for 'normal' roofs, but nowhere near enough to cover this job. Unfortunately none of the yards in town had any matching jacks in stock when I ordered my materials; in fact I had to start with not enough 60-degree jacks and finally got another 6 the second week we were up there so we could set up two full rows of jacks at one time. That helped a lot when moving up or down .
The ladders were actually very solidly planted stuffed into the crack there; neither kick-out nor side-swing was ever an issue, and my HD 20 footer was doubled up most of the time giving me a nice generous two rung foot platform; very comfy through my special 'roofing shoes' (nice, soft, old, light-weight sneakers).
Unfortunately as you guessed, I didn't have appropriate terrain for a boom lift; the slope on both sides of the house exceeded 3 in 12, way too steep to drive the machine on. There was no other access on the lot (it's small) for the boom without bringing in a shovel and creating one, which would have destroyed the HOs landscaping--not an option. A 60-foot boom could have reached from the front of the house, but there were trees and power lines in the way on the SE side of the roof that didn't show in the pics, and I tend to think the effort would have been more of a dog's breakfast than anything else. Also, the cost of renting the 60-footer for a week would have been equivalent to three days billing for the entire crew--two carps and one apprentice--and I don't think the boom would have saved us three days per week.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
I'm not familiar with the expression "dog's breakfast". You must pay your guys better than I do or boom lifts are way more expensive there.
A dog's breakfast is whatever the cook would scrape off the plates into the garbage if there were no ships' dog. In other words, it's a mess.
A 60' boom lift here from United Rentals would have cost about 1600 for the first week; less per week if we took it by the month. Plus diesel, plus insurance, plus trailering to and from, plus 2% environmental maintenance charge, plus, plus, plus....
Here's a shot of the other side of the house, after we struck the scaffolding out of the way. You can see some of the trees that would have been a problem for the boom; in the middle of the stand of spruces that you see the edge of is the Hydro Quebec pole with the incoming power line from the main run on the street. That would have effectively blocked us from placing even the 60 footer there on the flat you're looking at in the photo.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
You are one crazy canuck! Makes my butt pucker just looking at the pics. I'm not asking for anything personal, but was the job profitable when all the numbers were totalled? You mentioned that you would charge double next time...was that just for the special job conditions, or did you cut the bid too close?
Do it right, or do it twice.
You're too kind. The real Crazy Canuks would have looked at that roof and said, "Cool--what a great start ramp for the downhill! Where are my skis?!"
Yeah, I made a few bucks. I don't bid on quote; all my jobs are T&M. In this case, because I had postponed the job from the year before, I honoured the rates specified in last year's estimates--which means I was doing the job at last year's rates, about $2.50 an hour less than I am now charging. A point of honour that was not lost on the customer.
I was horrified to see how much longer the bloody job took than I had estimated, though. I was gratified (and relieved) to see that the customer understood and never bitched. In fact, his comment as we neared completion was, "You can't estimate a job like this. It's not possible." (Whew!!)
When I said I'd charge double to do it again, I was (probably) being facetious. It would be either to compensate me for the nerve-fraying the whole thing entailed, or to persuade anybody wanting a similar job on their place to consider trying something else, like asphalt shingles....
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
I was horrified to see how much longer the bloody job took than I had estimated, In other words, you would have lost your flannel shirt if you had quoted a price. How far off were you? Double?Do it right, or do it twice.
A bit less than double, but who's counting, LOL?
No, actually, it went about 3 grand over first estimate, but there were some change orders. The finshed cost per SF came out to about $6.40.
And yeah, I woulda died if I'd given a flat quote on that beast. I probably would have started pushing myself and my guys, and somebody would have gotten hurt or killed.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
A few thoughts Dinosaur
1)If I understand you correctly---the homeowner chose and supplied the material. Personally----I would have had concerns about the ---uh,ahem, "unattractiveness" of the materials chosen. given the apparently high profile location,though, I would have been pretty eager to do the job if only better looking material had been selected.
2) I agree with you whole heartedly about the harness question. We feel the harness makes a much more dangerous work enviornment for all the reasons you listed.
3)when working with a smaller crew like you mentioned,or when working alone-----I like to use adjustable slaters jacks that take a 2x12. On that roof ,though, I would have wanted a fixed jack at 90 degrees to the decking and would simply have figured the cost for buying the jacks directly into the job. definitely wouldn't have tried to bend 60 degree jacks into position. I definitely wouldn't have flinched at the jack cost at all.
4)Rather than try to wedge a ladder foot on/under/behind a toe board----we would have simply used a series of hook ladders. Very inexpensive and quite versatile.
5) labor costs and labor burden must be dirt cheap in canada as opposed to here(NE ohio). The $1600/ week lift rental would have been about the same as 1 1/2 days crew costs here for the same size crew. but given the constraints of the site, I also wouldn't have rented a boom.
I WOULD have ,however, looked long and hard at spending maybe $1800 on a shingle /platform hoist. I am almost positive THAT would have paid off.
I am sure you must have done a fine job. Here,however I would have cringed at the thought of that material on a residence. another choice of material,however ,and I would have been pretty eager to do the job.
BTW---RE: the tarps. I wouldn't have taken them down each day. IF I picture the situation correctly-----I would have rigged an attachment system near the ridge on the opposing side of the roof----and then simply rolled the tarps up the roof around a long 2x4 each morning---and then left the entire roll hanging(rolled up of course) on the opposing side .Tarping and untarping would have taken prob. about 5 minutes each day and the tarps would have been immediately available. Also,the nominal cost for new tarps sized for the job would have been built into the price.
Nice Job
On the tarps question, your suggestion is exactly what I set up the first time, with the added refinement of hanging a couple of 2" pulleys on the ridge so I could hook up a runner tackle near each rake to roll the thing up and down like a bamboo window shade each morning and evening. But there were just too many projections on the roof what with the 2x4s, the 3" insulation, and the roof jacks, for it to work smoothly.
Hook ladders would have been problematic because of the way we had to 'build' the ridge. Until the ridge board was in place, the hooks would have been sitting on the edge of the 3" foam boards and would have crushed into the foam. After the steel was in place, the thin upper edge of the steel would've gotten bent. Plus to move a hook ladder sideways over 2" high ridges, 2x4 crib rafters, and everything else up there would have been a true clusterf...k.
Labour billing rates for most licensed contractors here are close to double what I charge. The situation in Québec is weird because of our 'Construction Commission', the CCQ, which has been a closed shop for years even in the face of unbelievable demand for workers. If your last name isn't spelled the right way, you don't get a card. As a result, 80% of all residential renovation and new construction is done by unlicensed guys like me, and a lot of that is done under the table, too. What has happened is that two systems have evolved: the union/licensed contractors handle all commercial; 80% of residential is handled by guys that aren't even supposed to exist. The 20% left over is usually tract construction done by large developers bringing in out-of-town unionized crews working on flat bids.
I agree wholeheartedly with you about the material the HO supplied. I hated the stuff from the instant I saw it until I screwed the last piece down. I even hated the colour. But the HO bought eighty 8-foot-long sheets of it for a grand at an odd-lot supply yard. I did a rough calculation based on what new, residential-grade steel roofing would have cost, and came up with the conclusion that he didn't get that bad a deal. We would have saved a day at most if we'd had standard home roofing steel to work with instead of that armour plate; but the cost difference in materials would have been close to two grand. As to the colour--it's his house, if he wants a chocolate brown roof who am I to tell him different. And from twenty feet away you can't see where I had to cheat on the laps to make the edges line up at the eaves....
And as the HO said while he was writing the check, "There. It's done for life. I'll never have to do that again."
All we gotta do now, is install the bloody chimney for his wood stove. I'm subbing that job, heh, heh, heh ROFLOL!
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Wow! That was some roof structure to be working on. #8 picture gave a really interesting look at that pitch.
Reminds me of ten years ago, when I painted our quonset barn with a 4" brush and an aluminum paint bucket. I had all chains and ropes I had going over that, fastened to the other side and was climbing up the tractor, bucket arm and into the bucket where I had an aluminum ladder to get up there, hand over hand on the ropes and paint as far as I reached, then move everything over and do it again.
Took one afternoon per side and the tractor still has a few flecks of silver paint on it today.
Next time we will have a spray paint crew on a cherry picker do that little job, I think.
Impressive that no one got hurt on that pointy job of yours.
The crew consisted of me, my best lead carp, and an apprentice. My lead carp just had his 70th birthday a couple of weeks ago (I gave him a new Fat Head axe-handled framing hammer), and while he was perfectly capable and willing to climb all over that pointy beast, I tried to keep him on the ground as much as possible in recognition of the simple physical fact that his chances of getting hurt in a fall were greater than mine--by 19 years. The apprentice is a man coming back painfully and slowly from a work accident 4 years ago; he broke his back when he got flipped off an ATV and is on pain medication at all times. He used to do a lot of roofing 20 years ago, but he lost his nerve when he got hurt, and I sent him dirtside and kept him there when he freaked out on the roof jack one morning while we were stripping. So I wound up spending 90% of my time up on 'the wall' and the guys fed me as needed, moved ladders, and so forth. It worked out.
I'm self-insured, too, which means I don't carry any sort of insurance policies. This means that I am ALWAYS looking at personal responsibility for any stupid mistakes on my part or that of my crew. I hammer this into them (and myself) all the time. Don't get hurt--I can't afford it! Awareness of this does have a dampening effect on acting like a teen-aged clown on the site.
I will not wear a harness and life line unless I need it to let me hang in place so I can use both hands for a particularly difficult manoeuvre--like sheathing a gable wall without any scaffolding, for instance. I find that the false sense of security a lot of people get from attaching themselves creates a risk-taking attitude that can cause more accidents/injuries than the 'safety' gear can prevent. Also, by the time I've got the screw gun up there with its 50' of extension cord, the nailer or impact gun with its 50' of air hose, and the haul rope for pulling up the materials, I've already got more spaghetti on that roof than I want; adding a fourth cord just makes it that much harder to move without tripping or snagging your feet. At a certain point, it becomes self-defeating.
All the same, I keep the gear in the truck at all times, and if any member of my crew wants to wear it, it's there for his use. The things I insist they wear is stuff like hearing and eye protection, when appropriate, which I also provide.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
And I thought that dinosaurs were too heavy to fly!:-)
That pitch would have backed off many, I bet, even in harness and hanging from a crane.
Great job done on that and with good thinking behind it.
Yeah, well, I'm part dragon on my father's side....
He got the fire, I got the wings.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Edited 9/1/2003 5:16:16 PM ET by Dinosaur
Dino,
Great roof, I am impressed at the look of the job as well as the difficulties you overcame.
I know this is off subject for the thread but I couldn't get it out of my mind after reading your response. Self insured?! Don't wear a harness!? It's in the truck if the help wants to use it!? IF!? I mean playing roulette with your butt is one thing but wouldn't you demand the help be hooked up especially if its your financial butt on the line? Not to mention caring about their health. Just a view from the cheap seats. DanT
The prerequisite for the people who work for me is a complete understanding of the conditions under which I work. (1) I will never ask anyone to do any part of a job that I wouldn't do. (2) I will never allow anyone to do anything on the site that I think is dangerous for that person at that time. (3) I will never ask anyone to do anything on a job that he does not feel comfortable doing. (4) I will not fire someone off a job for not being able to work under the conditions of that job: if I hired him on for the job, and I misjudged the man and/or the conditions, it's me that should eat it, not the guy who came to work in good faith not knowing everything that I knew when I hired him.
I happen to be pretty comfortable working at heights. I know people, however, that make me look like a pu$$y up there--guys that can walk a 3x8 joist two stories up with a stack of 2x's on their shoulder like I can walk down the sidewalk carrying my lunch box. And since I was in charge of chairlift evacuation training at my winter job for three years, I also have a comprehensive knowledge of how to train people to work at height, and the different reactions different people will have to that situation.
No, I won't force a guy to wear the harness--but I will watch him working and if I think he's endangering himself I'll send him down before he costs himself some pain and me some money...or worse.
I am a strong and vocal proponent of the decidedly minority opinion that our 'safety-conscious' society has created a more dangerous situation than we had before take-out coffee cups were printed with warnings that the contents may be hot. If you look at statistics (get the raw data if you can; compiled reports almost always slant the conclusions to match the agenda of the commissioning organization), you will see that nobody my age (51) wore a bicycle helmet when we were growing up riding Rollfasts and Schwinns--yet we survived, and with a lower permanent injury/fatality rate than we now 'enjoy' among the young people of today. Of course, we didn't launch ourselves fifteen feet into the air off ramps in 'terrain parks', either. We knew better.
The fact is, equipment labeled 'safety gear' gives the people who wear it a feeling that they are protected as soon as they put it on--and that's simply not true. Read the disclaimer inside your 'hard hat': words to the effect that 'this bump cap will not protect you from some forseeable shocks'. But how many people who wear these things for 8 hours a day actually understand that the protection offered by the device is minimal and will almost never prevent injury by major impact? Not enough. Bike riders, skiers, construction workers, and others who wear light-weight, minimum-protection headgear think their brain is protected by their brain-bucket, and take more risks whether consciously or unconsciously than they would were they feeling just a little bit naked out there. To return to the example of the bike or snowboard rider who launches himself starward off a ramp--that silly styrofoam shell he's wearing will do him buttkiss good if he lands the jump on his occiput from 15 feet up. Goodnight, charlie....
Safe work practices are the result of individuals practising constant risk assessment and avoidance, not of the boss armour-plating and harnessing the worker until he can barely move. Our society has lost sight of that fact, and it's a scary thing.
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Dino,
I can't say I disagree on some of your points. However in a litagus society one guy falls, sues and you the self insured contractor are in financial ruin. No court in this country will give a hoot that you think people work in a less safe manner with the "proper" safety gear attached. They will simply convince the jury that you were irresponsible by not demanding your crew wear it.
Your point about statistics is well taken. One of my favorite sayings on the matter is figures don't lie, but liars figure. But in court a good lawyer (or a not so good one for that matter) would use those very statistics that you condone against you, and probably win.
None the less you apperently feel strongly about it all as you do most subjects so I will return to the safe cave and pay my premiums, demand my guys wear safety gear and follow the masses. Hopefully to financial prosperity! :-) DanT
Dan--
A personal question, if you don't mind: how old are you? I ask because I suspect you're between 20 and 30 years younger than me, so you don't have any personal memory of what we old farts call 'The Good Old Days'. Recognizing that there was some bad, unsafe, and otherwise undesirable stuff going on then as well does not imply that there was nothing of value we should not strive to preserve from the same period. In other words, just because it's new, doesn't mean its good; just because it's old doesn't mean it's bad. Look at the individual case and use your intelligence, education, and experience to decide for yourself. Don't let the media and societal 'atmosphere' tell you what to think....
I think that if one wants to be a contributing member of a society, one is duty-bound to scream, bitch, cajole, persuade, and finagle whenever one encounters something that detracts from the good functioning of that society. Like stupid warnings on coffee cups, for example. So when I see what my personal experience tells me is a bad trend, I holler blue murder at appropriate opportunities, in the (feeble but not fruitless) hope that someone out there will be listening and will 'pass it on' until enough people get bent about the situation that the powers that be actually change it for the better.
Unless you're Emperor of All the Universes with unlimited dictatorial power, that's probably the only way you're ever gonna get something changed.
(I considered running for Emperor, but when I saw how much overtime the job entailed, I went back to being a gadfly. You want the job? LOL with a wistful regard towards If wishes were horses, beggars would ride....)
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
Dino,
I am 46. I too have done my share of unsafe and dangerous work. I am not debating whether or not you agree with society or its rules or level of care in terms of safety. I am a pragmatist. I realize it is a litigus society and without using the percieved safety gear, especially if its in the truck and someone gets hurt I could get sued and lose my financial ####.
That was my only point. If you wish to scream and shout, howl at the moon......fine you have a right to and should. I simply was pointing out that I thought it might be a sound business decision to use the safety gear you have so if your help was injured they would not so easily bankrupt you.
Yes common sense is a great item, as is education and all other things you mention. I am not debating safety here. I am debating business survival. But I see you would like to debate a society wide or political or age driven debate. I have no interest in that thank you. DanT
Okay, so I tried, with the best will in the world, to get you interested in your society's long-term development. I had in mind that you might be convinced by the spectre of the clowns in the button-down collars making things even worse for you than they are now--which is exactly what they'll do if 'da peepul' don't get up on their hind legs every once in a while and make some noise.
But you're not interested. Sigh, well I know I can't win 'em all, but it makes me sad when a nice guy like you just wants to hide in his 'safe cave' because he's scared of what the bean counters have already done to his world. But don't think I don't understand.
I understand business survival. I'm dealing with it right now: tonight I'm looking through my files for a helper for another roofing job I've got to quote for tomorrow morning, and I thought of a good candidate--a kid I worked with for a few weeks on somebody else's job site. He's pretty bright, doesn't dope off more than usual, and he needs the money.
But he's 18 years old, and lives with his folks. In other words, even if I told him how the world works and he agreed, I'd always have a doubt that he really understood the downside in his gut. There's not many 18-year-olds that believe in their own mortality. I know I didn't. (The way I used to drive is ample evidence of that, LOL. Only quick reflexes and an incredible amount of luck let me survive....)
So, if I hire him on this job, I'll have to keep him on the ground, to satisfy my own conscience. That, and the knowledge that his folks could come back at me if he gets hurt, make it untenable for me to let him up on the roof so he can learn to strip and shingle, and better his prospects in the construction biz. If he were older, I'd just get him to sign a waiver as an independent contractor, and I'd be legally covered. But even though he's of legal age to sign, I don't consider him old enough to make that decision. It's up to me to watch out for him until the natural and unnatural hazards of life have made a wary and wise creature out of an enthusiastic youth.
Each job I take carries risk. Hell, each time I draw another breath I run some risk (what if I inhaled a mosquito infected with the West Nile Virus?). But the knowledge that I am responsible keeps me safer than if I believed I was 'covered'. (Mosquito? So what; the doc's can cure anything, right...? Duhhhhhh)
On a practical note: under the legal system here, with our semi-judicial workman's comp commission, it doesn't matter whether or not I had the gear in the truck and available for use. It doesn't even matter if the guy was wearing all the prescribed safety gear listed for the situation he was in. If he gets hurt once he arrives at my site--say, tripping over his own feet getting out of his truck and bashing his head in on the sidewalk--I am liable. Period. There are even some circumstances wherein I could be liable for an injury he suffered en route to the site, such as if he drove off the most direct route between his home and the site for any reason that could conceivably be connected to the job (he wanted to pick up a new tape measure on the way to work in the morning). The system is so severe that employers here just assume they will have to pay for anything that happens to the worker, no matter who or what caused it. The large majority of employers react by armouring and hog-tying their workers to the point where the workers counter-react and try to get away breaking the regs whenever they can. A horrible situation that does no one any good--except the lawyers, of course--and it's getting worse as I write these lines. Because the people don't scream.
Dan--I really like you. And I would not want you to risk your financial well being or the security of your family for this argument. But I want you--and everyone else who's in the same boat as you (and that includes me!) to understand that silence equals death.
Go rent the movie NETWORK. I've got a feeling it's been too long since you've seen it.
* * *
I'm done. We've hijacked the thread quite a bit, you and I. Let's see if we can get back to roofing.
Whaddya think of those rake boards?Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
A frame + metal roof... you are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Awesome job.
SamT
Roofers are all crazy... this story is the wildest I've heard in many moons. Better you than me up there with that tarp! I'm definately impressed w/ your patience (& ingenuity)
GF de SamT
Edited 9/1/2003 12:40:41 PM ET by SamT
Well, I promised the HO I'd do it--so that didn't leave me a lot of other options once I sobered up, LOL. In fact, everybody in the trades in our area knows the house, and when they heard I'd taken the contract they were ROFLOL--"Oh, no! How'd you get stuck with that!"
The scary part is, this house is literally 30 feet from the main drag through the village, and we were there for about 3½ weeks, so we got a lot of visual exposure. The job hadn't been done for a day before the HO was getting calls asking him for my phone number. If I have to do that again, though, I think I'm gonna charge double....
Pour la GF de Sam T, merci, mais je suis pas si fou que j'allais refaire cette bétise avec la maudite bache!
Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?
congrats on a difficult job - one question, why didn't you run the furring/insulation horizontally? - - be sure to get some finished picts sometime and post them - DOUD
A daunting task to be sure, nice job.
I have one question...
Why not put your 2x4s on horizontally?
Wouldn't that have given you a "ladder" to work your way up the roof?
Sorry....two questions.
Bee & DavidDoud--
As to why I didn't run the 2x4's horizontally, (a) I never thought of it...duh!, and (mainly) (b) I wanted the extra air space under that steel provided by the strapping running across the 2x4s. The insulation was 3 inches thick; that left the 2x's a half-inch proud of the foam boards, not a lot of air space. Also, if we had set the steel directly on the 2x's, we'd have had to countersink all 600 of those lag bolts a very precise half-inch and then go from 6" lags to 5½" lags. The time drilling another 600 holes would certainly have exceeded the time needed to run the 1x3s.
In fact, the strapping did provide a 'ladder' of sorts up the roof; a ¾" 1x plus a somewhat variable ½" space under it didn't exactly give me a generous tread, but it was quite adequate for scrambling from here to there. You didn't want to stand on it for more than a couple of minutes though: very fatiguing for the ankles and calf muscles.Dinosaur
'Y-a-tu de la justice dans ce maudit monde?