Are you handy?

[blue]

fuck me, a handy thread! how did I miss this. I'm building my woodshed right now, I rig up electrical stuff that hasn't been invented yet, I tear out load bearing walls cause I CAN, butt..... no time for this, I must read this thread, I'm way too excited.

[squirell nutkin]

Question:
Why did you bother to cut all those lapped valley strips rather than run a full width section down the valley? I guess you don't get ice dams in Seattle. Still, it seems like an awful lot of extra work.

I'd put a metal valley down if you get ice dams or loads of snow, or if the sheathing in the valley isn't very even. Over time the heat on the roof causes the roofing material to sag and it will eventually drop into any cavities or unsupported areas. One reason for metal valleys. But around here we use "IKO ice and water shield" on valleys, eaves, and rakes. Some folks cover their whole roofs with it. You could probably get away with just a strip of roll roofing on top of 30# felt.

Looks good.

[BigV]

Answer:

I bothered because that was how I was instructed by the wrapper on the roll. One full width section down the valley would have accomplished the same thing. There would have been minor differences, the number of thicknesses, a crack in one can't spontaneously migrate to a crack in the next unlike a single section, super extra wide for a strip vs narrower protection offered by the "shingles", etc. A trade off. The real answer to your good question is that at the time of this project, I'd had exactly zero roofing experience. This whole project was "by the book" PLUS my own compulsion to overengineeer stuff like this.

That valley will *never* leak. The old roof is still there (and it was intact when I put this new roof on), multiple interleaved shingled layers of roofing paper (#15 I think) plus the handmade valley shingles, plus the roll roofing material is overlapped perpendicularly across the whole valley, plus each parallel course overlaps the other by 12 inches, secured by the tar roofing adhesive. 'Cause that's just how I roll (out the roofing material).

In the next section, I did have some much more troublesome valley work. The pitches of the two roof sections were not the same, and on one section the pitch changes, causing it to both bend upward and curve to the side (like a chine on a boat in the transition between the side of the hull amidships as it approaches the bow). Additionally, shingles over this valley were rotten and the metal valley itself was rotten (daylight into the attic--very not good). You'll see in a bit how I dealt with this one, but I used a product that might be similar to your IKO material. I'm happy with the choice so far.

And thanks for the compliment!

[BigV]

The main ridge of my roof runs east-west. This means there is a very big southern exposure, reroofed in Aug 2007, chronicled here in earlier posts. And an equally large northern exposure that gets a LOT less sun, and is just as antique as the rest, but in less tragic condition. There is a third smaller section of the roof that slopes down from east to west, toward the street. This section should have been redone when I did the south side, but the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune conspired toward a different end.

So Labor Day of this year was my last best chance to fix this before I got in trouble this winter. Saturday and Sunday I spent in semi-tear off mode.

Pic 01: the view from the street. Nasty.

Pic 02: the view from the roof. Much worse than I thought. Silver lining: the more roof that has been eroded and corroded and irradiated away, the less I have to tear off, right? I'm really late, but not too late. I hope.

Also in pic 02 you can get a better feel for the more complicated shape of this section of the roof. This picture is taken from the ladder at the southeast corner of the house, looking to the north. The horizontal hip is over the dining room, which is over the garage. The two slanted hips point to the corners of the dining room. The wide flatter area in the foreground is over the living room.

[BigV]

I have been diligently tearing off the exposed parts of the old shingles. This leaves half the shingle on the roof. The half that stays behind is the stapled to the roof half, the half that hasn't seen any daylight until now. This is how I made the surface "smooth" in preparation for the new roof. It was dirty work and I made a big mess as I tossed the broken shingles down off the roof onto the grass, the sidewalk, the steps, the junipers, the driveway, the gutters (for all the foul tips).

Pic 01: Here is my helper, SonofV, bringing me the power cord. Power cord for what, you ask?

Pic 02: The power cord to run the leaf blower, of course. I *KNOW* I got some strange looks from the folks walking their dogs who looked up to see me hosing down the roof with a jetstream of loud air. But that sand is really, *really* slick on the slanted surface of the roof, and a hundred times worse on the tarpaper to come. I was very diligent about keeping it "clean". Here you can see what I've revealed from the tear off, and my push broom and my power broom. Looks better already, doesn't it?

[BigV]

This section of the roof has a valley. Because of the geometry of the roof, the valley curves in two directions, upward and to the left when viewed from the uphill side. Because of this, I could not use a single piece of metal. I had to piece together a valley from individual pieces.

Pic 01: The original (now cleaned up) valley. It was in shit shape. The metal that was at the bottom paper thin, very fragile, torn and broken in many places and I could see into the attic. Not good. This pic is looking uphill at a section of the straightest part of the valley.

Pic 02: Here you can see a couple of the sections. They are galvanized steel, twelve inches square, bent into a 90 degree vee. I took one edge and pushed it under as much of the shingles I could then lifted the shingles on the other side and pushed the other edge under them. I was unconcerned about deforming the metal. The vee stayed intact in all of them, and that was the important part. Also important was the need to start at the lowest part of the valley, and shingle them as I worked my way uphill. I overlapped them by a couple inches each. I continued this process all the way up to the top of the valley.

[glatt]

I don't think I've ever seen shingles that bad on a house before. Was the roof leaking?

[squirell nutkin]

Originally Posted by glatt

I don't think I've ever seen shingles that bad on a house before. Was the roof leaking?

Only when it rained.
(rimshot)

[BigV]

Originally Posted by glatt

I don't think I've ever seen shingles that bad on a house before. Was the roof leaking?

No, I don't think so. I haven't seen any evidence of leaking, but then I didn't actually go into that very low clearance section of the attic to see. It certainly is possible. At the valley, it is higher in the attic, but I still haven't checked. My denial remains intact, even if the roof in this section is not.

The shingles are (were) in terrible shape. But a lot of the decay has taken place in the last three years. If you go back and look at posts 28, 29 and 82, you can see a bit of this part of the roof. The shingles were definitely old then, but not nearly as bad as they were two weeks ago.

Also, haha to SN. Right you are, my friend.

Also, to SN, xoB and others, this site, HammerZone, better living through handy-man-lyness, was extremely instructive to me when I did the first phase of this project. I re-found the website when I followed up on IKO ice and water shield.

Also, regarding the edge strips, I think this is the best way to do it. Because if I was cutting very long strips, the length of the house, then I have a much bigger handful to manage up on the roof. Plus, think about where I'd cut them from--nine inches off the width of how many feet of a whole roll? Where would I cut the next long strip from? From the end of that cut? Or the next nine inches of width? What if the two sections were not the same length? Now I have a stair step edge on the roll. And how much will be usable after I make these long strips? How much wastage will there be?

With cuts nine inches wide off the end of the roll, I'm always going to have the rest of the roll to work with, whether I need to cut another nine inch wide strip or I need to roll out the material to cover the area of the roof. Just some thoughts.

[Lamplighter]

We are going to re-roof my daughters home soon. Her roof has similar valleys and peaks.
In looking at your pics, your old shingles were in worse shape than hers. But we have been planning a complete tear-off.

I'm wondering if you had it to do over, would you do a complete tear-off, or what was the deciding factor for you to trim the old shingles as you did ?

[HungLikeJesus]

My grandfather-in-law had shingles worse than that, but they were on his stomach.

[BigV]

Hi Lamplighter

There were a few factors that influenced my decisions as you've seen here. A tear off is a BIG DEAL. It's a lot more work. It's a LOT more trash. I learned that a roof can be re-roofed up to twice, for a total of three layers/roofs. I'm at 3 1/2 roofs. In my case, a tear off would have taken longer and cost more and been much more difficult and much more work. Bleurgh.

But the killer was the fact that my original shake shingle roof was applied onto skip sheathing. Do you know what this is? With the roofing material off, the top of my house would look like it was covered with latticework. If I took it down that far, I would have had to put plywood decking onto the roof if I wanted to use roll roofing or even three tab shingles, since that stuff won't work over the skip sheathing. That was just TOO MUCH to contemplate. I rely on the old roofs to be my "decking". The major downside to this strategy is that it is heavy. Cedar and two old three tab rooves under the roll roofing is heavy. I am hoping it's not too heavy. We get about the same amount of snow load as you do, so I think/hope I'll be ok.

A tear off is a good, complete way to do things. But I wasn't prepared for job that big.

[Lamplighter]

Big, that explains a lot.
I do know what you mean about the "lattice" sheeting and the extra work of putting down plywood. Ugh.
My daughter's place already has plywood sheeting and only one layer of 3-tabs.

I helped with a tear-off of a church roof many years ago, and it was a lot of work.
But with that special tool from hardware store I'm hoping it won't be quite as bad.

We probably will go ahead with the tear-off because trimming all of those (>30 yr)
old tiles seems slower and overwhelming handwork.
I'll let you know how it goes.

[squirell nutkin]

V, Be sure you sell that house long before it needs a new roof. And mum's the word.

3 1/2 layers is an aweful job, but there are companies back east (I'd bet there are companies where you live) that just do tear offs. One day. Done, clean, debris removed. you are ready to go.

My BIL looked into it and it was almost as cheap as the cost of a dumpster and hiring one guy to help him.

[zippyt]

Come On V !!!
Put yer big boy Pants on ,
Knutt up and strip ALL that half Assed Shit OFFFFFFFF !!
deck it and Roof it !!!

Dont band Aid what Needs fixing !!!

I Know its a Pain in the ass , ( so's a drip at 2am in the winter )
And Costs more $$$ than you want ,
But it will add to the Value of yer house
And be Less of a Pain int the Ass in the long run .