The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Covering up the skylight

On the roof

Fewer people buy chicken waterers in the winter, so we had to let Bradley return to the real world last fall.  While he was away, he worked on a roofing crew, and in the process he accumulated quite a bit of roofing metal that was extra and headed to the dump.  When we asked him if he could fix Mark's skylight, Bradley came prepared with enough free red tin to replace all of the rusty metal on the roof of the East Wing!

Carrying tin

We still had to carry it in using hip waders because the creek is a bit over knee-high at the moment.  While each sheet of roofing tin might not weigh much, we were definitely worn out by the end of the day, even with the help of B.J. --- Bradley's brother's ex-wife's cousin (who, as Gerry astutely noticed, took the photos of us working in the swamp yesterday).  Mark and I carried groups of three pieces of metal tied into a tin burrito from the parking area across the creek, then Bradley and B.J. took them to our fenceline, and finally we all carried the tin one piece at a time up the gully to the trailer.

Red roof

As a side note, Bradley says he loves installing skylights because he always gets paid twice --- once when he puts them in, and once when he takes them out.  I'd read lots of reports of skylights leaking back before we installed ours, but Mark really wanted to be able to lie in bed and gaze up at the stars.  And even though the skylight did have to be removed, I'm actually very glad we went ahead and gave it a try --- I'd much rather have tried the skylight than to have Mark always wondering what it might be like to have a window above his bed.  In my opinion, a failure is only a negative if you didn't learn anything in the process.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Skylights also bleed hot and cold like nobody's business. We have three skylights in my house, and they make us hot in the summer, and cold in the winter. It got so bad this summer we made basically a cardboard plug to put over top of them to try to stop the loss.
Comment by Ashaldaron Wed Jan 30 08:48:30 2013
We had 12 holes (err, I mean skylights) in the roof of our previous house, and they all leaked at some point. The house originally had only four, but every time a falling redwood branch would poke a hole in the roof during a storm, in went a skylight. They were nice to have because the redwood forest can be very dark, especially in winter, but I'm so glad that we now have a skylight-free roof. ;)
Comment by mitsy Fri Feb 1 09:45:46 2013

You referred to your red roofing material as tin. Is it really? I have seen a product that is called Galvalum (essentially galvanized aluminum)that looks similiar.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Ken

Comment by Ken Fri Jun 28 21:42:01 2013
Ken --- You're totally right --- it's not tin. That's just the colloquial term for metal roofs around here. Kind of the way all metal cans are still called "tin cans".
Comment by anna Sat Jun 29 07:33:09 2013





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