Roofing in 93 Degree Heat SUCKS

Re-roofing the house started today as planned. By noon it was 93 degrees and sunny. No shade, no breeze. The two guys I hired busted ass until around 2:00, at which time they had to stop working until around 6:00. They were sweating like pigs, and that was a very reasonable request considering I'm getting a good deal on the job to begin with. I was very impressed with how they handled the heat, something I can't do. I was chasing shingles, doing clean-up, etc but I just couldn't handle the heat (I came very close to getting heat stroke a few years back and haven't been able to handle that kind of physical work in heat since then). Anyway, on with the pictures. First we get a picture of the roof as it was at 8:00 this morning. Two layers of old shingles. The top layer was at the end of it's life and there were a couple of small leaks, but nothing I had to worry much about. To the left of the chimney is the old antenna for the house. That's gone now, which should clean up the look of the roof a little. I was tempted to keep it to get high-def local TV, but I don't have a high-def TV. It's garbage now.




I was concerned with what kind of condition the decking would be in. The home inspector said that the inside of the roof looked like it was in great condition, but you never know until you get everything removed. An hour or so into the tear-off, we found the decking to be in as good of shape as I had hoped. Nothing other than a bunch of loose nails to pound down. This is the front, so I haven't gotten to the back side where the chimney is, which I know had a small leak. The back also has the vents which may need some attention. These guys have done a number of roofs and said this is in much better condition than the typical roof they see.




By about 2:00, most of the front exposure is removed, with just the edge around the gutter to be finished. We also took delivery on the shingles, felt, starter strips, and ice & water barrier. $50 for delivery via forklift to the roof. A boom delivery would have been a little easier, but we only had to walk about 15' max with the shingles to get them off the forklift to where we stacked them on the roof. Not bad - I saved around $50 this way. After the guys got back around 6:00, we finished the front and right side exposure and got the ice & water barrier down along with about half of the felt. Tomorrow morning we'll finish the felt on the two exposures and get those exposures shingled. There is a chance of rain tomorrow afternoon, so this will limit how much of the roof I have to worry about. Also tomorrow comes more hard labor. You can see in this last picture that I've got a trailer parked in front of the door. We're loading shingles into the trailer for me to take to the dump. If I were rolling in dough, I'd have rented a dumpster. I still might - hauling and unloading the old shingles by hand SUCKS.