|
Queen Victorian posted:I've heard that a lead roof can be good for four or five hundred years, at which point you pull the lead off, melt it down, remake the tiles/panels, and put it back on for another five hundred years. A lead roof lasts as long as it takes for someone to come along, rip it off and nick off with it!
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 14:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 15:14 |
|
|
In the Netherlands clay tiles seem to be the norm, and I don't think I've seen inspections or replacements more than a few times in my life.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 16:05
|
|
|
Japan's roofs are actually pretty good tyvm. New houses have clay-inspired lightweight interlocking tiles, or big loving sheets of galvanium like we got. The old tiles are heavy af but last a very long time, unless a typhoon rips it off in just the right way. Most people here also don't let nearby trees get taller than the house, duh (it also means stuffed up gutters). Temples and shrines have huge trees but they also take maintenance more seriously that individual homeowners. Our local shrine recently redid the roof in copper plate, it was kawaii af when new, and will look amazing after it turns blue.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 16:18
|
|
|
Lemniscate Blue posted:Sam Vimes' Boots Theory of Economics also factors in there. The only decent thing Pratchett ever wrote
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 16:44
|
|
|
wesleywillis posted:Bonus: radiation shield!! terrible for neutrons tho
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 16:46
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:I also loved all the awesome thatched roofs in Denmark. Those last like 50 years, which is certainly longer than the intended lifespan of asphalt roofs. They have an issue with flammability though, and having one laid is a pretty laborious process. A cousin of mine recently moved to a house with thatched roof, and had to have one of the wings' roof re-thatched. It's taking weeks if not months, as far as I understood. Meanwhile, another house just down the road from me had its entire roof replaced in less than a week.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 17:26
|
|
|
Humbug Scoolbus posted:The only decent thing Pratchett ever wrote Imagine critiquing a dead children's book author on this forum in 2018.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 17:51
|
|
|
nielsm posted:They have an issue with flammability though, and having one laid is a pretty laborious process. A cousin of mine recently moved to a house with thatched roof, and had to have one of the wings' roof re-thatched. It's taking weeks if not months, as far as I understood. Meanwhile, another house just down the road from me had its entire roof replaced in less than a week. Yeah don't you have to stitch together the individual reeds? From what I learned of the process it seemed super tedious (so at least they last a while after you do it). Also, only really saw the thatch roofs in rural/not dense areas and definitely not in cities, because that seems like a bad idea.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 18:05
|
|
|
Humbug Scoolbus posted:The only decent thing Pratchett ever wrote I singed my eyes on this blazing take
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 18:13
|
|
|
Between that and calling him a children's book author there is little hope for the thread.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 18:19
|
|
|
America has lovely roofs because construction in american is eternally being given two options: something that costs $10 and last 10 years or something that costs $11 and last 50 years and always always always choosing the cheaper option. People rather have an extra 100 sq ft for on their 2500 sqft house than a roof or insulation or windows or a heating system that will save them tons of money in the long run. Just minmax that square footage, nothing else.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 18:28
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:I've heard that a lead roof can be good for four or five hundred years, at which point you pull the lead off, melt it down, remake the tiles/panels, and put it back on for another five hundred years. Lead roofs are OK for the inhabitants, but dangerous for the installers. You won't want to catch your rainwater either, or eat any stuff you grow in a nearby garden for that matter. The reason that lead is recycled so much is because governments want to keep it out of the local water table. Slate roofs are expensive, but can last 200-300 years. In fact, the main reasons that old ones failed is because the nails holding the tiles rusted away, but we have stainless steel now. kid sinister fucked around with this message at 19:13 on Oct 23, 2018 |
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 19:11
|
|
|
So if you were going to put a "best roof" on a house, what material would you use? Where "best" is optimizing for longevity, performance, and low maintenance load rather than up-front price.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 19:20
|
|
|
Slate or concrete* tiles, if the roof structure is rated for the weight. *Other cast products may be better.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 19:33
|
|
|
TooMuchAbstraction posted:So if you were going to put a "best roof" on a house, what material would you use? Where "best" is optimizing for longevity, performance, and low maintenance load rather than up-front price. The shape, pitch, and materials for an ideal roof would vary with region, but the common factor is "not literally the cheapest poo poo you can get away with"
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 19:34
|
|
|
cakesmith handyman posted:Slate or concrete* tiles, if the roof structure is rated for the weight. If you are setting aside cost, wouldn't it be best to do something like use concrete to make a single slab roof surface? You would want to design it to design it to properly shed water without pooling and I guess snow if you have that. It seems like a lot of large buildings like apartment blocks and towers have this design already.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 19:39
|
|
|
My roof was designed for my house in 1958. If I wanted to put a tile or metal roof, I'd have to have the whole structure re-evaluated and probably some substantial reinforcements. I would then have increased my property value by approximately $0 compared to just replacing with the same quality asphalt-shingle 30-year roof that will definitely be in good shape when we sell this place within the next 10-15 years. And the reason this is the case is not that Americans don't value quality - it's because there's a severe housing shortage in my metro area (san francisco bay area) and most other urban areas are the same, because there is a mass movement of population going on a multi-decadal trend in the US of abandoning the rural areas and concentrating in cities. Property values are set mostly by scarcity of single-family homes, with variables like school quality and transportation being at the top of the list, square footage/number of bedrooms/age of construction somewhere below that, and little things like the quality of materials waaaay down the loving list from there. This isn't because americans suck or are stupid (although we do, and are), it's because unlike much of western europe we are still a growing population country, undergoing major shifts in density and land use, with a legal system that grants zoning control and construction standards controls to the local and then county and then state level, with tax incentives that favor zoning for dollars over zoning for optimal density and land use. If home buyers had the reasonable option of choosing between poor-quality homes and good-quality homes within the school district and commute distance they needed, and had a reasonable expectation of staying in the same home for 40+ years, they'd care about roof construction quality a lot more.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 19:51
|
|
|
kid sinister posted:Oh god. Don't you feel great knowing that your family slept under that? The fun part was that while the city inspector had issues with some sink vent being 2" farther away from the wall than it was supposed to, he didn't bat an eye at several broken struts in the attic.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 20:14
|
|
|
Found this when I fell down a google hole. https://www.nachi.org/forum/f23/sistered-floor-joists-28830/ OP posted:I ran across this today. It's floor joists that are approximately 8 feet long made from 2 floor joists approximately 4 1/2 feet long. Where the two pieces of floor joist meet they aren't nailed together or have one or two nails! The joists are supporting a bathroom tub. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 21:41
|
|
|
Brute Squad posted:Found this when I fell down a google hole. I bet females love it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 22:10
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:I've heard that a lead roof can be good for four or five hundred years, at which point you pull the lead off, and sell it to scientists for radiation shielding in sensitive experiments. When lead is first smelted, it contains some lead-210, which is radioactive with a half-life of 22 years. It’s bad when your shielding itself is radioactive. A few centuries after smelting, nearly all of that has decayed and now it is suitable. There is no feasible way to speed up the process. You just have to find old lead and beg/borrow/steal it. For example, archæologists might part with some of the ingots they recovered from a Roman shipwreck if you lend them your expertise and equipment to analyse some of the artefacts.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 22:16
|
|
|
Platystemon posted:and sell it to scientists for radiation shielding in sensitive experiments. There's a similar problem with the structural steel elements of big instruments. For really sensitive gear you have to use steel last smelted before the dawn of the nuclear age. Currently a major source is, I poo poo you not, the Imperial German Navy, scuttled by Britain after the war in relatively shallow water.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 22:48
|
|
|
Steel is a bit different in that the ore is clean and it’s contaminated by air in the furnace. We could retrofit a furnace somewhere to use filtered air. It would be way cheaper than the isotopic separation required to separate the Pb‐210 from fresh lead, but still more expensive than just continuing to salvage Scapa Flow and other pre‐nuclear sources. There’s more seventy‐year‐old steel out there than there is two‐hundred‐year‐old lead.
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 22:58
|
|
|
And also WWII ships sank in deep water, that were/are being illegally salvaged. https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2017/nov/03/worlds-biggest-grave-robbery-asias-disappearing-ww2-shipwrecks
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 23:00
|
|
|
Facebook Aunt posted:I bet females love it. 
|
|
#
?
Oct 23, 2018 23:00
|
|
|
I am fascinated about this lead and steel stuff and want to read or listen to more about it. Any resources out there that can sate this?
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 00:50
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:My husband wants a slate roof on our Victorian, once the (currently pretty new and good) asphalt roof needs replacing. I'm guessing this house originally had a wood shingle or slate roof (I did find random shards of slate buried in the yard, including a tile piece with holes in it). There's an old joke in the property adjusting community: "What do you pay a slate roofer?" "Whatever he wants"
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 01:20
|
|
|
couldcareless posted:I am fascinated about this lead and steel stuff and want to read or listen to more about it. Any resources out there that can sate this? Here’s one article about lead I saw this documentary linked. Never watched it. Bonus: put an alarm on your mediævel roof so you can foil physicists seeking to chip away at it.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 01:22
|
|
|
All this stuff about lead and steel and sourcing untainted steel from scuttled Imperial German ships is  and I'm definitely reading more about it. The remark about lead roofs was from some article that was mostly discussing the pure longevity of various roofing materials. Didn't even think of lead roof theft (even though I've recently read about brick theft and the illegally salvaged brick trade in the South, and also old growth joist theft).PainterofCrap posted:There's an old joke in the property adjusting community: Lol. We'll see about the slate - that's like 10+ years down the road. I'm ambivalent because with this house being so drat tall and without much roof even visible from the ground/sidewalk, you're never going to get to look at it. It'd last for ages, though.. Speaking of property adjustment, I'm always wondering in the back of my head how it works for old fancy houses like Victorians because building standards were so different back then and what was once bog standard average poo poo is now high end and fancy.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 04:07
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:All this stuff about lead and steel and sourcing untainted steel from scuttled Imperial German ships is It’s usually only the fancy and nice houses that last that long. There were plenty of tar paper shacks and even just average houses that were truly standard building quality with just a wood shingle. https://www.nps.gov/tps/how-to-preserve/briefs/4-roofing.htm Even historical houses are subject to the same economic forces as regular houses. Grand mansions in cities with a lot of land are expensive on account of those things, plus the provenance of the house. Take away the land and move it to a minor town in the rust belt and most of that dissolves and the market contracts that price further when someone who can afford a $500k home doesn’t want to deal with old house problems.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 04:23
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:All this stuff about lead and steel and sourcing untainted steel from scuttled Imperial German ships is Ooh, I want to read about the illegal brick trade. Got a link handy? I just bought a house with lovely but excessive brick paths all over the yard. It also has a chimney but no fireplace. I'm trying to decide if, when I excavate the fireplace, I want to dig all that up and return it to the surround/hearth from whence it likely came.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 05:11
|
|
|
there wolf posted:Ooh, I want to read about the illegal brick trade. Got a link handy? Yeah keep them around! Even if the fireplace wasn't originally brick (we have a couple marbleized slate mantelpieces and a couple of wood ones with glazed ceramic tile surrounds - no brickwork inside) you could make a brick one or just keep them for future repairs to the house. There are probably over 200 spare bricks lying around in my yard. Most of them were in a spider-filled pile against the house, which I converted to a cute little platform for the garbage cans, and the rest are being flowerbed borders at the moment. Oh, and there are still more in the basement. They all match the bricks the house is clad with, so I'm guessing they're like the extra buttons sewn onto the tag of your jacket - there in case you need them. Here are a couple articles about brick theft: https://www.stlmag.com/St-Louis-Brick-Thieves/ https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/20/us/20brick.html It's actually pretty depressing. I guess at this point all those buildings are ravaged or they've done something about it. Articles are several years old.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 05:44
|
|
|
Facebook Aunt posted:I bet females love it. That was such a nice loving bathroom before he started, too 
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 06:02
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:Yeah keep them around! Even if the fireplace wasn't originally brick (we have a couple marbleized slate mantelpieces and a couple of wood ones with glazed ceramic tile surrounds - no brickwork inside) you could make a brick one or just keep them for future repairs to the house. Thanks. The house actually isn't brick, just the still present chimney and the old piers. At some point they walled up the fireplace, but kept the actual chimney stack to run the exhaust pipe from the furnace up. That's why I think all the yard brick had to be an old surround; it matches the chimney and it's really rare to find a non-brick fireplace where I live.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 07:08
|
|
|
Blue Footed Booby posted:There's a similar problem with the structural steel elements of big instruments. For really sensitive gear you have to use steel last smelted before the dawn of the nuclear age. Currently a major source is, I poo poo you not, the Imperial German Navy, scuttled by Britain after the war in relatively shallow water. The German fleet was anchored in British waters (at Scapa Flow) after armistice, and their own crews scuttled them as they feared the ships were to be seized and given to the Allied powers as reparations/loot.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 09:46
|
|
|
And most of them were salvaged by one guy, with zero marine salvage experience: Ernest Cox. It's a remarkable story, told here: http://www.scapaflowwrecks.com/history/salvage.php ...and in great detail in the outstanding Joe Gores book about marine salvage I can't recommend highly enough: https://www.amazon.com/Marine-salvage-unforgiving-business-cure/dp/B0006C0KU2
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 09:54
|
|
|
Queen Victorian posted:Re: morning yard work: Our house is overall better than our apartment for yard work noise EXCEPT the neighbor (a landlord - house is a rental) has his yard guy come at like 8am on Sunday. Yard is tiny and simple so he's gone again pretty quickly, but holy poo poo what's so hard about coming on a weekday or an hour or two later on the weekend? Yard guy has a bunch of properties on his round, yours is the first (or maybe somewhere in the middle depending on local ordinances.)
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 11:43
|
|
|
On my first morning in my new rental place in the city centre, I was woken at 5:20 in the loving morning by two blokes with leafblowers being followed by a streetsweeper as they wandered up and down the street outside my house.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 12:20
|
|
|
Megillah Gorilla posted:That was such a nice loving bathroom before he started, too It was a pretty run of the mill builder bathroom, a remodel wasn’t crazy if you had the funds, his design sense was just loving atrocious and rooted in hilarious sexism.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 13:38
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 30, 2024 15:14 |
|
|
Leperflesh posted:My roof was designed for my house in 1958. If I wanted to put a tile or metal roof, I'd have to have the whole structure re-evaluated and probably some substantial reinforcements. Common metal roofing material does not require a structural evaluation/improvements - it's very light stuff. It will require a tear-off of your existing roof though (ie - you can't go over the existing shingles). Asphalt to metal is a common upgrade, it's literally just a price swap during design/estimating for roofs with a 4:12 slope or greater.
|
|
#
?
Oct 24, 2018 14:16
|
|
