Day 4892

It was pretty noisy today. The roofers arrived around 7 AM and immediately begain tearing off the old roof. There was a lot more damage than I anticipated. There were several places where the 4x8 plywood decking underneath the roof had completely rotted away. We ended up having to completely replace 5 of the half inch thick 4x8 decking panels. No wonder the roof had been leaking so bad. Once water managed to penetrate the Armorflex silicon coating, it had a clear path to the inside of the house. There was a modified bitumen roof under the Armorflex, but the seams had gone bad long ago. Basically, the previous roofer had just done a shoddy job.

So far, I've been very impressed with this roofing crew. They have been extremely professional, always making me immediately aware of surprises they discovered. There were a fair share of surprises. The amount of rotted wood was massive. They actually did an excellent job of repairing the rotted wood I already knew about. The fascia and soffit on the low side of the roof where the water normally drains looks as good as new now. I was surprised that these guys brought a real carpenter with them. Usually the people roofing companies try to pass off as carpenters is laughable.

The roofers were surprised that our existing roof had virtually no insulation. I knew about this just by looking at my electric bills in the summer. The original tar and gravel roof provided excellent insulation, but when a previous roofing company replaced it with a thin torch down modified bitumen roof placed directly over the decking, the insulation value vanished. This time we are adding three inches of insulation under a TPO Membrane roof. The low areas where water used to pond have already been leveled and hopefully I will never need to use the pumps again.

Right now the house and yard look like a disaster, but I have high hopes that everything will look good again in a few days. I'm finding nails everywhere. I'm going to have to do a very careful sweep of the driveway before we bring our cars back. So far, everything is right on schedule. I'm hoping that the roofers are able to finish tomorrow. The weather was great today and will still be good tomorrow. There is rain in the forecast on Friday though. 

We still managed to get all the usual things done. Dawn got her early morning walk before the roofers arrived. I took my regular long walk as well. I waited until Janet returned home before I left though. All the noise on the roof kind of scared Dawn and I didn't want to leave her alone in the house. Fitbit says I'm not burning as many calories on my walks now, which is weird since my pace has been faster than usual this week. Sometimes I don't trust my Fitbit. It often doesn't agree with the Apple Watch at all. I wonder if I could ever walk without all the tracking devices? I tend to think that things don't even exist unless you measure them or write about the experience.

In other news, I applied for TSA Pre today and got the lawn mower batteries replaced. I filled out the TSA Pre registration information online, but I can't get an appointment to be fingerprinted until June 20. Bureaucracy has become impossibly slow. I had to wait over a month to get an appointment to renew my driver's license. They say it can take up to a year to get your passport renewed these days. Ironically, it only takes a few minutes to get a new credit card.

I hope tomorrow goes smoothly. I'll be glad when this roof replacement is behind me. I've still got a lot to do before the AX-2 trip as well. It's good to get things done though. I've been talking about getting the roof replaced for years. Now it's finally happening.

Susie is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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