MORE CLEANING, MORE COST

The work on the roof has been interesting. This morning I went out to talk to the guys, mainly to ask about the beautiful copper gutters and downspout that were laying out back. For me beautiful equals expensive. I asked why they weren’t using the galvanized metal like the gutters were made of before, but of course everyone assure me that copper is a MUCH better product. Yeah, and we know what THAT means.

Additionally, we didn’t realize what the cleaning would involve. I guess Art and I thought they’d just go up on the roof, dust or scrub the tiles, replace any that were broken, and be done. Of course it’s not that simple. For those of you who don’t know how a tile roof is made, here’s my take: first the roof tiles are about 24” long, and curved in a “C” shape.

The tiles seem to be up on the roof in two layers….the bottom layer of tiles are laid with the curve facing up, then the top tile faces down.


In order to clean the roof, the men are taking up the top tile, setting it aside, then sweeping tons and TONS of accumulated dust, dirt and pine needles that have accumulated underneath.


Our neighbor Frank commented that the house should also be cooler now that all this stuff is no longer retaining the heat that’s being stored in all this ‘stuff’. That will be an added bonus.

Of course our workers told us that the roof had been done incorrectly the last time. Apparently instead of looking like this:    , they should have been placed like this: __ __ __ . (Well, apparently the symbol I found online won't copy into blogger...so just imagine several upside down U's for the first example, then upside down U's separated by the underscore for the second example!)

They told Art that by leaving a space in between the tiles the dirt, pine needles or whatever wouldn’t accumulate so easily. Of course it makes sense, and who knows why ours was done the other way…..but it seems to be the most common, judging from the other houses around us.

It’s also looking like the cost will be about double the original estimate. We suddenly jumped from “about” €1000 each to “about” €2000 each. I hope Mauro will let us pay over a few months time, since this wasn’t quite in the budget!