Covering up the skylight
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!
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.
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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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