Stone Roof Renovation

by Dannyjw in Living > Homesteading

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Stone Roof Renovation

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Hello , I am new to this, forgive me if it all goes astray.
I am rebuilding an old farmhouse and the roof is falling in.
The intention here is to show what can be done to renovate a failed roof.
We needed to move into a tent in the garden to complete this job.

Supplies

Although never attempted before, I was certain that modern adhesives would provide me with a massive material savings.
So we decided to re use most of the original stone that we removed.

Securing the Roof

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Obviously, the first thing to do was support the old roof.
We placed structural support Jack's under the weakest beams.
Normally, the stone would be smashed and thrown off or loaded into steel scuttles and lifted off by crane.
Our requirement was for as much stone as possible to be removed intact by hand.
We hired a local construction company with cranes and dumper trucks to remove the stone.

Removing the Old Stone Roof

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We were living in the house almost from the day we purchased it.
When it rained, more water came through the house than ran off of it.
One day we heard a loud cracking and found a main roof beam was breaking. So we got some labour in and removed over 30 tonnes of stone.

Replacing the Rotten Wood Beams

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Almost all of the wood beams were rotten beyond repair.
We bought whole chestnut trees from the local saw mill and cut them to size on site

Insulation and Waterproofing

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We used sandwich panels to give a strong flat surface for the stone to go on top, but first we coated the roof with a fibre reinforced elastomeric coating

Replacing the Stone

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Some 8 months had passed between removing the old roof and getting the new roof ready to have the stone replaced.
My wife and I had worked an average of 18 hours per day in preparation and had completed all of the construction of the new roof including stone pillars and supporting walls ourselves.
We took a 10 day holiday, we knew the hard work was about to start.
It was now time to scrub clean and power wash all the stone that was to go back on the roof.

Sticking the Stone

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The real work starts here, I should say at this point, the stone is more aesthetics than water protection.
Certainly it is the first line of defence against hail and snow, but the actual waterproofing is below the stone.
We added a corrugated fibrous membrane between the stone and the sandwich panel to protect against resonance damage and provide a heat barrier to keep the house cooler in the summer months.
The process of handle and rehandle starts with selecting the stone we wanted to put back, we need only to put a third of the original stone back on the roof.
Each piece selected, scrubbed and power washed and then manually lifted onto ladders and scaffold eventually onto the roof, we drilled and screwed the first row down, all subsequent rows were stuck down toe and heel style with a branded construction adhesive.
The replacement of stone was a mammoth task in itself, much of the stone so heavy it took both of us to lift it up onto the roof, wecouldnt work any more than 6 to 8 hours per day on the roof, it was just simply exhausting.
We stuck down 2 rows at a time and left them overnight to set before laying the next 2 rows.
Galicia, northern Spain is well know for its extreme rainfall and Atlantic coast storms and without tempting fate, so far, the roof has stood fast through a few of them