With the problem of delivering cement to the roof solved, this week I go to double shifts working on the roof early and then again in the evening to avoid the mid-day heat. In this section, we've got a substrate layer of ferrocement laid down. We will be laminating layers of meshcrete on top of the substrate to build up the roof and attach it to the walls. The circled area is most of the damage that remains from our little structural collapse of 2 weeks ago. Goes to show that you can't keep a good roof down.
A closer look at how cement makes its way up to the roof. The structure is set into an improvides pad made of concrete blocks held together with rebar pins and anchored by cement. A winch sits on a cross beam at the top. Cecil, a local guy who is helping out this week, mixes cement and loads the buckets onto the lift. Your humble correspondent waits on the roof with a remote control and a feeling of gratitude that he is not bringing cement in buckets up to the roof on ladders anymore...
These foam panels are being used as crickets (a term for structural elements that channel water flow on a roof) to aid in rain runoff from the barrel vault and down the low-pitch roof to the drainage elements. These crickets will be covered with ferrocement and meshcrete just like the rest of the roof. Crickets were used on the renovation of the roofs of the Spanish missions in San Antonio which inspired this project. Theirs are styrofoam and are laid underneath a roll-on rubber roofing product.
Here we've laid down nylon mesh on top of the crickets and used small pieces of insulating foam board to fill in dips and gaps. After this prep work, we take the cement from the lift and wheelbarrow it across the roof on 1x8 planks to the various roofing sections. The arrow marks the spot shown in the photo above after we hand-trowel the cement over our prep work.
We intend our thin-shell laminated ferrocement roof to be partially self-supporting by tying it to the roof parapets, much like a lid fitting on a box. In this photo, note how we've used pieces of foam board to fill in gaps and voids, laid down our wire up and over the top of the parapet and into the roof and then finally laid nylon mesh over the top of the wire. Progress continues and we pick up our pace as the finish line in our marathon comes into view...
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