Friday, May 22, 2009

Roofers came… and went…

Our roofers started this week.  They showed up on Tuesday morning after giving us an hour’s notice that another job had been delayed and that they wanted to start the repairs to our roof.

It seemed to be going well.  They set up scaffolding at the front of the house, brought in a 60 ft ladder (the longest I’ve ever seen) to work on the front dormers, and setup two ladders with a work platform between them on the side porch.

That was on Tuesday.  They have been back for very brief periods since then but haven’t done any further work.  I called them today and they said they had to deal with some emergency jobs and that they’d be back on Monday.

It’s a bit dissappointing, but hopefully they’ll make good progress next week.

On the bright side, I did end up climbing their 60 ft ladder to get on top of the main roof, and measured the size of our chimney flue opening so I could order one of these:

http://www.woodlanddirect.com/Chimney/Top-Sealing-Chimney-Dampers/LockTop-II-Chimney-Cap-Damper

Our fireplace in the parlor on the main floor was originally coal and has a coal insert with it’s own built-in damper.  The chimney itself doesn’t have a damper or a smoke shelf.  We’ve been back and forth with some chimney experts on whether we can use the fireplace for burning wood or not.  A couple chimney sweeps we brought in said we have to get a gas insert as the chimney flue is in bad shape, but I think they might be biased as they also sell those same gas inserts they say we need.  I called in another sweep who said the flue looked fine, and we had a mason who rebuilds chimneys (inside and out) who said it’s fine and quoted us on putting in a new damper (which is quite expensive).

So, the advantage of the lock top damper is that we can seal the flue at the top to keep heat in and stop drafts from the chimney, and if we do decide to use the fireplace for wood burning, we don’t need a damper at the bottom of the chimney, the lock top damper will work just fine.

I’m hoping it arrives before the roofers remove their ladder so I can install it.

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