Hi
I'm new to the forum and hoping I can get some thoughts about a roof issue I have.
I have an old house in Nova Scotia - about 150 years old - and made of pretty sturdy materials, I think cedar in many places. When I bought it, it was in solid but superficially rather neglected condition. I've done loads of work on it myself; window frame repair, wall repair and wall shingling, installed a new shower room, built a woodshed (real beaut), loads of stuff.
Since buying the house, I've known that the front (north) half of the roof needs reshingling, particularly the dormer which seems to get fried by the sun and blown to hell by noreasters. The back of the house and L are pretty OK. Every major gale takes away more shingle tabs off the dormer. There seems to be no leakage at all into the building which made me think that probably the ice and water shield underneath was keeping it sealed. I spoke to a roofer a couple of years ago and he thought probably it was ok and the steep angle was making the water run off pretty quick. We talked about replacing just the shingles on the dormer but he said it would be difficult to impossible because although the shingles on the rest of the roof are mostly intact they're also rather brittle.
I finally took the plunge and took a closer look today and to my horror found gaps between shingles where the tabs had blown off but no ice and water at all, just wood.
I have no real experience at all of roofing and unfortunately, at least for now (might possibly change in the short term), very little budget.
I'm kind of wondering about my options.
I can't replace the whole north half of the roof, out of the question for now. One thought is to get some roll roofing and just cover the dormer roof, nailing it firmly in place at, say, 9" intervals and protect it with that until I can get a budget to get the whole north half replaced. The other possibility is that the roofer is wrong and a skilled roofer (if they exist around here - not sure) could replace just the dormer roof. Maybe carefully tarred ice and watershield would be a better temporary fix.
As I mentioned, it's a pretty solid place and I think it's a relatively recent issue and I doubt there is structural damage but even if there was I can't fix it now.
Any ideas?
Thanks
I'm new to the forum and hoping I can get some thoughts about a roof issue I have.
I have an old house in Nova Scotia - about 150 years old - and made of pretty sturdy materials, I think cedar in many places. When I bought it, it was in solid but superficially rather neglected condition. I've done loads of work on it myself; window frame repair, wall repair and wall shingling, installed a new shower room, built a woodshed (real beaut), loads of stuff.
Since buying the house, I've known that the front (north) half of the roof needs reshingling, particularly the dormer which seems to get fried by the sun and blown to hell by noreasters. The back of the house and L are pretty OK. Every major gale takes away more shingle tabs off the dormer. There seems to be no leakage at all into the building which made me think that probably the ice and water shield underneath was keeping it sealed. I spoke to a roofer a couple of years ago and he thought probably it was ok and the steep angle was making the water run off pretty quick. We talked about replacing just the shingles on the dormer but he said it would be difficult to impossible because although the shingles on the rest of the roof are mostly intact they're also rather brittle.
I finally took the plunge and took a closer look today and to my horror found gaps between shingles where the tabs had blown off but no ice and water at all, just wood.
I have no real experience at all of roofing and unfortunately, at least for now (might possibly change in the short term), very little budget.
I'm kind of wondering about my options.
I can't replace the whole north half of the roof, out of the question for now. One thought is to get some roll roofing and just cover the dormer roof, nailing it firmly in place at, say, 9" intervals and protect it with that until I can get a budget to get the whole north half replaced. The other possibility is that the roofer is wrong and a skilled roofer (if they exist around here - not sure) could replace just the dormer roof. Maybe carefully tarred ice and watershield would be a better temporary fix.
As I mentioned, it's a pretty solid place and I think it's a relatively recent issue and I doubt there is structural damage but even if there was I can't fix it now.
Any ideas?
Thanks