How To Cover The Roof With Shingles

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Wooden tiles - an environmentally friendly and durable roofing material

In addition to the plank roof, where slope-length boards are used, roofs of short planks have been built in Russia since ancient times. Wooden shingles, shingles, potato chips, chips, shingles - all these names refer to one roofing material, namely shingles.

Shingles are a purely natural material that provides the best comfort for living in a wooden house under a roof made of wood or shingles. Because trees surround us, grow with us on this earth and, as it were, organically enter our life. After all, living in apartments with concrete walls and ceilings, we drive ourselves, so to speak, into the stone-metal-synthetic jungle. Thus, we automatically deprive ourselves of the natural life-giving forces of Mother Nature.

Therefore, it is not at all accidental that recently (especially in the countries of Western Europe) the cry: "Back to nature!" As a result, wood is once again becoming one of the most demanded building materials. Accordingly, wood roofs are increasingly used (especially from shingles and plowshares).

After all, a shingle roof (however, like any wooden one) retains heat well. It does not overheat in hot weather. In cold weather it serves as a kind of curtain, preventing warm air from leaving the room. In a word, the shingle roof “breathes” as it were, regulates the temperature depending on the season.

Under the shingle roof, condensate that is so destructive for rafters and lathing does not form, to prevent which additional labor-intensive work is required in the under-roof space of roofs made of other roofing materials.

The service life of a shingle roof in different editions varies within quite large limits … Thus, foreign manufacturers give a guarantee for their products from 5 to 20 years. Domestic sources believe that the service life of a shingle roof does not exceed 40-50 years. However, historical experience shows that all these periods are very relative, since in practice a shingle roof can last a hundred or even more years. It is enough to recall Valaam and Kizhi.

Shingles, even in our mechanical-automatic age, are still made by hand, they are divided into sawn and chipped. When manually splitting workpieces (chocks), shingles generally retain their natural properties and have a smoother surface. The sawn shingles are rougher, the natural structure of wood is very often violated, therefore its operational properties are noticeably deteriorated.

Shingles can be made from different types of wood: oak, beech, cedar, larch. However, the main tree species for making shingles are spruce, pine, less often aspen. And the best shingles are obtained from freshly sawn upright pine. Plates (shingles) of this roofing material are made up to 50 centimeters long, 60 to 120 millimeters wide and 2-3 millimeters thick.

The slope of the rafters under the shingles ranges from 30 to 45 degrees, and the steeper the slope, the longer it serves. The lathing for the shingles is made of dry straight sanded poles with a thickness of 50 to 70 millimeters. They are positioned along the axes 160 millimeters from each other. Individual irregularities of the poles (on the front side) should be cut off.

There are several ways of laying shingles, but basically two are used … The roof of the house is covered, as it were, in two strips. First, a row from the cornice is laid: two shingles are placed next to a gap of 3-5 centimeters, the third shingle from above - it closes the gap. This is followed by the second row from the ridge of the roof (with an overlap of 15-20 centimeters on the first row).

Shingles can also be laid (which is most often done), starting from the overhang and rising layer by layer to the ridge. Depending on the thickness of the plates, the coating can consist of 3-5 layers.

The shingles are attached to the crate with so-called drape or chip nails 50 millimeters long, 1.5-2 millimeters thick. At the same time, from above, along the entire length of the row, a soft wire is passed, which is twisted on each nail by one turn. This measure allows you to more firmly nail the shingles to the rafters and level them if they are deformed during the drying process.

Special attention should be paid to the device of a ridge on a tattered roof. After all, this is a very important element of the entire coverage. The old masters ran the upper ends into the logs (see Fig. 1, position a). In modern times, the shingles on the ridge are covered with boards (see Fig. 1, position b).

If you have a desire to master the "pancake business", then for this you will need, although not cunning, but quite a specific tool, which, alas, cannot be bought in a store. First of all, this is a special metal knife, and a mallet (mallet) is also needed for it. The main difficulty is making a knife. For this purpose, you cannot simply use a suitable strip of iron, you need a metal plate 50-60 centimeters long, at least 10 centimeters wide.

The blade does not have to be sharp (for example, such a sharpening as that of a cleaver is sufficient), the main thing is that the opposite side (butt) is not thinner than 50 millimeters. On the right side, if you hold the knife horizontally with the blade towards you, there should be a ring with a diameter of about 60 millimeters. It can be welded, riveted or simply bent the strip accordingly. A wooden handle 50-80 centimeters long is inserted into this ring. It should be directed towards itself, perpendicular to the knife blade (see Fig. 2, position a). To make a knife, you can use a spring about 50 centimeters long (see Fig. 2, position b).

It is most convenient to tear a shingle together. One of the workers instructs and holds a knife, and the other, with a wooden mallet (mallet), hammers it into a tree. You should not wield an ax or a sledgehammer, since from such blows, burrs are formed on the butt, which will, firstly, prevent the knife from moving in the wood, and secondly, pick it up.

The shingle roof requires almost no maintenance, except that with the onset of spring it is necessary to sweep the snow from the roof with a broom, and from time to time to correct the row on the slopes, where moisture is most retained, and the roof quickly becomes unusable.