Home Damage Resources Windows Doors Ceilings Roofs Walls Services Furnishings Re-building Damaged Homes - Roof Repairs and Replacements : By Richard Edkins Introduction : Blast, shrapnel and fire, can displace, shatter or even collapse and destroy all but the strongest roofing materials. The damage classifications are to some extent 'readings' of roof cover. Class 4 damage requires only modest replacement of damaged tiles and slates, whilst Class 3 - slightly more extensive - could theoretically be coped with by some salvage in a well-organised relief effort. Class 2 and Class 1 damage call for dismantling of damaged surviving roof elements and a complete re-build. Damage to slated and tiled roofs is worth making good to maintain resistance to rain and damp. Where a roof 's timbers are damaged, slates and tiles will need to be carefully removed and stacked whilst timberwork is made good. Tiles are normally nailed to horizontal laths or butt-jointed planking which are supported by sloping rafters, themselves linked by horizontal or inclined braces or purlins. Rafters in houses built in Western Europe from the 1950s tend to be constructed as sets of roof 'trusses', composed of pairs of rafters joined by timber or metal 'plates' at the ridge of the roof, with braces or 'hangars' to a joist that forms the ceiling of the building. The roofing joists themselves rest on so-called 'wall plates' of timber planking at the top of the walls. Modern roofing tiles are normally backed by waterproof composition 'sarking felt' above the planking or laths and under the tiles. In cases where large areas of roof are missing and local builders are out of reach or prices are exorbitant, consider the stability of surviving walls and the possibility of re-roofing with alternative materials. Alternative Roofing : A few solutions to roofing material shortages. :- Damaged and missing roofing could be replaced by :- (a): Broken rafter and joist timbers pieced together and 'splinted' and dowelled or screwed together using small planks. (b) : Tree stems ('small poles') dowelled, lashed or nailed together for purlins and rafters, spaced where necessary more closely together than the original roof trusses. (c) : Bundles of small canes, withies, reeds or brushwood, lashed together around small or broken timbers to strengthen and lengthen them, then lashed together as roof supports. (d) : Geodesic mesh of small timbers lashed together into grill-work panels as a support to light-weight roofing. Damaged and missing sarking felt can be replaced by :- (a) : Heavy gauge flexible polythene (e.g. Visqueen). (b) : Opened fertiliser bags. (c) : Some kind of fabric waterproofed with a tar or asphalt. Missing tiles and slates can be replaced by :- (a) : Corrugated steel sheet, if available. (b) : Shingles cut from scrap wood and boiled in creosote, oil or tar. (c) : Thatch made from locally-cut reeds or grain straw. (d) : Overlapped fertiliser bags secured by chicken wire stapled in place (ugly, but it works). (e) : Strong woven fabric treated with oil-based paint or tar to waterproof it and stretched over a strong framework of withies or laths. Note that some of these solutions (particularly thatching) need skills that may not be common, but books and pamphlets are available. Solutions that are medium-term to semi-permanent are needed. As proof, the people of Arnhem re-roofed houses de-roofed by the Germans in 1945 with reeds cut from beside local rivers. The thatch was later replaced by tile and slate when the economy recovered. Home Damage Resources Windows Doors Ceilings Roofs Walls Services Furnishings © 2003 Richard Edkins. Site maintained by Dalbeattie Internet. Last Updated 16th April 2003.