Apparently, my back isn't hurting enough to prevent me from taking on two different battles, one nearly a year old, the other postponed for three.
First, the roof. Skye Builders is the company which reached out to me about loose/missing/folded shingles after a March 18 windstorm. It turned out they were hoping for a full roof replacement for this house. My insurance company took a look and authorized replacing 11 shingles, some of the hail-damaged turbines which bleed hot air from the attic, and the highest buck item, removing and later replacing properly the solar panels in order to do the shingle work. They sent the check. To me.
Good thing.
Skye was only very intermittently in communication with me over the next many months. What was going to be done in two weeks is... still waiting. There were excuses. The assessor was over-booked. They found a new issue justifying a full roof replacement (which happened to be a second roof under the first, which to me simply meant the very rare rain would have twice the trouble wending its way down to where it could cause any damage to the house.) They simply went away for months, waiting for the insurance company to change their mind. That was fine with me. It's not like we'd had any rain, right? The money sat in my savings account earning, uh, a whopping $.38. Whoopee! Profit! I mulled over having a handyman with some roofing cement secure or replace the shingles and calling it a day, but never pursued that thought.
Last week they called again. Apparently my insurance company's adjuster was standing firm on the 11 shingles bit. I was relieved, since I'm on the hook for a quarter of the replacement, and a whole roof would be a big pinch. Did I still want Skye to do the work? (What, are you that desperate? Having problems getting customers?)
I invited them over for a chat. The owner himself showed up this time. There were new issues in the past year. Pigeons, primarily. My roof held enough fertilizer to feed every tree and plant in my yard for the next decade. No problem, they'd just power wash before they started. (Mental note made to get Rich to move everything our from under that gap over the patio where its roof was added after the house was built, and which for the last few years has been leaking onto the patio and running across its floor and on to the ground beyond: it won't be just water coming down this time. Also get things sitting on the floor up and off it. All of which he promptly did.)
OK, then how about that roof join? One of their guys promised as their apology for the delay about half a year ago to run a fat bead of silicone along that gap to seal it and prevent dripping. Nope, I heard now, that wasn't me who said that, and no-can-do. Wouldn't work anyway, he decided after a new walk on the roof, because jargon-jargon-jargon somebody had done something weird in previous incarnations of roof construction and repairs, so a new flange would need to be shoved up under what was sitting there to bridge the gap and shuttle water out far enough on to the patio roof to drain further outward. Plus now that he'd looked closely at it, 12" wasn't going to do it. It needed 24".
By the way, I should really get some kind of a vertical jargon thingy on the far edge of that patio roof to keep the pine straw from collecting there. Well, I liked the flange part for that gaping joint, but don't care about the pine straw: it's kind of amusing to watch the baby cacti work to grow up in that crack, rooted in air and a few pieces of pine straw every year after we've removed their predecessors.
How about the turbines? After another roof trip, he declared replacing them was going to require going down through both sets of shingles and a wide area around the current mounts. Or they could leave the old ones in place and just put up dormer vents. He never explained how those wouldn't need to do the same things, since they had to reach attic air as well. I chose not to ask. This last summer was the only one we plan to spend here again. No new or repaired venting is in the contract. Perhaps in the future....
He explained the difficulties of getting shingles to stick to older shingles because they'd been painted, and I had to bite my tongue to keep from asking whether he ever heard of roofing nails. Might take a few extra whacks each...
Returning the conversation to the pigeon problem, as the wind picked up a bit and a few pellets were hitting just over our heads on their way earthward, I inquired how, once the project was done, we could keep the pigeons from returning. He came up with two things, both of which I approved. One was installing a pair of a kind of a whirly-gig contraption mounted near the roof peak. Each has a short vertical stem, then three side branches off the top which each hold a chromed rounded half cup. Any bit of a breeze sets them moving, the shininess accentuates that movement, thus making the birds very uneasy. Others people's roofs are suddenly found to be much more agreeable. Then he would wrap the sides of the solar panels with a metal mesh which would keep the birds from thinking they could snuggle under them for nesting. This of course would be very difficult because jargon too short jargon clamps jargon.
We'd discussed prices for each part of what needed to be done, including those initial 11 shingles without removing and replacing those solar panels. He promised to start Saturday, if I would respond to his emailed estimate listing job details and the prices we'd discussed. My reply to the one covering those details would be considered my legal signature, he'd stop for the first half payment, second upon completion. We shook on it. There was a little glitch - of course, right? - where he forgot to include the part about wrapping around the solar panels in his proposal so it had to be amended, but I carefully worded my reply each time to make sure all knew what I was agreeing to.
The crew would start 8:00 AM Saturday.
Uh huh.
About 10:00 AM he called. They were still finishing a job from yesterday that ran long but would be there in about half an hour. Ahem, cough cough, the whirly gigs were not, in fact, available anywhere locally. He'd had to order them online, and wait for their delivery. I settled for suggesting that it was really good it wasn't Christmas right now, so I could expect they wouldn't take weeks to arrive. I'm not sure if his chuckle was because he found that funny or was uneasy about meeting my implied deadline. You know, track record and all that.
The crew was two men. The pressure washer turned out to be only a blower. There was a lot of banging for a while, which I determined to be the flange going in, as attested to by the jagged cut off piece on the ground next to the patio. By this time I was outside in the back yard, kinda faking yard work, watching their progress. So far as I can see, no shingles have been replaced. It's a shallow roof, so I had to step back to the farthest corner to see even part of the bottom of the rear solar panels. There was a big mound of "stuff" under the end, a combination of pine straw and pigeon poop.
It was still there when they came to the front door to (try to) inform me that their part of the job was finished. After inviting one of them into the back corner of the back yard and pointing to it, both returned to the roof for another 15 minutes of work. While I'm not sure where it went, the pile disappeared from where it was. I was positive for a bit that, while one fellow was on the topside of the panels using a broom or something to sweep crap off to the side of the panel and down off the roof, clearly landing on the ground, the other was aiming his blower up under the bottom of the panels, hiding the crap as if the panel were a rug where it would never be found again, nor leach nasty brown stains down the shingles, possibly back flowing under the flange as well, in the event it ever rains here again. He seemed to notice me staying there, and eventually a small bunch of stuff was blown sideways, off the roof on the other side. I wasn't too impressed, but not ready to argue when they left. I hadn't proof. Rich was unavailable, and I don't do ladders.
I had Rich take a good close up look via ladder today to see what exactly was done in back. He reported that my suspicions are correct, crap is piled under the bottom of that section of solar panels. After cooling off a bit, and incidentally having a late lunch while I did, I called the owner of Skye. I started with letting him know we had a problem, that his crew was cheating both him and me. He asked a couple questions, then thanked me for the feedback. It he's not there, he doesn't know how the job is being done. He added once the mail brings his package, he personally will be out here to finish the job... correctly! This time it will include a washer, so long as I have no problem with his using our water.
Nope, no problem at all. I'd already figured that into the project. It comes with a bonus, since all water falling off the patio roof hits the dripline roots of the pine tree, still thirsty after last summer's punishment. Better, it comes with fertilizer this time! Yummy. I bet this incarnation of our roof cactus approves too.
Now I'm just waiting.
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