Saturday, December 23, 2006

Maine Metal-roof torture.

An interesting effect of a metal roof and the passive solar design in an ice storm.

About 1:30 am this morning, we heard a crash that brought both of us and all three dogs out of a nice winter sleep with a vengeance. What? could be some wood checking in the new house? A couple of shakes from the dogs, a roll over from us and everyone back to sleep. For 10 minutes - another crreech - crash!
Back up - Sophie at the bedside to let me know something just isn't right (she is my nervous Nelly about any loud noises - thunder, gunshots etc.) Then the third - brrrrrrr-crash! Aha - ice sliding off the metal roof in sheets and landing against the aluminum at the top of the foundation - due to the southern breeze.
And on it went - rain coming down - freezing on the roof - sliding down the slope and crashing on the aluminum. A fantastic method of natural sleep deprivation. At 2:00 am, I gave up and took the whimpering Sophie to the living room. Banjo and Milos managed to groan at each disturbance, but go back to sleep. Every new bang, Sophie would look up at me and I would reassure her and back to dozing in my chair. At 4:15, I finally went back to bed as it seemed to have slowed down - or I just got so tired it didn't matter. So, build a steep metal roof at your peril.

2 comments:

Lino Kosters said...

That was some situation back there! It’s been years since this incident happened, and I think by now the roof has been fixed. Heavy snow can cause insurmountable damage to a roof structure. The remedy here is to make sure that the roof supports are strong enough to hold a huge amount of snow during the winter season.

Sharon said...

Lino - there was / is nothing wrong with our roof. The ice was sliding off as it is supposed to - just making a lot of noise. Odd comment.