If it looks super hot in the first few photos, that's because it was - this work was done on the weekend in the afternoon, and it was absolutely baking hot out on the deck/roof.
The first job was to remove the metal clips from the timber rails I chopped up last time. I found that most of the screws could be worked loose if I removed the decomposed leaf matter from the screwheads with a dental pick. This was a bit tedious, but I need to make what the lumber industry calls "stickers." These are scrap sticks which go between layers of boards in large lumber stacks. I'm going to manufacture my "stickers" from the 2"x4" rails.
Pulled up some more boards....
Now I need to move the boards I lifted at the beginning of the project before I can go any further...
Had to remove the table too...
What was very interesting is that below the boards at the apex, where the deck is shaded by vegetation, there was a lot of moisture at the underside of the deck boards. This is a reminder that the roof needs to be able to drain all year round, not just when it is raining.
Of course the support framing at the perimeter doesn't exactly help....it is essentially impossible for water to drain from this area.
The next bit is later in the day or the next day - I have been chipping away at the deck for an hour or so each evening after work - it's only 80 F (27 C) at that time of day.
Incidentally, when I was lad it was common to talk about ambient temperate in Celsius. That's what the BBC weather forecast used. I mean, they might have been wrong, but they were wrong in Centigrade. Funny thing is, the thermostat in my parents house was graduated in Fahrenheit. And it was set strictly to 65 F apart from under exceptional circumstances, and shut down entirely when my folks went to bed. My Grandfather G. taught me that "double it and add thirty" is a pretty good approximation for converting between Celsius and Fahrenheit and much easier to do in your head than multiply by 9/5 and add 32.
Finally made it out to the perimeter boards. Once these are lifted I can remove the rest of the timber rails...
And sweep up the next batch of leaf mulch...
So far the exposed roof surface looks ok. It has been very well shielded from UV-light and so does not exhibit the usual signs of aging that I see at work most days. But....and it's a BIG one...there are a number of very soft spots at the roof surface. I'm taking about areas where the roof sags by almost an inch when stepped on. This is not a good sign...
After a couple of evenings I have the bulk of the roof exposed.
The last bit of the deck, where the grill is located, is still hanging on:
Before I can lift the last bit, I really have to get rid of some of the material I have already lifted:
I removed a section of the railing at the rear of the deck...
...and unloaded the rails into the backyard. This would have been much easier with a second pair of hands, but there were none around at the time, so I just got on with it.
This is the view from below. If you look closely you can see where there used to be a patch of daffodils. Oops!
All stacked in the backyard...on top of the garden furniture we can't use at the moment.
Which leaves just deck boards and a few stickers on the roof. The plan is to spread these boards out a bit and try to work around them. We'll see how that goes.
The next time around, I wheeled the grill into the house and got to work lifting the last few deck boards.
There was a whole bunch of moisture underneath these boards too.
This is later after all the deck boards have been lifted and moved into two piles, which I hope I can work around.
I've got rid of all the leaf mulch from on top of the roof and I parked the grill on top of a sheet of plywood so it doesn't sink into the roof. The next step is to measure the slope of the roof (if any) with my laser level. Stay tuned for future developments...
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