In the winds last week, our little wooden shed had part of its roof felting blown off.
My local building suppliers have mentioned using felt adhesive. Is this good advice for some one who has never done this sort of thing before?
Plus, any tips on doing the job
Dave
Pent or apex roof? e.g. flat sloping or pointy?
you can do it either way, adhesive or nails. Or you can even use wafer head screws.
Its a very simple job, not sure what there is to say about it. I'd just avoid cheapie felts, false economy.
NT
Start at the eaves and work up to the top. Apply felt adhesive, or liquid felt, liberally all over the roof. Apply the first row of felt over the eaves. Leave a few inches over the edges to form tucks so the rain drips away from the walls of the shed. Leave a couple of inches on overlaps so the water runs onto and not under the previous row of felt.
Use large head felt (roofing) nails every 6 or so inches along all the edges, and try to use liquid felt or felt adhesive under and on top of all joints. Apply liquid felt with an old paint brush. All mineral crumbs can be collected to cover the nail heads and camouflage them.
The top ridge felt covering should be stuck with felt adhesive and then nailed to make it stronger and last longer.
In message , BigWallop writes
All above and....
Use mineralised felt and fit thin battens, 18" apart, up and down the slope to stop wind lift.
By tucks, I think BW meant to say double the felt back under itself to form a strong edge/drip.
regards
"strong edge/drip" - its called a welted drip and if you are using the green mineralised felt, it is sensible to lightly heat this with a blow torch on the actual 'bend' to avoid cracking during the 'turn-over' operation.
Apex.
Dave
Noted. The felt will be mid range of what the BS stocks.
Is the adhesive a grab type, or will it allow slip like wall paper paste?
Dave
Many thanks for all that detail, I feel more confident about doing it now. I was thinking that the adhesive would have to be painted all over where the felt was to sit.
Dave
Thanks for the additional info.
Dave
That was something I forgot to ask, the ending in this cold weather.
Dave
Dave I'm not accusing those who have replied of not having done a re- felting job in winter, but having done a similar repair situation some years ago and had to work all day and well into dark (7pm on a cold winter's night !!), I would strongly recommend that you consider avoiding using felt. You are going to be faced with trying to apply an adhesive that is very temperature sensitive in terms of its capacity to flow and hence be painted on, and will need to be warmed considerably to be useable.
You will find that if you go to any of the Sheds you can get sheets of Onduline. The accumulative price is not going to be that much different from using felt properly, and the effort to install it is minimal which is critical at this time of year. If you haven't done felting before, avoid it under these circumstances and go with the corrugated material - not much different in price and so much easier to put on. I've just done a 5m x 3m roof with it and it took a short afternoon.
Rob
its a gloop, very slow drying, and impossible to clean off whatever you get it on. And you will. Can be applied by brush or scraper. And dont take the whole gallon up there, put some in a marge tub etc, that way the disaster is smaller :)
NT
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If the gloop goes stiff, it can be thinned with a lttle paraffin. Ultimately it can just be wiped on solid if necessary, just press down hard to stick.
Go for a modern felt, trad felts stiffen right up in cold weather.
NT
Not bothered with glue on our 8x6 shed roof, just used clout nails. The winds here get strong enough to blow the shed away, which has happened twice. Once the roof took off in it's entirety and landed 25 yards down wind, second time the entire shed was rolled over, it was empty though.
Nails are about every 1 1/2" on exposed edges and every 6" or so on non-exposed ones. There are also a couple of wood strips running up/down the pitch to reduce the free area of felt that can move in the wind.
A downside with sticking the flet down is that should it become damaged again it's not going to be particulary easy to clean up the bits that are stuck down. Nails can be pulled and reused...
Dave coughed up some electrons that declared:
Coming late to this, but I'll add my vote for gloop. Gloop and nails. Loads of gloop.
Don't just gloop round the edges, but paint it all over, stick felt down, nail edge with clout nails for good measure.
Did exactly this for the landlord a couple of years ago and the shed's kept it's felt.
Why that way? Well, if you don't stick it down all over, if a rip develops, the wind gets under it and bye bye felt.
Beware though, the gloop can find it's way past the planks and drip inside the shed.
Cheers
Tim
Very sound advice. You sometimes forget the little bits of advice that really matter in doing this type of project.
A Welted Edge. That's it. I was going to call it a Welp. :-) Isn't it luck a red face only lasts for a second. lol
That looks like a very good alternative.
Thanks for that, I'll take a look at it in the next few days.
Dave
If you can get access to a *large* blowtorch (we are talking something with 30mm+ wide nozzle here) then I would be tempted to get a roll of torch on felt instead. Especially given the weather. Basically you cut the felt as usual, but instead of titting about orible black gloop, you just play the torch over it to melt the back, and unroll it onto the roof, heating as you go. You will be able to do a decent sized shed roof in about an hour that way, and keep warm into the process.
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