Halleluiah!

The builder and I had our follow-up meeting this afternoon to resolve my house’s roof problems and at last we’ve managed to come to an agreement. It isn’t what the builder was originally proposing or what I suggested following our last meeting.

The first positive step was when the builder finally admitted that the roof structure as it stands is mounted unacceptably too far forward on the walls of the house making the ‘balance’ of the roof all wrong when viewed from the south. Originally they suggested just adding extensions to the joists sticking out at the back for purely ‘cosmetic’ reasons and to overcome my objections. This I rejected out of hand and made a counter-proposal just to remove the tiles from the front elevation and push the structure back a few centimetres.

I knew that this might give rise to certain other problems. For example, the horizontal spacers between the joists that rest on the tops of the walls are attached to the joists and would therefore move with them. That wouldn’t matter at the rear of the house because the spacers would still be resting on the walls’ upper surfaces, but in the front the spacers would move off the walls and into the interior of the house, probably meaning that they’d have to be cut off and replaced somehow.

The builder has taken a different line and has now suggested lifting the tile support battens and waterproof plastic membrane off the rear of the roof and adding a separate new roof structure on top of and attached to the existing one. This would have the effect of raising the roof line a bit but as the additional joists will need to descend to the same level as the existing structure ie the bottom line of the roof, they will extend further, making the roof overhangs at the font and back of the house at the living room end the same.

This is almost the same as if they’d made the roof structure according to the width of the larger gable end right at the beginning, so I’ve gone along with this idea. It means that the house will end up with ‘débords’ (soffits) slightly wider than the original plan (28cm compared to 25cm) but that won’t matter. And I’ll also have to keep a close eye on the way the tops of the gable ends are finished off because the gaps that are now present in places between the tops of the blockwork at each and of the house and the underside of the roof will remain and will need to be filled and made solid with mortar.

This will be necessary in order to support the ‘Crépi’ rendering that I want to go right up to the underside of the roof. I certainly won’t allow it to be applied to the wood blocks that are currently placed on top of the blockwork to support the ends of the roof as it wouldn’t take long for it to break away as a result of differential expansion and contraction. That would give rise to all sorts of other problems in the future that I just won’t need, thank you. But now I’m just happy that work on the house can be resumed and we can start moving once again towards completion.