Small Building Construction, Part Ten

Dear Preppers and Survivalists,

In the last installment of this small building construction project, I promised I'd tell you about the problems we had with installing the metal roofing.

Needless to say, just like dimensional lumber, every piece of metal roofing was true, square, and exactly the same size. Well, the roof wasn't.

Let me explain.

Notice the Roof Decking
especially the gaps

I had ignored some problems when I was installing the roof decking. First, the OSB (oriented strand board) wasn't going on easily. I had to cut some pieces that weren't square. Second, (I found this out later) the trusses need to be evenly apart, and the end trusses, just like the walls, need to be plumb. Mine weren't. Lastly, the purlins overhang, I thought, exactly 12 inches; they didn't.

So,

When I put up my first sheet of metal roofing (The metal roofing is about 36 inches wide) and tried to square the metal to the roof, it overhung the roof decking at the top by about an inch and a half. Yes, only 1 1/2 inches.

Well, you can see that difference from the ground, so I had to take the sheet of metal off. mark the wood decking that needed to be cut off, remove the rake, cut the wood decking (and the purlins), reinstall the rake, and reinstall the metal roofing.

It was a pain in the *ss undoing all that work, but it went back together a whole lot easier. Another reason to use screws on small building projects ; - )

Needless to say, once the first sheet of metal roofing goes on; it's easy to install the other sheets of metal roofing. All you need to do is lay down the next sheet (per the manufacture's specifications), even it up, screw it down, then go to the next sheet. Easy.

Oh, did I tell you; the other side of the roof was uneven, too. So, I redid that side of the roof.

Then, I talked to the carpenters working on our barn about installing gutters because we want to add a rain barrel, later on. They said to make sure the metal roofing overhangs at least one inch. You guessed it. The metal roofing that I had installed was flush with the eaves.

So,

I take off all the sheets of metal roofing, replace all the roofing felt/tar paper because it had a bunch of holes in it, and reinstalled the metal roofing with a one inch overhang. Next, I added the ridge vent at the very top (and slipped off the roof)

Of course, it rained a few days later. You guessed it, again. The inside of the building was dry!!!

Now, you and your family could stop here, all you would need to do is add a coat of paint, but I want a building that looks good.

So, we ordered all the other pieces of metal that go with this roof.