Rain day and solar update

Today has been a spectacularly rainy day. Woke up thinking not much would be going on. Phoned Dennis at 9 am and Jane said he was gone to work. Took his lunch. This was crazy, but this is Dennis. He thrives on what most would flee. Mind, Gilles has his own tight schedules, and rain is no big deal for Stephane sitting in a cab on a large shovel impervious to moisture and mud. Nevertheless, I know he hopped out of the cab every now and then to help Dennis with a measurement.

I proceeded to phone Stephane, the only one of the two with a phone. He sounded cheery and told me they were working on setting the second pier of the porch, moving the beast out of the way, and dumping gravel into the garage. He passed the phone to Dennis and he was his usual upbeat self, ironic about the weather. He repeated their agenda, saying they were preparing things for the crew’s return, and said they’d be done by lunch. After that, he was going to take some rebar to Robbie’s shop where those guys were going to spend some time in the pm bending stirrups. There I was in the city, useless and embarrassed, though very grateful that things were done on a day I expected to be a total write off.

Rainy days provide the time to update the website and do some research. I did some of the latter last week. I was looking into roofing. Other than steel, sheathing is required, along with an underlayment. In terms of the latter, there is light to heavy duty. The heaviest is placed along the edge of the roof. This area collects the most ice and pressure. When thawing happens, there’s more risk for moisture to penetrate. Bakor Blueskin Eaveguard is the go to brand. They also make an intermediate product for the rest of the roof, and it looks like it may solve a particular problem.

Well, this might provide the answer to all the holes created by the fasteners for the rack holding the solar panels. It could cover the entire area where the rack will be placed. Will do more research, but this product along with the fastener’s gasket and the special sealer-caulking appears to provide a reasonable amount of security.