| Author | Message | ||
     Anonymous |
We've recently purchased a 100+ yr. old Mansard Victorian home. Mansard portion of the roof has old slates with plenty of neanderthal tracks on them. Upper portion had been previously re-roofed with asphalt shingles way past their lifetime at this point. We're considering various options: a. remove old slates and sell them, remove asphalt and install new slate roof. b. remove old slates, flip them over to the less weathered side (will this create a more consistent look?) and integrate them into a new slate roof installation on mansard & upper roof portions c. repair old slates on mansard as needed and leave the rest of the slates rest as is, and roof the upper roof in grand manor shingles or similar product for cost savings. What do you think about removing all slate and starting from scratch w/ a new slate roof? Contractor we're talking w/ referred us to "Slate Bible" but in the book it talks so much about how restoration is much more preferable to replacement in the majority of cases. This makes us nervous. We want a long-term solution, but don't want to waste money. What do you think? | ||
| Walter Musson |
Depending on how bad the Mansard slates are and how much metalwork is required will probably dictate whether to repair or replace.Flipping them over is really not an option since slates have a front and back side,meaning you'd have to trim each side,a laborious process. If there aren't dormer hooded roofs projecting from the Mansard and the gutter work is o.k. then I think repairing the slate is your best course,using same color and pattern of course. typically the upper roof was changed over to asphalt sooner because of the lesser pitch and more chance of leakage.These slates were usually much larger on the upper roof to help keep water out,but with a 4/12 pitch or maybe slightly more these roofs could leak much more than the near vertical lower section when some slates were lost. Since the upper roof has less visibility from the ground in most cases,many roofs were changed over to asphalt as they became leak prone. If the budget is tight do the upper roof in Grand Manor's and retain and rejuvenate the Mansard which is the primary architectural feature on your building. If you have more resources then use slate up top as well.Look for the larger sized ones for that roof though.Steve Taran{listed on this site} has some nice large Buckingham coming off now I believe. |
