New Felt Garage Roof

[roberta1000]

My garage will need a reroofing when the weather's a bit better. I've coated the leaks with Acrypol and it will do for now. It's a shallow-pitch roof about 16'x25' and I'm going to use felt.

The current covering is a bit of a mess - looks like cold bitumen, 1 layer of green felt and nailed every 6"-8" at the seams. The nails come about an inch through the boarding. How do I get the stuff off?

Any way that I could reroof over the top of the old stuff? There are quite a few ripples and bumps in it now.

 

[flatman]

Hammer the edges, pull back, and rip off

Spade uder the felt, work up, and move along, lift up, and pull up

If its well down, bang all over with a hammer

If boarding is chipboard, the chipboard will come up aswell as the felt, so will need replaceing


You can if dry, cut ripples, and bumps and if all flat, prime or just go stright over with hot bitumen, and re roof, but i would strip, as the edges need to come off anyway

 

[roberta1000]

What does hammering the edges do?

The roof is something like 6" x 3/4" (maybe even 1") boards. 40 years old and built to last so no chipboard. Biggest concern is the nails which look as though they will be hard to get out especially where they've gone into the rafters and they're all covered with bitumen. Never done this before so I'm a bit concerned about biting off more than I can chew and getting stuck with a several day job and rain turning up. (Scotland y'know!).

But I can't really afford to get a man in

 

[flatman]

I thought you was just taking the felt off, there should be no nails throught the felt, on the boards yes, but, if i was taking the boards off i would prize the nails with the boards, or if hard, crow bar, and hammer to get them out

If you have green drips around the edge you hammer to lossen the bitumen, and pull of


yrs ago a lot of roofs were done in chipboard, or tounge and groove

 

[roberta1000]

Yes, I've read the posts on how to put felt on. How this one is done though is 1 layer of green felt. bitumed to the roof and nailed along all of the overlaps.

 

[Rob G]

Flatman is right - you just use a spade to lift the felt and the nails with it. But you've got your work cut out with a roof that size if you are on your own. That's a lot of roof to strip and re-lay properly. You had better pray for several days of good weather - rare to predict as I know in Scotland !

Rob

 

[roberta1000]

Rats!

 

[flatman]

Half a day to remove old felt, for me i could do in a hr, if lucky it comes up in big peices.

give all the felt a hammering, it helps lift it, if its hard to remove

 

[vinty]

My garage will need a reroofing when the weather's a bit better. I've coated the leaks with Acrypol and it will do for now. It's a shallow-pitch roof about 16'x25' and I'm going to use felt.

The current covering is a bit of a mess - looks like cold bitumen, 1 layer of green felt and nailed every 6"-8" at the seams. The nails come about an inch through the boarding. How do I get the stuff off?

Any way that I could reroof over the top of the old stuff? There are quite a few ripples and bumps in it now.

Robert if you strip off the old roof and try to use hot bitty over the sarking boards it will **** through the gaps you would need to nail on another layer of sarking felt to prevent this, a better solution is to use torch on felt which already has the bitty on it and you just have to heat the felt , the old felt can be used as an underlay. If the wooden deck under neath the felt is sound you can use 4mm torch on felt overlay over the existing roof, check the felt for blisters and wrinkles cut them open with a stanley knife, roll out your torch on felt on the roof align it and then start torching it on using a felters gas torch the felt has bitty on it already so once you heat it the bitty melts and sticks the felt to the roof this means you don't need a bitty boiler, the old felt under neath melts down and acts an underlay , the end result may be a bit bumpy but it can last as long as a new roof.