De-tiling the Roof

Destejado.  Here are some pictures of the tiled roof before any work was started.  These baked unsealed clay tiles are in the basic traditional curved or arabic style.  Originally, in colonial times, these tejas were laid concave face up nested on closely spaced open vigas (rafters) to form rain-draining channels, with another layer convex curve up capping the rafters and lower tiles.  On this roof, the same colonial look was achieved, but the alternating tiles were bedded in mortar on a 10cm thick sloping rooftop reinforced concrete losa (slab).

It was clear that these tiles, on the house only since it was built 15 years ago, were not the best choice for a low maintenance roof. A person must be extremely careful setting one's weight down when walking on the surface, to avoid cracking the tiles.  The only people up there would have been installers of the TV cables, and perhaps workers periodically cleaning the tiles.  Easily 25% to 33%  of the tiles on the roof were damaged in some way--broken, loose or missing.  It was an easy decision to make our first renovation job stripping and removing everything off the techo (roof) down to the bare slab.

The temporary chute at the front corner of the house allowed drop-delivery of bucket-fulls of escombro (debris) off the roof safely, deposited streetside in a big bin.  We also bought a raspador, a heavy chisel with 4' handle.  That with palas (shovels), martillos (hammers), cinceles de corte frío (cold chisels), barretas/grifas (pry bars) of various kinds, plus some well used/abused empty cubetas (5gal buckets) given to us by Frank, were all the tools needed for this job.  The 10' extension ladder (escalera de extensión) was separated into its two pieces, and one provided access to the lower roof over the comedor (dining room), with another set up on that small roof to access the main roof above.

The first job was to strip the old roofing from the dining room roof, since any trip to the top of house would tread across here.  This meant that the upper section of the ladder could then sit on something more secure than moss-covered, fragile, rounded-top tiles.  The escrombro from that small job was lowered by bucket down the ladder and deposited outside the yard along the edge of the avenida.  Then the de-tiling job moved to the upper roof, where the plywood chute sped up the process of disposing of the debris.  The tiles that came off easily without breaking, and could be cleaned by chipping with a hammer, were a material that could have a future life somewhere.

The tejas that could be saved were stacked on the roof, and eventually carried down the ladders on young shoulders, or tossed down individually to a careful catcher, to end up on the growing stack below along the back wall of the yard.  Since we had determined that newly manufactured tejas árabes (a few inches shorter & narrower than the old colonial style that were on the house) were for sale locally at MX$8 (eight pesos or approx US$0.60) each,

I put up a sign on the front gate offering to sell our excess.  After saving some for future repairs of the remaining lower roofs, we had maybe 900 tiles to dispose of.  There was sporadic interest by passers-by, but invariably when the homeowner-prospective purchaser would go home to consult his albañil (mason), nothing ever came of it.  Even at a reduced price of  MX$3, nobody bit. Towards the end of the renovation job we gave the tiles to our work crew, and they hauled them away up to their village outside of Coscomatepec for personal use.

The piles of escombro in the box and at the side of the road continued to grow, almost bursting the triplay (plywood) bin.  In addition to stripping the two larger roofs, the marquesinas (awning roofs) over the dining room door, the laundry ventana (window), and another in the sala (living room) had to come off for the planned new full bathroom on the ground floor.  This of course add to the volume of debris to be disposed of, and more used tiles to the huge stack against the wall..

Eventually we located a dump truck owner who provided two guys to pitch the debris up into their vehicle and haul it all way, all 6.5 cubic meters of it.  I  also spent one afternoon on the front porch roof, sweeping concrete grit and mortar chips down into the rain gutter, and then cleaning out the huge gutter. Despite all the care, lots of debris from the upper roof job ended up on this lower roof, but only one lower roof tile was cracked in the process.


Next: Re-roof