A friend of mine who lives in a small town outside of Prague city limits... recently wrote me the following related to my post some weeks ago about the difference between Czech roofs... and American roofs. Here are her comments:
Hi Scott,
A couple weeks ago I saw on your blog the article about Czech and American roofs and you mention there that you don't know how the Czech roof tiles are fixed, you supposed that there were some nails used - not at all! The typical Czech roof is composed of a roof frame from strong wooden rafters then insulation is wrapped and then wooden laths. The distance of laths must respect the dimensions of tiles because tiles are not fixed by anything, they keep by their own weight. They have on the back side a protrusion by which they are affixed to the lath.
You usually start with the lowest row of tiles and the upper tiles are partly laid over the lower ones. You continue this way up to the top where in one row special "ridge" tiles are used. Only this one top row is fixed, originally by mortar, now special ridge roof adhesive exists.
The advantage of these roofs is that in case some tiles are damaged/broken you can easily change them. The lifetime of standard fired pottery tiles is very long (about 100 years), so you can see here that if somebody demolishes the old house, the tiles are kept for another construction.
Thank you Eva.... this was great. I appreciated you sending me more information and correct information about how Czech roofs are built. Dekuju moc, a uvidim te brzo.
Cau a pa pa.
PS: This is a photo that Eva sent to show the Lathing on the roof that is getting tiled. zase, dik.
No comments:
Post a Comment