I raced home thinking the worse and wondering how it could have failed. It was a relatively windy day but nothing to intense. When I got home I found that the tape seam had failed along the entire length of the ridge. All the mechanical connections were rock solid and even though the center of the roof was billowed up like a sail in a full gale, the plastic held tough and did not tear. I wish I had time to take some pictures but I was slightly panicked and went right to work.
Luckily I had overlapped the seams by a foot and then centered the seamed up roof properly directly centered on the ridge. This gave me a little material to work with in order to temporarily secure it. Starting at the West end I pulled the plastic in, wrapped it a couple turns in a small batten then screwed it to the inside of the ridge with a couple screws and cap washers. I followed this procedure every other joist bay for the north side roof section and then followed the same procedure in the empty joist bays for the southern roof section.
This took the strain off of the roof from blowing in the wind so the plastic would not tear on the end wall. However it left a gap in the roof the entire length of the ridge. It was good enough for the moment and the equipment I had since moved in to the boat shed along the perimeter was safe from the weather. I went back to work licking my wounds and contemplating my options.
When I got home later that night I went back out to see if I could figure it out. The good thing I learned was that my halogen work light provides ample illumination to fill the entire building. It looks cools to!
I came up with what I believe was a pretty simple fix. I planned to buy another section of 20 foot wide 6 mil plastic and basically put it over the ridge as a really wide ridge cap. My father and I went to work this past weekend when the winds were low. We draped the new roof plastic over the roof, leaving it much longer than needed and temporarily screwed it in place.
I bolted a 4 foot piece of 2x4 on to my ladder perpendicular to the rails so I could lean it up against the arches to cover the span in between them in order to reach the bottom of the new roof section. I then used wooden battens again and rolled them up a few turns in the plastic and secured them to the arches with some screws and cap washers. We secured the new roof section to the end walls the same way we did with the other roof sections previously.
All's well that ends well and it certainly cant hurt having another layer of protection. The lesson learned is that the sheathing tape which is designed to work with this material and has UV resistance and exterior grade adhesive is just not designed for the wind loads it was subjected to in this application. However we are all dry inside and now and the next job is building and installing the doors. I'll have the details on that posted in a few days.
In other news; I started researching how to document this boat build with a YouTube channel. There are very few blogs that document the building of wooden Diesel Ducks and I can't find any documented with a YouTube channel. Through the forums and through the comments and emails from the readers of this blog there seems to be genuine interest in seeing this build through a video series. For me personally, I know it's something I would like to watch so hopefully others will enjoy it as well.
I'm certainly no producer, cinematographer or camera man. While I have muttled my way through the editing of some home movies with IMovie I'm certainly no expert with that program either. Research continues but I think it's something I want to do.
As always if you have any tips or comments please feel free to post them up here. I'm shocked to see that this site has had nearly 3000 views. I'm honored that people have taken the time to check out my project.
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