Cat on a warm gravel roof



Despite her age and occasionally impressive creakyness Mosca can still get herself up on the roof.

This is nice as it is always very warm up there on the gravel, but a bit weird as she seems to use the roof as her litterbox lately.



In fact I was going to entitle this the big cat box in the sky, but though it incorrectly implied that mosca had ceased to exist.

Anyhow, the ceilings and roofs in traditional adobe homes are beams with slats on the inside, covered with tarpaper, then tar or sealant and then gravel/dirt for insulation.

They are flat roofs, really gently sloping, the walls of the house come above the roof level and then there are spouts (canales) that allow water to escape. However the whole roof system seems to be designed to trap standing water on the roof.

As any New mexican will say, flat roofs leak. And damned if they don't. This being a dry part of the US the roofs actually work pretty well, but the Los Alamos-Santa fe area gets almost 20 inches of precipitation a year which is really not that dry especially compared to the annual 10" or less you see in Albuquerque and south.


So the roofing is actually being redone. The pic above is the roof minus much of the gravel dirt layer.

It is now in the yard:


Huzzah!

There will be a nice layer of foam and insulation sprayed on top and then foam sealant so it is one big continuous roof, instead of sections that are poorly sealed in betwixt.

The insulation will be nice as the walls in the house are 18ish inches thick of adobe brick covered with plaster/stucco, but the roof is rather thin and uninsulated, so what heat loss occurs goes through the windows and roof.