If you've been with my channel for a very long time, you may recall that when I installed my electrical service panel and power meter, I was unimpressed with the "weather resistant" enclosures for said equipment, so I built a tiny little roof over them to keep the rain off. At the time I just made a simple frame, stapled some spare roofing underlayment over it, and set it on top of the mounting posts. It was roughly equivalent to throwing a tarp over the whole thing.
• Building a Tiny Roof
(Fun fact, this roof contains the first two pieces of wood I ever milled with a chainsaw: a little piece of Uncle Mike History.)
Anyway, I always kind of planned to put some sort of actual roofing material down on this thing, but as so often happens, temporary is only really temporary if it doesn't work. That underlayment, which is rated for I think 90 days of weather exposure, shed water faithfully for three years while I attended to more pressing (read: interesting) projects.
After my recent re-roof, though, I had a pile of damaged 26-gauge standing seam steel roof panels begging for a second life, and they were perfect for finally upgrading my tiny roof.
This was a great project. Not only was I able to use almost entirely reclaimed (read: free) materials, but I also deployed several custom, home-made tools to get the job done.
First, to remove and ultimately reinstall the roof, I used my excavator forks and shop-built wrist pins:
• Excavator Forks
• Replacing a Broken Exc...
Then I made extensive use of my table-saw mounted sheet metal nibbler to cut my damaged panels down into useable pieces:
• Table Saw Mounted Shee...
My home-made roller bender made short work of most of my long, straight folding:
• Edge Roller Bender on ...
And then my little custom pop-rivet finger clamp proved essential for getting my ridge cap fastened securely:
• Pop Rivet Clamp
So when all was said and done I'd replaced my mossy, tired, old roofing underlayment (which, to be fair, doesn't appear to have let a drop of water through in all the time it's been up there) with a really nice, overbuilt standing steam steel roof. That should keep the weather off of my electrical service equipment for decades to come.
17 авг 2023
