I make me tired, too. It was a hard couple of weeks but well worth it in the end. Our fundraising events went great. We are having a rest and recovery week.
You could add sand under the plywood to stop it flexing, easy to remove later too when you relay the tiles. At last you found the leaks, but still a o pain someone drilled into the flat roof. The garden needs the rain so its not all bad. Great update 2x👍
We talked about sand but it would take an awful lot to fill up the space. We could put down some wire mesh and pour concrete. It wouldn't add any more weight than there was before. It all depends on how long it will be before we can afford to get a new porch floor. The yard really needed the rain. Everything looked so good for the garden tour.
They are so hard to track down. I can't wait to get the rest of the roof replaced, and the gutters on, and the chimneys pointed, and flashed properly and the windows reworked and on and on and on.
Ammonia will likely work. Best to do as you are doing: saturate micro fiber towel with ammonia - the stronger the better. Cover with plastic for 24 hours and then see what happens - it should loosen it up. in my commercial restaurant, we would put our hood baffles in plastic bags with straight ammonia and leave overnight - we did that for anything that had carbon build up too - it always loosened enough to clean further if not final - used strong commercial degreaser too. You will likely have to do this several times - but I bet it does come off eventually. Steam will help too. Good luck. Looking good! Roof leaks are always a pain! My experiences with roofers is that the majority don't know what they are doing and don't seem to understand the molecule H20 is small and breaching a roof with a screw or nail anywhere, will cause a leak! Silicone caulk by the gallon isn't a fix either! lol.
I have never had any luck with roofers with the exception of the company that did the TPO on the small porch roof. I'll try a stronger ammonia solution. I think having hot water would help but since we don't have running water in the house that's not an option. There was something meditative about the hand scraping but it doesn't help much with the grout lines. It's not an urgent issue but it is one of those low to no cost satisfying things to do when you don't feel like doing anything else.
Modern day pressure treated plywood is not as good as the same plywood in years gone by. I've got some outdoor furniture and brick-a-bracks made from the olden pressure treated lumber and it's still in good shape. More recent projects with the pressure treated lumber hasn't been so lucky. I swear it's just green water they spray on that plywood and lumber! Something for Action13 to look into! 🤣
Modern day pressure treated lumber is a joke. My husband and I put in a new deck and five years later there is significant rot. The old stuff could be in the ground for twenty plus years without an issue. I wouldn't waste the money on it but I've heard that the termites like it a little less than untreated wood.
