Shingles...Layers and layers of shingles...

We had a structure fire a couple of weeks ago. We went offensive and kept it to the void space above the living room and behind the wall of the upper bedroom. It got into the roof and was trying to travel. The roof was composed of 1x6 slats with three layers of wood shake shingles with one layer of tar shingles on the outer most layer. We have an old FMC with a high pressure pump that would peel up the top layer of shingles but that still left the wood shingles. Over an hour was spent just trying to peel up the wood shingles with shovels and pry bars. Here is my question. How would you get down through the layers of shingles efficiently to ensure that you have stopped it?

Gopher

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Permalink Reply by Nathan Whoric on February 26, 2009 at 1:17pm

power tools :) i know the one time i used out vent saw it was on a fire that had jumped from the house to the garage. the house was a complete lose and in attempting to save some of the peoples stuff we had to cut into the side of the garage/shed since it was soooooooooooo full of junk. in the process of cutting through the wall, i unintentionally cut through a file cabinet.... ooopps the saw had no problem doing it cause a few minutes later we made a second hole and guess waht?? found more file cabinets... i forget what type of chain that is on it but i know it runs around $600 some kind of carbide somethin or other. r guys have used it to cut through some thick roofs before without a problem.

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Permalink Reply by Gordon "Gopher" Runer on February 26, 2009 at 1:38pm

Dont forget the two inches of ice with six inches of snow on top of that! Just because Mr. Murphy likes to mess with us like that. lol

Gopher

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Permalink Reply by Gordon "Gopher" Runer on February 26, 2009 at 1:44pm

Sounds familiar. Its amazing sometimes how much stuff some people can cram into their houses and garages. The longer that I am in the fire service the more I find that if it is related to fire it increases the cost tremendously.

Gopher

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on February 26, 2009 at 8:31pm

Gopher? I apologise. Why? Because I can't resist gloating!

Roof construction like that? No, doesn't exist here. Not at all. Wooden shingles? No, none. Let alone with tar!

Roof ventilation? Not our method. Usually only during overhaul.

I have been known to blow concrete tiles off a roof with the high pressure reel though...

Oh, and for those who mention snow? Do you mean that white stuff? The stuff we also don't get? Sorry...

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Permalink Reply by Chad Furr on February 26, 2009 at 8:42pm

ok Tony I am enroute to see you. It is cold as hell and expecting snow tonight. LOL Would really like to take a vacation somewhere warm right about now.

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Permalink Reply by Gordon "Gopher" Runer on February 26, 2009 at 11:57pm

It has been my nickname since I first got into the fire service. Something about a play on my last name. This was during the overhaul. Most of the time we dont do roof ventilation but sometimes. So what kind of roof construction do you have there? We are supposed to get snow but so far this year all we have had is a dusting. It is starting to get really dry here because of it.

Gopher

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Permalink Reply by Tony P on February 27, 2009 at 6:21pm

Roof construction for houses is very simple. Mostly just the wooden (sometimes steel) framework overlaid with either tiles (concrete or ceramic) or steel sheeting (corrugated or panel). Insulation is commonly in the form of batts placed between the rafters. Except for the mountain regions which have very small populations, very few areas in Australia get any snow at all. Climate ranges from tropical to temperate.

Dry is no good, I hope you get either snow or rain! Dry makes for a bad fire season. We know about dry. I'm losing track, not sure whether this is year twelve of the drought or thirteen.

My use of 'Gopher?' was using your nickname as an interrogative, not questioning the name. Good nickname. A fairly common animal nickname here is 'Wombat' - when you learn that the wombat is an animal that eats roots and leaves it makes sense... That is if you know what 'root' means in Aussie slang. Same as 'bonk' in British slang.

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Permalink Reply by T.J. on March 1, 2009 at 12:13pm

We just had one last week 5 layers of shingles and we had to take the saw to them, using water to try to blow them off seems like a waste of water to me.