Jeff Adams and I spent a Saturday together doing a shingle roof to feed our families. Watch and learn my friends.
Real roofers are Union and Non-union and we can get along. Jeff and I are more than job site buddies and we are starting a roofing school together. Watch soon for our full online and onsite roofing school. We love roofing.
Yeah most of you guys…. that read these blog posts are really not the audience I am trying to reach. I prefer to write for the guys I usually share shade with behind a wall or a compressor up on job during lunch. I would like to talk about some safety issues for older roofers and all in general.
old roofers are not a liability if precautions are taken
We are in high heat weather and high humidity weather now. So just like you take care of your dogs at home you need to pay attention to the older roofers still banging away. I am going to give you a few tips on what you can do to make these guys more comfortable on the job. You want to get some productivity out of them , and basically save your insurance company a shitload of compensation payments to prevent a heart attack or death. Hey these guys are up on the roof because they have to be so have some f…ing respect. Here is my list of suggestions for you
Mark’s top suggestions for saving your men and your ass from the heat.
That’s all for today. Please add some things and I will add them to the list.
As a Mexican-Arab American I have a few viewpoints and sometimes they are cross eyed. This gives you a rare view from inside the tamale. I always have one foot in and one foot out. Today I am writing from the perspective as a Mexican that has stood on the streets of New Jersey for a days pay of about $75 when I barely had $3.45 for my chicken and rice the night before. I actually have done this a few times during periods of my attempts to get out of the roofing business.
I write to you today with concern. Immigration reform is lining up its pawns, 11,000,000 million of them.
Wise chessmen know that a pawn is useful and disposable. Just part of the game.
For those of you who play chess you know that the pawn is useful to a certain extent. They really will move forward and bring your strategy to light. Chess is a powerful game of war.
Politics is also a game of power and not much different than chess. Today’s political chess game is lined with the newest pawn, the Hispanic worker a month ago considered illegal today considered undocumented. The government and the associated press changed the term not long ago. They made it officially a term for war.
The roofing industry is dominated by what most people call Mexican roofers. They work hard, they work efficiently and roofing seems to come easy to them. They are mostly undocumented and they are the pawns making the first strike against the American small businessmen and your business. We all can hope for the good of our workers and we generally admire the strong work ethic and the family values that the Hispanic workers have imported for us. I know that the relationship between Hispanic roofers and their employers is very sold and respectful.
The risk today is what is happening in Washington DC. Today I had a chance to spend time and to argue with an immigration attorney. It started as a friendly conversation but then turned ugly when I heard him tell me that he defends his cases by arguing to the courts how unfair the American employers have been. He went on to say that American business owners in construction have mostly unsafe work conditions and just want cheap labor. This was an outrageous statement and protocol for his trade and was clearly representative of the democratic party that is clearly making a power play for 11,000,000 votes fro the new Americans that will gain from immigration reform.
You may think that this issue does not effect you but it does. It is not enough that you work 18 hours per day and that you work cheap. Its not enough that you just went through 5 years of economic turmoil with no end in site. Its not enough that you have zero retirement and no health insurance. Now all your hard work has brought you to the greatest liability that you will ever experience.
The past Hispanic workers will be asked to tell the government whom they have worked for , how much they have earned, and the government will make you pay.
It is coming. You better be ready. It does not matter that your truck is nearly broken. The time has come for the pawns to be used against you. It is a big time political move that will position this country as the new socialist government with the new power that is gained by the 11,000,000 Hispanic voters. My culture , the Hispanic culture is paternalistic. The culture is always ready for El Jefe to take care of things. That is why day workers never have tools and expect you to buy lunch. Sure they will work hard but it is part of my culture to expect The Boss “El Jefe” to be a man, step up and do the right thing. O.K. so you get that? Good.
Now the general media pitch is that you have been short changing America and the employee but let’s look at the facts. When a Illegal or undocumented worker got his $80 for the day he was living on $10 and sending home $70. So what? So it means a whole lot. We all know the Peso and whatever other currency the worker was dealing with was pegged much lower in his country and worth so much more. This actually meant that the American worker including you was at a distinct disadvantage equating earnings.
Now what my hunch is since the government that is spending out of control it will find any way it can to gain needed revenue to keep their friends in their jobs. You are the scapegoat. You are the next media pony that the world will ride. Forget the buildings and roofs you built with your heart, it means nothing. The government has been for years quietly using illegals covertly to put the strongest non-union companies out of business. Many OSHA cases including a major one I was involved were started by heavy press releases condemning the plaintiff and prejudged in the media by many solicitors with promised star witnesses at hand.
I know for a fact that Senator Robert Menendez backed a non-profit that’s sole purpose was to infiltrate illegal workers groups congregating on street corners and to utilize them to report on contractors that OSHA could likely generate penalties. The illegal workers were given special privileges and strongly coaxed.
What bothers me most about this situation is the fact that all these illegal undocumented workers were lured and allowed to come to America for the purpose of construction labor as the demand from the housing boom took off after Sept 11, 2001. There is no way 11,000,000 people can cross the border without the orders from the top to look the other way. Now it is checkmate for those that employed the people that the wealth of this nation needed for their financial gains.
It is time to wake up because you may be thrown from the roof.
How responsible are we for the future of our own country? If you were to ask me we are all responsible to do what we can. If you are an American and reading this blog you know the dire situation that exists regarding employment and opportunity for Americans with great work ethic but average education. Too many media outlets pitch us on the need for better trained and better educated workers. They claim that America cannot fill complex jobs that require advanced skills. The media also claims that there will not be more manual labor jobs in the coming years for America.
I strongly disagree based on the surge in interest in sustainable construction and the payback I see that can yield from Green roofing. Green roofing is not about anything more than putting vegetation on a roof surface. The paybacks are huge measured by cost savings in cooling and in heating.
It works like this. You create a great waterproof membrane . Can you do that? Can you do it on flat and sloped surfaces? Yes, of course you can. Now the next thing you have to do is think about how you would go about protecting that membrane by using vegetation. And how can you protect the membrane from the vegetation. That is pretty much it… but why does green roofing make sense?
Much of the roof industry relies on bad weather and or development to forecast the growth of the roofing industry year by year. The industry goes through cycles and is very dependent on the quality of materials and on workmanship. We may be in for a change where workmanship becomes most important. The normal cycles may not be seen for a long time if green roofing takes off like I believe it will. Green roofing is green business .
So for one Green Roofing enables you to build longer lasting roofs which potentially means you will be installing roofs that can last 100 years or more. You might think this will be bad for the industry but you are completely wrong. While we are primarily men and women that keep water out of buildings we could also become some of the greatest Job Creators this country has ever seen if we are smart enough to embrace this basic concept of green roofing.
Only a roofer would cross the country to speak to communities about Job Creation on his own dime.
A new industry will emerge from simply managing the soil and the growth on these roofs with costs absorbed from the energy savings . It is also my hunch that greener suburban and urban areas will begin to reverse the global warming … I mean if it exists. I believe it does. This is a pretty big deal and a huge opportunity for the average roofer. This will grow our industry and give all roofers the added respect they deserve as we bring a small solution to the energy problem all while making a few bucks too.
I will be traveling the country doing my side job for The Foundation for Job Creation and I hope you will help me as we create jobs in this new industry that comes from our very old and important industry, the roofing business.
Here is what I will be doing as I cross the country over the next few years.
http://www.meetup.com/Designing-and-building-Green-Roofs/
Please join this group and be part of the start of something big. I will work with each and every one of you to try to stimulate interest in your companies and in seeing more good Americans get back to work . Not because the government is behind us but because it just makes sense.
The rewards will be high for you and your country. Together we can develop a solution and the details that make us all winners.
So I just had a programmer quit on me because I told him about a problem and used an analogy of “you have a roof leak ” regarding a malfunction of the software that they he was writing with a team of programmers. Basically I was testing the software that is supposed to make the roofing industry easier to manage and well It did not work.
When I am given money to fix a roof it is personal. I take pride in my work and when something goes awry I am on it. If I have a leak at anytime at any hour I am there to fix it or I move my resources to that event in a rapid response.
never put only one roof cutter on a job.
Now I know that the audience response here from some of you is that if you do the job right the first time therefor you do not have any leaks. I can only say to that …..who cares ….. you are the perfect roofer… not me I am human.
Now getting back to these programmers and my history with software. In 1993 I had the idea of starting an internet auction . Yes long before Ebay. I took the time and attended the Missouri School of Auctioneering because I wanted to know all about the process of auctions before I set out to create the software. I used to buy many pieces of equipment at auction and I was upset when I could not get to an auction. I wanted to create a tech that would get people there. As you know it is best to spend as little as possible on capital equipment when trying to grow. a major construction business Many competing roofers wondered why I would have as many as 10 cutters on any given job. They also wondered how I could grow so rapidly. Some thought I was a Mexican drug dealer or doing something wrong. Anyway what the secret was, is that I just did not spend any money I earned , I reinvested it.
So I thought auctions on the internet was a good idea. I even met Pierre Omidyar at Comnet in Washington DC before he started EBAY and yes opened my stupid roofers mouth. The rest is history although Pierre returned tha favor.. sort of, by using my software at a live auction broadcast in 1997 for the Kruse Car Auctions that EBAY turned into EBAY motors.
In the early days when I was out trying to find programmers to build Auctionquest.com all of them said that an auction on the internet was just a stupid idea! Oh well they were wrong and I lost that battle. Now I have learned that if a roofer tells me a better way to fix a leak I listen to him or her because well they might be as smart as Pierre Omidiyar.I have learned to listen and also to shut up.
I never had the intentions of building an internet auction for the purpose of selling Pez dispensers and by the way Pierre admitted that he really did not do it for that matter either. My intention was to create a marketplace that was not dependent on the personality , race, or gender of a buyer. It was to be built to provide a more fair playing field greater efficiency. In my opinion Ebay has not done that but hey the idea was there. The how is not.
Now I am building a software again and damn it I can not stand for a challenge to my vision or another “roof leak”. I expect responsiveness from programmers the same as I do from roofers .
No darn roof leaks.
Roofers tend to carry a heavy load far past the trucks and up the ladder. It seems these guys always have something on their mind. I am no different even though I must seem spectacular and perfect to you. I have my issues, no no I am not lying . I do have issues. I face challenges like everyone does. Sometimes I think that roofing is my purgatory, sort of a community service for something I did that I cannot remember. I remember a guy named Dale came into my office one day with another guy they nicknamed Batman. They called him Batman because he had an old Cadillac with those huge fins on the back and he had hand painted a formerly yellow car Black.
Batman painted a car like this black. We all new him as Batman.
Back to the story. Dale came in and basically said that the two if them were great roofers. Torch down was their specialty. I was jammed with work so I figured what the heck hiring people was just such a crap shoot I might as well give them a chance. They both came to work and I assigned them a truck and ordered rolls and propane and had the material delivered to the roof. They started promptly and all seemed well. I was heading back to my office after a few estimate calls and I wanted to finish up some proposals. Long story short after I went back to check on Batman and Dale they were no where to be found. I later found out that Dale said he was stung by a bee and Batman and him, well they needed to get drunk to manage the pain.
I was so angry at the moment. I could not understand why they would not just stay and work and deal with life.
In life there will be pain deal with it!
When I look backwards at how Dale and Batman dealt with life sometimes I wish I followed a bit of their medicine especially with what I have dealt with beyond my Big Roofing Career .
I have had two times recently when I wish i could pump up the volume, get stoned and just forget about it all.
I just do not have that kind of courage.
Last Saturday my 40 year old brother passed away. He was at paintball , left the field , drove a mile down a Dundee, Illinois Highway veered off the road and straight through a cemetery into a vacant Taylor Rental building. He was my kid brother and damn I used to change his diapers. I wiped his ass a substantial number of times. I loved this kid. He tried through the years to get close with me but I was always so busy doing the roofs. One summer when he was 15 years old he wanted to be with me , be a part of me and all that I was doing. He shoveled slag all day, he coated a smooth built up roof with aluminum coating alone. He just gave his all , just so he could be like me.
I never took enough time to be with him.
My brother Tom never became a roofer but he married a roofers daughter from Crystal Lake, Illinois. Tom became a slick insurance salesperson most recently selling employee benefits at Assurant Employee Benefits , One Tower Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois 60181. He is dead now but I understand he was under some pressure at work. Apparently his superior Rick Morris did not like him so much because he showed up at my brothers wake with the contents of his desk in a box. He waited on the line at the wake and handed the box to my other kid brother. I guess Assurant really knows employee benefits and how to be Dead Man rude.
OK so my brother is dead and what does this have to do with roofing or Dale and Batman? To me it has to do with all of it. Man I am feeling pain, guilt, regret, and anger. I guess I am healthy since those emotions are healthy during grieving. I am so ready for Dales medicine, isn’t there something that I could smoke or drink or digest or whatever to make me feel better? To make this go away? This past week has been rough but I managed to work on the roof , I did some estimates , and I did not cry or get high once. The main reason is I have never got high. I just never was a drinker nor did I use drugs. I pity myself for this . My life full of emotions and anger never being able to calm and self medicate.
The only drug I know is roofing and work, but sometimes it is not enough.
This past week so many dogs have come up to me crying and just rubbing against me in a consoling way. The dogs have been great to me and have helped so much. I guess I have been lucky just to have passed their walking course. I guess they have made me think.
A few years back I heard they found Dale floating in the Passaic River, in Garfield New Jersey. Yes he was dead and presumably a bit too high to be in the frigid waters with those flippers and his diving mask. It was an awful way to go for a roofer. I guess his courage got the best of him for one last time. One more roofer down.
I am still standing and hoping for one more roof to do. One more pallet of insulation and skid of SBS to carry up the ladder, Just give me something to carry , something to lay down just one more day. Let me think I am doing good and doing my job. Let me not have this courage that so many have. By now you probably realize that I am a strange bird up on these roofs but not so different than other roofers that have come before me or that shall come after me when I get discharged from this purgatory of the roof.
My purgatory of the Roof. Amen.
When it comes to roof leaks even the old guys can sometimes get it wrong. I am posting here because I do truly care about my workmanship. It keeps me up at night and it is never good enough for me. I insist on working with people that have knowledge and patience. Sometimes like in this case I really needed a patient customer. I can only say thank you to this elderly woman in this home. It took me months to figure this one out.
We fix leaks in Asbury Park, NJ call mark 732-995-3914
I wish I just wrote he a check when I came to this job but sometimes that is just the way it goes.
One lesson I learned on this is just tear off the roof and start over when there is a super tricky leak.
We thought we had it here. But we did not.
Finally after full tear off we got it right finding that the leaks were indeed coming right through the brick and finding its way to the bottom of the plywood.
Thank you
Nothing can upset me more than going to a restaurant that sells highly digestive food and does not have a bathroom. I often startle people when I ask the local restaurant and walk out after I find out that they have no bathroom.
I have been known to stay up on the roof and keep banging away regardless of my intestinal pains knowing that I would be stopping in at the supply house so I could let loose of some fury in a comfortable location. My favorite store as a matter of fact is Home Depot. I like Home depot not for their prices on roof shingles. I like Home Depot for their clean bathrooms and the fact that I do not have to deal with some salesman behind a high counter that does not really know the products or the roofing business. I will keep this quite simple. I am currently listening to a marketing guru Anthony Sarno former Lucent executive. He has been kind to me in leading me through the maze of internet marketing. We discuss marketing and sales and we were chatting about what I was recently pissed off about. No pun intended.
I explained how I just cannot believe how little roofing suppliers know or understand what makes a roofer buy their product. I just recently visited Allied Building Products on Rt 34 Wall Township, NJ. and found the above sign in the door. I can only respond .
Are you kidding me?
Please do me a favor and take a dump on Allied Building Products. They do not realize there are NO bathrooms on the roof and the last thing a roofer wants is a job site porta potty because the Allied office staff does not want roofers using their bathrooms. You should know that this facility is a few years old and was rebuilt after a major fire. You would think that Allied would understand a roofers needs?
I will gladly pay extra at Home Depot
Way back during the Aids crisis I believe in 1986 I donated $2500 on behalf of the Real Roofers at Continental Roof Systems Inc. The organization I donated to was the Gay Mens’ Health Crisis Organization in Greenwich Village NY– NYC. I was so sad for the ravage of the crisis with good men facing death for simply having sex. I recall this was a time when the world was changing. The Mafia was strong , prostitution was flagrant on the streets and Bernard Geotz popped some bullets into some gang members and became a national hero. Hmmm………gun control? Anyway I respect gay men and women. My daughters say I am homophobic and I disagree, You see I think my daughters have been taught by the media and in their classrooms that straight men are phobic of Gays by nature. God forbid any straight man talks about the rights of Gay men or Lesbians . Well if a straight man talks about that he must be mocking? I guess I can understand the defensive strategy of the media . Everyone knows control is at the hands of the liberal and yes mostly Gay media. The Gay media is approaching any and every gay comment as if it was a comment about the Holocaust. We are at a point of time in America that we have no real news and the media feels they can make or break anyone. This is not good.
Back in the day when everyone was having free sex on the streets , in the clubs and behind their partners back , men were expected to be straight and the open sexuality of the disco media maybe forced some men into the closet. Maybe the times of the 70′s and 80′s caused some hypocritical media people to hyper emphasize the equal freedom of gay sexual relations? I could imagine that if some of my friends were gay or if some of the roofers I worked with were gay? They were not going to say anything if they were. There was definitely a time when men not comfortable with their own sexuality mocked the gay movement.
I guess a pro gay media was necessary as a defense to “Bring out the atrocious” bondage of keeping Gay in the Closet or just on the West Side hwy.
This blog is not about Gay men or Gay roofers although if it were there would not be anything wrong with it. I mean I was just thinking about being a straight man right now. I kind of feel my manhood is being clipped from me. Or shall I say that I feel like my style of masculinity is being ripped from me.
Going back to my donation to GMHC on the fundraiser with WNEW radio 102.7 I remember a couple of the major roofers , roofing company owners, coming up to me and asking. Can I do anything for you….maybe a blow job.?. in a snide way giggling and mocking my generosity!
The 80′s were so cruel to Gay men uggh. Anyway, after a short time with my marriage falling apart and my frequent visits to the female Go Go Bar the few in the industry that miffed at the idea I was Gay went away. Allelujiah the world knows I was not gay.
Hey, like I said this is not about being gay but it is about the media controlled by the Gay movement. Just watch TV and see what I mean. Are you going to tell me that these journalists have the right to literally gang up on the Rutgers Basketball coach. What is next are they going to gang up on the military training that goes on to toughen soldiers up. The nature of war is unfair. The nature of sports is to be as rough and as tough and by the way names and balls chucked at you will not hurt you.
With coaching , mental toughness often is not easy to instill. When I saw the video of the Rutgers coach I could only say ” so what” . So the coach called it the way he saw it. Really who cares? Have you ever stood in line behind a gay man that rips the straight man ahead of him. Have you ever recently meet any gay men that are …. damn like gangsters they are so mean. Gay men are vicious dudes. They do not play, They will rip your heart out in a second.In business and the media they play their cards to move their agenda. they have no idea how they are reversing the balance .
It is clear to me that the media ousted the Rutgers coach because they could.
I personally think there are no real men left out there that have enough guts to at least say “hey leave the coach alone”, he has the right to be straight and not perfect too.
I say leave my manhood alone and leave my style of masculine leadership to me. Because brother it is none of your business . Straight men have rights too. We are all men gay or straight so let’s rumble, because that is what men do.
And the roofer catches the programmer. What most people do not appreciate is the stress that roofers go through. I was working at my office in Jersey City, NJ on a news program in between running my small roof repair business on this Holy Thursday 2013 
A team of three programmers were trying to deploy a TomCat server so that Java Servlets would be capable of running . Myself and the other roofers in the company were busy hauling gutter up the side of an office building and fighting with snobby finance people on the Steets of Hoboken , NJ.
Top roof attaches to wall below. Gutter detail.
It was cold and breezy. The Hoboken sidewalks were busy and crowded with Financial Wall St people. We were a couple of short Mexican looking guys trying to make people avoid the area below the hoist point. Most of the “Suits” wanted to push us over and ignore the potential for a deep gash in the head if this gutter happened to slide loose of the tie off of rope. Meanwhile we had to figure out how to get this long length of gutter up 6 stories, over a parapet wall without bending it. Hmm a bit tricky. We had just installed a small TPO white roof and we field designed a detail so that The screws of the gutter would not penetrate the new white wall of TPO.
We also wanted to make sure that if over the next 20 years there was a breach at the gutter that at least water would not get in the area of the screw. Here is what we had to get the job done. 2×6, nails, gutter, hangers two end caps drop tube and leader. TPO membrane. Anyway we made it look easy and it will not leak.
finished detail at gutter , no leaks baby
Programmers Jumping off roof.
We finished off this roof detail pretty quickly and I was free to head back to the peace and calm of the office where we have ample views of New York City and the many roofs that we have installed over the past years. I was just pleased to wash my hands and settle into the office with blue prints and the programmers. I enjoyed knowing that these employees were safe and well educated. I was shocked to hear the foul mouths and cursing coming from the programmers as I walked in. This Fu—ing software, this sh–t server etc. I don’t know , I don’t know , heads in their hands. There is something wrong they proclaimed. I wanted to tell them to shut the F — up but I quickly realized that these were not roofers. these were people I should respect because they build software and stuff and have degrees out the Home depot toilet. I stepped up and approached the issue like a roofer and like a builder. Rule 1 stay calm, rule 2 there is a solution to every problem. I admit I do not know that much about programming but I understand the process of building. I sat down solved the problem and here is what we have for you in the form of an flowchart to solve the TOMCAT install issue should you have this problem on your next shingle roof. In the tech I have built since 1993 I have learned that the process of the roof apply to building anything. here they are simplified.
1. There must be a leader
2. There should be a capable team with varied skills
3. Motivation and calm should be the daily bread
4. The psych of the team is the solution
5 If you can not lead you will bleed …..payroll
And here is the solution in one hours time…done and working. Designed by a roofer.
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