Roof work

Finally found time to climb a ladder and look at a few jobs on the house roof.
First thing I noticed, the gutters need cleaning, so that was a quickish job. Cut my hand up pretty good, nice to really draw some blood on this place finally.
The other thing I was doing in this photo was getting the iron color and profile so we can try and buy some more sheets that match. Need to remove a few of the (leaking) air vents, and the best way is to just put whole new sheets in place vs trying to patch what's there (I think).

It was great to finally clear out the old power cables from the roof line.
I did not expect to see the wasp's nest(s), and sure am glad that they had hatched some time back. It could have been a job that went sideways very quickly had they not!
Need to remove the cables as they were moving around in the wind a bit, and so with a solid storm, I'm sure they would have been really annoying. Also, they ran into a junction box where the old house meter was on the back of the house, and Freddy wanted it removed / cleaned up. Cole and I had already pulled the wires from the meter box to the basement when he took the old house breaker box off the wall in the laundry, so yeah, that just left the roof end to remove.

Not shown was the squirt of fill-a-foam I put in the top of the pipe to block it off.
I don't think I am going to remove it, lot of work for not a lot of return in this case. (Note to self, check if this pipe is leaking at the roof joint when I get into the roof space one of these days - soon).

The previous owners converted the living room to a bedroom (which we have now converted to a dining room - but is currently a computer/laptop room).
In doing so, they removed the somewhat bulky gas heater and flue and installed a low-profile electric radiant heater - no flue and pretty flickering LEDs.
The flue pipe just got cut off in the roof space, and the vent - the big ugly thing in this photo - was left to do its leaking thing into the roof space. I don't know for sure, but I suspect this is the most likely entry point / cause of the mould in the roof space.
I think this is the one case where 1-2 sheets of iron are just going to be unscrewed, removed along with the vent, and new stuff put in their place, and thus totally remove it.

The small, low-profile vents are just annoying. Not sure if I need them or not. 2 of the 4 on the roof are shown here.
I've also got no idea why there is a short section of cut roof just above that low profile vent.... Let me know if you have any idea what that might have been about.

The two white PVC pipes are for the root cellar HVAC unit (gas burner draw and vent). They have to stay, but I'm not excited about their location or the amount of gunk used to 'waterproof' them.

While I was up there, a photo of the shop roof. Lots to do here, but can't get to doing them due to more pressing things pending. Blog pending about the apple tree in the background, and the basement dryway, and the RV pad prep, and the path repair/upgrade/finish, and the patio garden rebuild, and the ......

It really doesn't matter who or when, but this chimney mess has to be fixed ASAP...

The flue goes down to the basement, where there was some sort of fireplace (Long gone).
The bucket is clearly not a quality UV stabilized job and is falling apart badly. That said, I do wonder how many years it's been there....

I found it interesting that the iron does not go all the way down. It seems to stop right around the top of the top Besser brick.

Don't ever need this thing, we are never going to put a wood fire (or a gas one) back in the basement, so we want to cap it off and perma-stop it from leaking, and also stop the top part of the chimney from getting worse.
The plan is to knock the metal top part out, clean off the mortar from the top Besser brick, that should give me a nice flat square to work with.
Then I have some leftover galvanized tin from the basement HVAC relocation, so origami it up into a folded square tin and slip it over the top with a solid glop of construction adhesive.
I hope I have enough tin to slip it down a full brick and a half and so totally cover the top of the old chimney in one seamless lid. UV proof this time.
Slap some gray paint on that tin shower cap and call it fixed?

Last thing to note is the very top image above the blog title.... You can see the triangle shaped bit of metal that goes along the roof... Most places up here have them. I'm told it does something to/for the snow. I can't quite get my head around exactly what - I mean, I can, the snow rests against it and stops it from sliding off the roof in a big old deadly chunk - but I want to see it actually work through the snow season.
Related to this is a future blog.... The previous owner suggested that if we have a solid snowfall, I get a ground-based snow rake and take the snow off the back patio roof, "it is not as strong as the house, and I don't think it will take the weight".
That sounds like a fun future blog.....