Mon15oct-Sun21oct ... volunteer "free"

Mon15oct-Sun21oct
A ”volunteer free" week, though work continues intermittently on the site as weather permits, sometimes with just Levi and I, and with family members as their work schedules permit. The climate is growing markedly colder and windier, with rain clouds hovering at the ready at least 50% of the time… echoes of home in the Pacific Northwest…

We trekked to Bekescsaba to visit our hospitalized guest Monday and again on Wednesday, to visit and support the process of orchestrating the return of she and her partner home to Canada. They left for the Budapest airport via ambulance at o-dark-thirty Friday morning, bringing this chapter of the healing process and adventure to a close, at least on the Hungarian end. A note on Hungarian community hospitals: While the overall care giving was very good (the surgeon, nursing staff, residents and ancillary personnel all gracious, encouraging, and supportive), theirs is a very basic and often “BYO” oriented system in the day-to-day, e.g., bring your own towels, toiletries, and more. Food is humble and bland fare (much more so than anything we see in the US), hygiene and other aspects are also quite “humble” (I’ll refrain from the details!).

In Szarvas… early mornings at the office to pick up e-mail, etc., (early enough one day to prompt the cleaning staff to ask if I slept [laughing]), a couple of afternoons on site with Levi, a day of wind/rain/quiet, and Thursday, Saturday and Sunday on site working on shingling the roof. That 400 square meter expanse looms large whether working with just the two of us or a crew of 4-5; as of this Sunday, 25% of the roof has been covered. Slow but sure…

For those hands on readers, shingles are applied directly to the OSB (no paper layer of any kind). The first course of (asphalt) shingles is laid in reverse (right side up with tabs towards the peak) as an underlayment, Each piece has a line of tar mastic “caulked” on the back for optimum contact and adhesion; the weather is too cold for the ingrained tar layer to “grab”, and the additional line of tar mastic holds the shingle edges tight to the roof and reduces lift from the wind. These shingles are also nailed to the metal flashing above the gutters, forming a water barrier and runoff straight into the gutters and via there to the ground.

The “second” course is laid “normally” (tabs down and at the roof edge) directly over the first, and like the first, a line of tar mastic is applied to the back bottom edge of the shingle tabs on every piece. From there on, shingles are laid much as we do in WA… there’s just a lot of ‘em!

Shingles are prepped on the ground and handed up to the roof, volunteer friendly and lighter/easier/less messy than hefting full packs up to the roof and applying the mastic there, especially since the cold temps mean heating the mastic to make it malleable enough to apply. It’s a system, and works whether there are 2 or 20.

Roof vent access points are cut using a drill and jigsaw, with vents placed/nailed in every 2 meters or so in tandem with shingles.