Roofing

ROOFING, AN ITERGRAL PART OF BUILDING
BY KOFI DARKO

You can be impressed with the mason as he lays the blocks to plan, bringing out the architectural design on paper; from the foundation to the lintel level, but you will see the inner and exterior beauty of the structure when it is roofed properly.

Roofing of a building is the overall image decider of the building. The impression you will have for a building as in its beauty depends on how well is has been roofed. Blocks or bricks might have been laid excellently, the building itself may be huge, fine plastering and all that, but if you have a caricature type of roofing, you will forever be remorseful for investing into the structure.

Be showed any new building and trust me, the first thing you do is to look up. Go inside the room, too, and you look up again. Have you ever wondered why we normally do that? Intrinsically, everybody wants to have something covering his head once he enters anything called a finished or a complete building, and would not want to see the skies up. This tells that, roofing is a kernel aspect of building.

The act of covering the upper part of a building is what we mean by roofing. With this, it tells that anybody, by choice, decides to cover his or her building with anything at all. It is in no doubt that-in the olden days, people used palm branches and grass to roof their buildings .Up to date, some people still use it for its beauty, or to portray old culture .Whichever way you choose to roof your building, it is your choice. The question you need to ask yourself is, does it suit the purpose of roofing?

Roofing gives a complete definition to the word ``SHELTER’’. If you have a place of stay but haven’t got an enclosure at the top, that is, a roof, how then do you say you have shelter when it rains and you are beaten by it, it shines and the rays are direct on you; dew drops pours on you and you are so cold at night? You will become exposed to the weather, and seriously at risk in terms of security for yourself and that of yours belongings.

Roofing serves these purposes to you apart from the fact that it gives the true beauty of any structure. Talk of the front view or the back view of a building, whatever design it has been architected for it-it is when the building has been roofed that it portrays it beauty.

For your roofing to be able to achieve the purposes outlined as why proper roofing should be done, the technical knowhow of roofing must be very high. The architectural plan for the roof must be read well by the carpenters who do the spreading of the roofing material on the laid out woods on the building to support the roofing material. Did you even know that, roofing, like the building itself, must have an architectural plan? Yes, it must, and should be given to an expert carpenter who can decode it properly.

Otherwise, the cable for the building will be wrong. Where there is supposed to be a slope to show the corners and angles of the building will be gotten wrongly. When this happens, nailing can also be done improperly, because the architectural plan for the roofing is misunderstood by the carpenter. Disaster then awaits the occupant of such building. This is because-the roofing will leak when it rains. Commercially available roofing materials includes thatch, asbestos, tiles, galvanized iron sheet (commonly used in Africa), shingles, asphalt shingles (made of bitumen) and the likes. Whichever type you want, your location or geographical area and its weather condition is a decider, as well as quality and affordability.

Do you know the type of roofing material you use has got effect on you? For instance, ASBESTOS COMMONLY KNOWN IN AFRICA AS SLATE(IN ROOFING MATERIALS),IT IS SAID TO BE A CANCER PROPAGATOR.HEALTH EXPIRTS SAY AN EXPOSURE TO ASBESTOS CAN CAUSE MESOTHELIOMA CANCER, A FORM OF CANCER THAT MOST OFTEN AFFECTS THE THIN MEMBRANES LINING ORGANS IN THE CHEST  AND ABDOMEN.ASBESTOS CAN ALSO GIVE LUNG CANCER.

ALL OVER THE WORLD, MOST COUNTRIES HAVE BANNED THE IMPORTATION OF MATERIALS THAT CONTAINS ASBESTOS.A TYPICAL EXAMPLE IS AUSTRALIA.THEY BANNED THE USE OF ASBESTOS ON 31ST DECEMBER, 2003.The European Union and Japan have also banned the use of asbestos.

 For your information, a town called Asbestos in Quebec, has stopped the mining of asbestos, but their name still remains. Interesting, isn’t it?
Well, choose your roofing material right after reading this piece of education given in this article.