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If you wonder why the lumber industry has a problem with public relations, it could be because the industry has no sense of humor.
It started last year, when I was at a meeting of the Adult Children of Parents Support Group (convenes often at the Victoria Tavern) with Kirby Perschbacher, a friend and local contractor.
Expensive homes around Oakland had gone up in smoke, and
fire officials there blamed the extent of the conflagration
on the popularity of cedar-shake shingles. Cedar shakes
aren't exactly my idea of a fire-retardant roof,
Kirby
observed, recalling the big hailstorm on July 1l, 1990, in
Denver which caused $625 million in damage -- much of it to
cedar shake roofs which had to be removed. The resulting
piles of old shakes caused fire authorities to fear big
conflagrations.
I mentioned a recent visit to my parents' house, whose garage boasts a shake roof. My dad said it looked like time to treat the roof again. In the belief that he had my help at hand in Longmont, he started looking for ladders and linseed oil. Desperate to escape, I quickly contrived some pressing and plausible business that required my immediate return to Salida.
If you don't oil the roof, the shakes get dry and
start to warp so that your roof starts leaking,
Kirby
said, and dry shakes split more easily, so they're more
likely to get crunched in a hailstorm. Of course, if you
oil it, you could increase the fire hazard, and there's
always the chance of slipping off the roof.
I noted that cedar shakes are easy to split and make
excellent kindling for the wood stove in the kitchen. What
with oiling, fires and hail, cedar shakes keep more
contractors in business than any dozen pork barrel
projects,
Kirby concluded, and they never come
around asking for campaign contributions. What a great deal
for us contractors.
Those observations, along with some about wood siding
(an attraction for woodpeckers) and redwood decks (often
ordered by people who have save the redwoods
stickers on their Jeep Cherokees), led to our collaboration
on a light-hearted article about the odd ways people often
build houses built in the southern Rockies.
We sold it to the Vail Trail and the Wet Mountain
Tribune. Then we swung for the fences, and sold a version
to Snow Country
magazine, where it appeared early
this year under the title Fads Ski Homes Don't
Need.
There it came to the attention of one John Cole, cedar
products sales manager of American International Forest
Products Inc. If you oil your roof, you will ruin
it,
he wrote, although the Cedar Shake and Shingle
Bureau says that oiling contributes to dimensional
stability and decay resistance.
As for the expensive hailstorm in Denver, Cole said
cedar shake roofs stand up to hail better than any
composition roof,
and that he had very rarely found
roof damage with a hailstone under 1.75 inches.
Cole's letters noted that he was sending copies to the
Forest City Trading Group Legal Department.
But
you've doubtless heard enough lawyer jokes, so I won pursue
that. Cole could have laughed all this off, and pointed out
that there's no such thing as perfect roof.
But instead, he makes us aware that he has legal counsel
on tap, and complain that this article has harmed the
wood industry.
The local lumberyard tells me that
shakes were about $125 a square year ago and $130 now -- if
the industry is hurting, the prices sure don't show it.
But I'm sorry anyway, and to atone I'm asking for your help in healing any harm we might have caused to the wood industry.
If anybody tries to sell you a metal, slate, tile or plain old asphalt-shingle roof, and the salesman even hints that cedar shakes may not be the ideal roofing material in all circumstances and climates, then John Cole should be informed immediately, so that he can act to protect the poor, oppressed wood industry.
So write him at P.O. Box 4166, Portland, Ore. 97208, and be sure to give him all the particulars so that he can pursue other threats with the same energy he has devoted to two guys in Salida.
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