Cukurbagli's Blog   My life in Turkey

Windy wasn’t the word for it this morning. I got up at 6.15 and took the dogs for a walk up to the end of the road and back, takes about an hour, and on the way back there was one point where we couldn’t make any headway. The wind was so strong that it stopped me and try as I might I couldn’t move forward. It was only a big gust of course and I was soon able to move again but my hat blew off twice.

Anyway we got back to the house and had breakfast after which I started a little job putting a new cutter wire into the strimmer, the plastic stuff doesn’t last five minutes with all the rocks in the garden. As I was doing it a gust of wind came and with a lot of noise lifted the shingles, roofing felt and boards off the veranda roof frame and three of the boards disappeared over the back of the roof and landed about twenty yards away. March winds eh?

The veranda roof is something that I made myself and to be honest I was quite proud of it. I wasn’t expecting it to have to withstand hurricane strength winds though and had used fixings that I thought would hold it all together. Well I was wrong. Here’s a picture of the newly complete roof in June 2007:

I was delighted and proud of it, I thought it blended well with the house and it seemed quite strong enough however this is what happened this morning:

You can see that there are a number of sheets of oriented strand board (O.S.B.) that are missing as well as the shingles and roofing felt having been peeled back. I suppose the wind got under the edge and once it started lifting there was no stopping it. Well I got some wood ordered this afternoon to repair and strengthen the construction of it and I’ll pick up some more roofing felt and a few rolls of shingle tomorrow morning. I think rolls of shingle will be better as it is easier to hold down. I’m also using 2″ screws to hold it together now and reinforcing the edges so the wind can’t lift anything.

I suppose there is always the possibility that, having made it much stronger, the whole roof will take off next time. Well we won’t have long to wait because there are some more strong winds forecast for Monday, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.