Reflections on the Fifth Week of Summer – Roof Walkers

 

    Wednesday a crew of five men from Energy Independent Solutions arrived wearing neon green t-shirts with “Harvest the Sun^TM” logos.

    I walked down the ramp toward them wondering if I could take photos and ask questions while they worked.

    A thin six foot man stepped away from the group at the truck and extended his hand. “Hello, I’m Richard.” His voice had a lyrical African accent. A smile crinkled his dark skin.

    I shook his hand and returned his smile. “I’m Janet.”

    Before I could ask a question he said, “Nice to meet you, Janet. Do you have any dogs?”

    “No. We have two cats.”

    “That’s fine then, Janet. Do you have a bathroom we may use?”

    I took him inside through the sliding glass door, led him around our cat George sleeping on the great room floor, and showed Richard the upstairs bathroom.

    “My you have a lovely house.”

    We walked downstairs to the basement bathroom complete with a worm factory in the shower stall. Then I showed him how to get back outside through the basement door.

    “This is perfect. We can use this one. Now, Janet, may we move your flower pots so that we can put the ladders on the deck?”

    “Yes,” and before he could ask another question, I got one in myself. “How can you work on a forty-five degree angle roof?”

    As if reciting a practiced report, he said, “We’ll put two short ladders on the deck and two long ladders on the grass.” His hands drew parallel lines upward. “Between each pair we mount bridges.” His hands moved horizontally. “From the bridge we install the first rail. Then we stand on the rail to mount the next and so on up the roof.” He placed one hand over the other repeatedly until his arms stretched straight.

    Throughout the day, I heard footsteps overhead, the brrrrrrrzzzzzaat of drills attaching clips to metal roof ridges, and, once, the squeak of the basement screen door. Did the other four men use jars in their trucks?

    Thursday, lugging my swim gear out of the garage, I met Terry, the site supervisor, walking down West Creek Road. His long thin arms swung by his sides and his shoulder length hair, with a pony tail drawn only from the sides of his face, swayed.

    I reached into the mailbox for letters. “Were you going for a walk?”

    “No, I was watering a tree.” 

    Okay. No truck jars.

    While we walked back to the house, I said, “The weather forecast called for thunderstorms at 3:00 today.”

    Terry’s brow scrunched. “I hadn’t heard. We’ll watch the sky.”

    After lunch I took my camera outside.

    Terry turned a solar panel on its side to pull off plastic packing corners and tape holding the connecting wires. He carried each unpacked panel, which weighed about thirty pounds according to one of the dozens of answers Terry gave me, up the ramp. Shifting his hands down the sides of the panel, he hoisted it over his head.

    On the roof, one of the men crouched, grabbed the top of the panel, and pulled up. Then he turned the panel around, held it over his head, and lowered the panel into the rack.

    Amazed that they didn’t drop the panel, I clicked pictures till raindrops hit my head. I lowered the camera and turned to Terry. “You won’t work through the storm, will you?”

    “No. It’s not safe.” He called to his crew. “Secure everything up there so you can come down.”

    Fifteen minutes later, rain pounded the roof. Except for Scott, the crew retreated to the two EIS trucks. In soaked clothing, Scott, who’d climbed down last, sat in a wicker chair on the porch. The shortest in the crew and the only one with glasses, he stared at his phone.

    After my husband Spence held George so I could give him his daily subcutaneous fluids, Spence joined Scott on the porch.

    I followed.

    “May we join you?” Spence said.

    Scott grinned. “Yes. I was only reading the latest from Mueller.”

    Spence sat on the love seat. “We were giving George IV fluids for his kidney failure.”

   I sat beside Spence. “With the lump of water on his back, George looks like the character from the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo isn’t it?”

    “Quasimodo is correct,” Scott said and glanced at the rain pounding on the fir trees. “I hope it’s raining in Pittsburgh so I won’t have to water my lawn when I get home.”

    I stepped inside, checked the radar map on my computer, and returned in time to hear Scott say, “I trained as an architect. I like to work in 3-D.”

    “Pittsburgh isn’t getting any rain,” I said.

    Scott flashed a sad smile.

    Before the fellas continued their discussion I said, “Will you be able to go back on the roof after the rain?”

   “It’s safe when the roof is wet. We don’t slide down—” he moved his phone from over his shoulders to his lap “—just slip a bit.”

    “You mean sideways on the rails and metal bridge?”

    He nodded. “That’s not a safety problem.”

    Friday, I ran out and in with my camera a dozen times hoping to catch the crew installing the last row of solar panels. How would they work on the edge?

    Finally, Scott said, “We’re going to put the last row up now.”

    I stood on the grass, pointed my camera upward, and waited. A deer fly bit me once. Mosquitoes bit twice.

    Wiley, the heftiest guy on the crew, had the job of hoisting panels to the men on the roof. He pointed at our wire cages topped with white cover cloth. “What are those bushes?

    “Blueberries.” I clicked a picture of Scott setting the top panel. “The cages keep the birds away.”

    “My grandmother has a field of red raspberries.”

    “Does she make jam and pies?”

    “She makes jam that comes out more like syrup.”

    Jake, the quietest member of the crew if you don’t count the music he played softly on his phone, motioned to Wiley for a panel.

    Wiley missed the gesture because he faced me. “It’s great on pancakes.”

    I motioned to Jake. “I think they want another panel.”

    After Wiley hoisted the panel, I asked, “How many installation crews does ESI have?”

Wiley paused before answering. “Two, but the other crew only does ground installations. The heavier guys don’t work on roofs.”

    To install the last panel, the crew took down the bridges, and Scott stood on the top of a short ladder. “Can you put counter pressure on the ladder, Wiley? It’s crushing the gutter making it give way. I want to fix the gutter before I lean into it.”

    Wiley pushed against the ladder.

    Scott drilled in screws.

    The drill slipped from his hand. Leaning and balancing on one foot, he caught the drill before it fell on Wiley’s head. “Be sure to get a photo if I drop the drill on Wiley,” he called to me. “We’ll need the picture for worker’s comp.”

    After an hour, Scott lay on the empty one foot edge of roof and reached under the panels to make the final connections.

    Five red, five black, and one green wire, each sixty feet long, hung off the roof. Jake rolled them into a coil a foot and a half in diameter and set it on the ramp.

    “We can’t close the ramp gate with the coil there. George will wonder off,” I said. “Could we move the wires somewhere else till the electricians arrive?”

    Jake hung the coil on the butt end of a house log. “The electricians will be here in about two weeks.”

    “Will they have to drill a hole in the foundation?”

    “Yes,” Jake grabbed wire cutters and a drill off the deck. “The work to connect the wires to the basement panel will take two or three days.”

    When the crew ambled toward the trucks, I called, “Thank you. You did a great job. I enjoyed watching you work.

    Jake lagged behind. He touched the brim of his baseball cap. “It’s been a pleasure to meet you.”

    During the three day installation, the crew responded with a million answers to the two concerns I had walking down the ramp Wednesday morning. All five had become more like neighbors than contractors.