CALL MY ROOFER .com  aka "Homeowner Armed and Dangerous"

 

 

     Hi my name is Chris Brooke and I grew up at the west end the San Fernando Valley in Southern California totally immersed in the roofing industry.   In 1963 my family(the Brookes Ostenbergs and the Spaldings) had started a roofing tile; manufacturing and installation company called B.O.S. Tile Inc. The plant was located in Van Nuys but the work installing these tile systems took the crews all over Southern California.  I was ten and would go to some of the projects and the plant with my dad, Dick Brooke. 

 

  

     When I was in high school I could work more often.  Lifetile was another new manufacturer and they needed help producing enough trim pieces until they finished automating.  I ended up making thousands of them.  I think I got three to five cents apiece from my dad (Dick Brooke) who had set up this endeavor as part of his company B.C. Roofing. There was a steel mold that had to be filled with the cement. Then you would take a flat piece of steel and work it back and forth leveling the cement in the form.  At that point you would use a whisk- broom to lightly add brush marks and then make a nail hole using a stiff piece of wire. You would get several of them finished, lay them carefully out in a row, spray them with the curing compound and then set them into the drying rack, that had plastic sides to hold in the moisture.  This lasted a couple of years before it was gone and by then I was able to move on.

 

 

      After school and during the summers I was helping out with dad’s business. I could pick up and deliver plans and light materials.  His company was doing installations on a lot of high- end projects.  His reputation was great and therefore had a lot of work.  It wasn’t long before I was installing roof systems myself.  We were doing all types of roof systems.  Being a Union shop I was able to learn from people who had gone through the apprenticeship programs as well as having worked with all the mediums used in roofing.  For many years if you were the son of a roofing contractor there was no requirement to join the union. Now they made us join and we initially were C men, which was a notch below apprentice.  The apprenticeship program is good but we already knew most of what they taught as we had been around roofing for many years already.   I do think they got tired of seeing a nineteen or twenty year old running the crews so when I was twenty- one they made my younger brother Rich and myself test for competency.  I became the youngest journeyman- foreman while Rich became the youngest journeyman in Union history.  We knew our stuff.

 

     Over the years we worked on many, many high- end homes and projects.  We had the good fortune to be dealing with a lot of people who wanted the best systems possible and over the years we found even better ways to do a lot of things.  Some are so simple and don’t cost very much.  Even so I still see a lot of people doing just the minimum required not just in the roofing but also in the framing and sheeting phases. Have you seen a tile roof where at the gable overhangs the roof droop down?  This is due to the lack of support at the framing stages.  And similarly have you seen a roof dip in the middle?  This can also be a result of doing the minimum at the framing phase of construction.  A lot of people either don’t know or don’t care or both.  That’s why I want to give everyone the benefit of all the years of my family’s research and development with some of the best builders in the business.  Every fly by night builder architect and realtor beware this handbook will make every      HOMEOWNER ARMED AND DANGEROUS!!!