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Now the roof is ready for the Italian style pan and barrel roof tile installation.

The tiles are machine made but look like they are hand made They come from a company by the name of Artezanos in Miami, FL. Artezanos Inc. is a manufacturer and distributor of authentic handmade clay roof tile (Barrel / Mission and Spanish -S), handmade clay brick pavers, etc. The tiles are hand textured but kiln fired. Each tile is kiln fired for a different length of time which creates the difference in the colors. The end result is a tile that has a great variation in texture and color that looks like it is at least 100 yrs old. However the price is very competitive with that of other new tile manufacturers. We considered reclaimed tile but the price of reclaimed tile has increased over three hundred percent since we first started our research. This tile is less brittle than reclaimed tile which has a high percentage of breakage during shipment and handling.

The first step in installing the pan and barrel roof tile is to measure the roof and place two x fours on end and space them in such a manner that a pan tile will fit between 2 two x fours and a barrel tile will rest on top of the 2 x 4. You start at the cornice area and work your way up to the top of the roof. The most important ingredient in the installation procedure is the polyfoam material which has totally replaced stainless steel screws and mortar. Polypro AH160 Roof Tile Adhesive® adhesive specially designed to bond concrete and clay roofing tiles to approved underlayment substrates. The polyfoam comes in tanks and are mixed very much like epoxy. Two tanks feed into a single tube which is then pre-mixed and once installed, is extremely strong. We opted for stainless steel screws in addition to polyfoam and we buttered our tiles both for an old Italian classic look and to prevent wind from blowing underneath the curved part of the barrel tiles. Our structural engineer has rated our roof at aprox. 250 MPH. We believe that the 2x4's used have created additional insulation in the roof but we are not sure as to the R-value. We just know that it is strong and highly wind resistant. 

A local company did the installation. We got three bids. We were very specific and showed the installation companies photos and precise instruction and also that we wanted to see a small sample of how they would do it. The bids varied tremendously. One bid was over 400% more than the lowest bid. We used the firm with the lowest bid but did a thorough check out of references, etc..

The polyfoam under the tiles was quite expensive !! This was a big surprise to us. 

The Polyfoam home office has emailed to ask that we add: "Polyfoam will perform job site inspections free of charge with the proper notice."

When all our work is done, we plan to add to the website a list of contact info on all the suppliers and subcontractors that were were pleased with.

You can leave a Isokern firelite fireplace as is but we built a wood frame around our chimney because we thought it looked too skinny. Then we had genuine stucco artisans install a metal lathe they stuccoed over it. When they finished, Juan and Jose colorized the stucco using the patch kit supplied by DAC-ART. They even installed fake grout-lines to make the chimneys look like DAC-ART. We are searching for antique chimney pots that deserve to be installed on our chimneys.

We still have places that we need to fill in where our blocks just didn't quite match up.