Maybe a related story?? In Cuba the U.S. Interest Section building built
around 1953 had a tile roof typical of Cuba.  A couple of guys from the
Foreign Building Operations at State Dept. went down to "fix-up" the
roof in the past year or two.  They brought it up to US standards - tore
out all the tiles. Now the damn thing is causing all sorts of problems
that they never had with the tile.  preservation/common sense can save
money. LARA

Ken Follett wrote:
>
> In a message dated 7/30/98 5:25:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [log in to unmask]
> writes:
>
> << You have a tile roof on your brick house, and a few tiles are
>  broken?  Louie the roofer comes out.  He only does roll roofing.
>  His business is booming because his roofs are the cheapest
>  (in terms of what it costs right now).  He says,  They don't
>  make tile roofs any more.  Let me give you a nice modern roof.
>  (Why should he advise you to search the metro area for someone
>  who does tiles?  and the tile repair will cost more, this year,
>  than Louie's entire new roof) >>
>
> Very well put.
>
> It continues to be interesting when Louie gets started ripping the tile off
> the roof then finds out there is a local preservation group with the clout to
> stop him dead in his tracks -- even if it means they get the police involved
> to impound his truck. Louie has no clue as to what he has done wrong, and
> feels insulted that his roll roofing craft is not considered historic. He
> immediatly hits a bad nerve when he uses all the taboo words. A cigar is often
> being waved around at this point. I think 90% of survival in historic
> preservation is having a trained vocabulary, the other 10% is keeping your
> mouth shut. If Louie is resourceful he asks his lawyer cousin for help, who
> tells him to look in the yellow pages for a preservation oriented roofer to
> ask for help. Louie asks for help, but not to change or improve his ways, he
> wants to know what to do to convince the crazy people of the merits of roll
> roofing. This is a long and difficult strategy and I rue the day Louie gets
> smart and writes the book.
>
> ][<en Follett