[log in to unmask] wrote:

>
> Ken what are you doing up so early?  although I was up too, washing
> dishes and trying to figure out what to do with half a gallon of worn
> out frying oil - can't I just put it in the tank of the Volvo?

I get up earlier and earlier all the time now. Trying to catch up w/
Twybil. Can you leave the frying oil out on the corner where someone w/
a hybrid can scarf it up?

> Is it fair to guess that architects/builders working in the 1850-1830
> period (the heyday of slate roofs) would choose "synthetic slate crap"
> over "real" slate, if given the choice?

Sort of an Occam's Razor kind of debate... would they expend the energy
if plastic slate were readily available?

    1) I don't think we are talking about recycled milk bottles here.
Use more oil! An environmental debate on crap?

    2) I love false and manufactured materials... the more kitsch the
better. (That is why one of our last contracts was to remove aluminium
and refurbish the underlying wood. If you leave scrap aluminum out on
the sidewalk in Greenwich Village it is scarfed up before the sun
raises. Though I think it odd that the church complains considering how
humanitarian & environmental the leaving behind crap on their sidewalk is.)

    3) Proven technology - do we actually know that the plastic slate
will have the durability and performance characteristics of the
'natural' slate that it replaces. (How will it hold up in the next lvl
5? Or will it blow off in large sheets like so muich of the tin roofing
now littering the woodlots of the Gulf region?)

    4) On that note... is the recovery post-hurricane for plastic slate
higher than for natural slate? Why not go w/ fully adhered black EPDM?
Leastways EPDM is black, gets rid of the ugliness of a whole lot of
little squared lines, has a performance history and would be less
expensive economically and possibly environmentally than plastic slate.
(We recently installed inauthentic fully adhered EPDM to the lead coated
copper - even the llc was not authentic to the history of the structure
- to the gutters on a mansion of a signer of the Declaration. You can't
see it unless in an an ultra-lite or with a ladder and the report is
that it does not leak -- thus saving the wood structure from rot and the
enclosed collections.)

    5) As an aesthetic, does authenticity of appearance and tone matter
to the French Quarter? Plastic slate DOES NOT look like natural slate.
Is the intention a Dynseyfiction of History?

    6) Lastly... even if natural slate is used will it be of the same or
similar quality to the original? Chances are it would be easy for the
pundits to substitute Spanish or Chinese slate that is cut thinner than
traditional American w/ it in mind to maximize the square surface area
contained in a shipping container. Nowadays technology of slate/stone
cutting makes it easier to produce thinner slate -- well suited for the
McMansions. And, as we are no longer in a slate heyday there are not too
many folks who can tell the difference, or care, between a good slate
and a crap slate.

I saw the guy Prodhomme on TV from the place where we ate dinner in the
French Quarter. At dinner I got to tell the story about the foundation
that funds the preservation of exotic French donkey semen. (Having a
hell of a good time reading Bouvard & Pecuchet!  A definite BP
recommendation for lite reading.)

][<

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