Roof work

Colder today with snow flurries instead of rain, so the roofing crew was at work on the front part of the house while our construction crew was busy sheathing the rear half of the roof. The rear roof has only one more course of plywood sheathing at the top to finish it off while all the installed sheathing has the rubber membrane and vapor barrier fabric (blue stuff) in place. A lot of the shingles are now staged on the peak of the roof for installation tomorrow. They used the old HardiePlank pieces as spacers on the fascia. We appreciate using old before buying new.

The first door, our rear entry door, was installed and most of the windows have been foamed between the frame and the panels. The weather is turning colder for the rest of the week--teens to mid-20s, so getting the doors in and windows sealed will help when the crew turns on their electric heater.
We are even more anxious to get the wood stove and the new house geothermal working since we got the Christmas electric bill: over $100. (Global warming, my a$$.) We didn't freeze the kids out this year.
On Sunday evening my computer screen went green and a pop-up warned me that I had better buy a $49 fix right now for the worm that just infected my computer.  Since I noticed 2 spelling errors, Paul jumped on the fishy case quickly and found Internet Security 2010 was a difficult-to-remove trojan horse and malware.  He downloaded the  repair kits for free and we proceeded to disinfect.  It took a while but seems to have worked.  WARNING: don't buy anything from popups unless you know for sure. Once a malware company has a credit card number it is free to charge and spend.
Sunday to Monday we had about 2" rain.  As usual we worried about the driveway.  I have had luck digging small diversion trenches in herringbones to catch some water and push it off the road.  They are only about 2" deep but catch enough water that we had no erosion in the areas served by these herringbones.  However Murch's sand mound has a pool of water behind it that is draining poorly onto our road and caused significant, though drivable, erosion gullies.  That issue is going to be unpleasant to repair.
From the Centre Daily Times,  Jan 26

Between 7 a.m. Sunday and 7 a.m. Monday, 1.73 inches of rain fell in State College, breaking the 1938 record for the date by six-tenths of an inch, said Bill Syrett, manager of the Joel N. Myers Weather Center at Penn State.
The 24-hour period was the second wettest January day on record, behind Jan. 20, 1996, when 1.78 inches of rain fell, Syrett said.
The unseasonable warmth — temperatures in State College topped 50 degrees Monday morning — made that possible, Syrett said.
“You need a combination of warm air, moisture-laden air and proper atmospheric setup” to get this much rain, he said.
The rain tapered off and finally ended early Monday afternoon. By the time the storm ended, two observers reported that about 2 inches of rain had fallen from 1:40 p.m. Sunday to 12:40 p.m. Monday. Centre County and the surrounding region spent most of Monday under a National Weather Service flood warning.

Read more: http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/story/1751632.html#ixzz0dlb8UEkU