May – October 2024

The work started in May and was completed at the start of October 2024. There is extensive photo documentation, so here are a few words about how it was done and the surprises on the way.
The top is the house is divided into two half parts – a roof top terrasse facing east and from there, access to an attic apartment with a sloping roof towards west. Coming into May the terrasse is in a state where the brick covered terrasse is so “fertile” that flowers are growing between the bricks. Quite charming, but not great when looking at the ceilings in the east side of the first-floor apartment.
Attic roof and rooftop terrasse May – October 2024 The work started in May and was completed at the start of October 2024. There is extensive photo documentation https://hus.reneloh.de/roof.html , so here are a few words about how it was done and the surprises on the way. The top is the house is divided into two half parts – a roof top terrasse facing east and from there, access to an attic apartment with a sloping roof towards west. Coming into May the terrasse is in a state where the brick covered terrasse is so “fertile” that flowers are growing between the bricks. Quite charming, but not great when looking at the ceilings in the east side of the first-floor apartment.
The constructors team starts scraping the layers of the terrasse, dropping it into the courtyard and carry out the rubble through the ground from passage to the street.
The attic ceilings are coming down as the weather is taking its turn through the roof tiles. I love the terracotta tiles of the Portuguese houses, I would go a long wat to keep them, however the team convinced me to start using the “sandwich” roof plates that has built-in isolation. There was a price point and an esthetic point to this decision – it is cheaper, and the townhouse attic roof is at a position and height, that gives almost nobody line of sight to the roof.
When the constructor removes the attic tiles, it turns out that most beams and wood constructions in the attic roof have deteriorated and must be replaced.
After that the crew really didn't involve me much. I can’t strain enough, how pleased I was with the decision and budget to have a local construction crew rebuild the entire roof (and with the team I found). I think this process was tension free between me, the construction team and the local neighbors, and I believe this was due to the following:

• There was no real deadline – we discussed it, but the construction crew needs to be able to rotate on projects during project standstills and unforeseen incidents. I think you need to give that freedom to the constructor. This makes deadlines difficult, but it makes the collaboration better
• Having a crew that is used to operate and work in the same street with local street knowledge and taking insight from the municipal workers and negotiating (E.g. When is the best time and where should we place a container before the municipality starts laying new sewage pipes)
• We trusted the team to choose materials and make esthetic choices. We could spend a thousand hours choosing paint, tiles, beams etc. but we really did not spend too much time on that. First of the engineer was smart – he gave us only two choices for tiles on the roof top terrasse 😊- another example, when the guardrail for the roof top terrasse was being installed the engineer looked at me and said: “I did not know what color you wanted but is it green. Green was the color preloaded in the machine when the rail came in for painting and I believe it is the most popular in Portimão”. I think he did the exact right thing
• When some of the collaboration between engineer and owner is done remotely, there are a set of caveats I had to work through – like you don’t get the same attention if you are remote as opposed to being onsite. Also, when negotiating re-construction issues through a remote channel – like WhatsApp – you must develop skills that can convey construction changes/wishes visually – to your counter part
• Indulge the local culture – let me give an example – I come from a Geo/culture where water coming off the roof is captured at end of the sloping roof by visible gutters and then brought to the ground by an exterior vertical drainpipe. I spent too much time talking and thinking about this until I discovered that is not at all how you do this on traditional Algerian houses.

In late September I met with the constructor and engineer for the final inspection of “Project one”-delivery. Upon exception, I accepted as delivered.