Charlie: Jerry in Bay town says his home was built in 1958 and the roof decking is shiplap pine.
Tom: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Charlie: The wood’s very dry, and he says the roof nails split the wood very easily. He says, on his last roof, there were a great deal of nail pops, you know, where the nails are backing out of ’em.
Tom: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Charlie: He says, “So I’m about to get a new roof.” And he’s concerned about these nail pops, Tom, from this previous experience, he wants to know, should he just re deck, to prevent these nail pops again, and should he have an engineer check the building, the decking for integrity before he does it?
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Tom: Oh, you don’t need an engineer to take a look at it. The roofer will take a look at it and see if he decides he can do it or not. I wouldn’t tear the old stuff off. If you needed to put something smooth on there to hold the nails down, you could put a layer of plywood right on top. You don’t need to restructure anything, the weight’s not gonna be an issue.
Charlie: So, you’d leave the shiplap in place?
Tom: Oh, yeah, I’d leave it there and put a half inch of plywood on top. Be a heck of a deck, and it’ll hold the nail. So, if there’s a real problem with it, if it’s really that crispy a wood, then that would be the way to go.