Thanks, everyone! I really did have a wonderful time! I'd love to go back to Oak Hill when I have more time to just browse... even when I can't buy, just walking around and looking at everything is pretty satisfying. I, too, love to explore garden centers and greenhouses... breathing in that earthy smell that only greenhouses have, and seeing all that green is very good for the soul! Honestly, I could have spent days exploring everything Oak Hill had to offer! And at their more than fair prices, I could easily be overwhelmed by collecting too much too soon! I do want to go back for a 'Sharry Baby'... I know they're rather common, but I find them to be very beautiful! They had some really nice miniature oncidium type plants, and the mounts... oh my! The walls were covered in mounts! They also had many different types of tropical houseplants, which I found to be very interesting, and very beautiful! I almost got a Phal Mini Mark 'Holm', but I couldn't choose one from the many tables of flats... so, I thought I'd go back later and grab one... but I ended up getting the Phal Sogo Grape 'Fireball', instead. I'm a picky shopper, I guess... I prefer plants that have new growth, healthy roots, and are not quite in full bloom yet, even if they're younger... I could never just grab one off the table and call it a day! It must be the right one! LOL! All in all, it was a fabulous experience! Just think... there are several other orchid greenhouses in northern Illinois... visiting each one will be like the "first time" all over again! I'm going to love my trips up north even more now! I'm glad to share my trip with everyone... I'll be sure take my camera along for every trip, just in case I get a chance to stop in a greenhouse!

Karyn now you"re talking. SO good to read that YOU got good weather. It is about time that you can work OUTSIDE the greenhouse. :-) I just walked around....My heart is heavy. It is worse that I imagined. This is my 1st hailstorm I remember that damaged the garden as it did. I guess I always missed out on the bad ones with moving around a lot lol Had rescued a banana plant from the sales rack at Lowes. That poor thing I swear looked dead just like Caren's. It had grown TWO layers of leaves ready to get big ....well the hole plant looks worse then your banana plant Caren. thanks dweep. I am glad this is my first and PLEASE the last one. I know I am dreaming again :-( Chocolate Brug, you sure know how to bring sunshine in my day! That is such a beauty! Oh I was just thinking what hail would do to a Plumeria and that reminded me of the succulents in the wheelbarrow that REALLY made me cry. But now I have unique succulents I am sure only I got lol What a way to get one of a kinds. Mary Jane I sure hope that you play it safe with this storm and going to games :-( I hope for your sake that by then you do not have no more storm!! For the rest that were able to *rescue* your plants before the storms comes. I AM SO HAPPY FOR YOU!! Next time they say we get hail...guess what I will try to do! Not that I would move my DH's car out from the carport rofl. But SHED here we come AGAIN lol Man even the cellphones did not work during the storm. I tried to call hubby and warn him to take his beloved car somewhere under a cover. Before they put a fence around the building he works in, he used to drive it right in the building. Well I had to plug my regular phone back up and call him. I sure hope his car is ok or I will see a grown man cry today Here comes the rain again. Let me go and close this and the doors Lucy

Do I understand correctly that someone has proposed spraying closed cell foam on the underside of your slate roof to insulate it and create a so-called "cold roof"? That sounds like a terrible solution to me! Terrible because it goes against the way slate roofs actually work. Terrible because it will cause damage to the slates themselves over time because slates must be fairly loose to succesfully withstand extreme temperature changes over the course of a year. Terrible because it will make any subsequent repairs very difficult, if not impossible. Terrible because the foam expansion could force the slates, which now lie flat against each other, apart actually creating places for water to enter where there are none now. Slates are not sealed or nailed down tightly to the roof beyond the two nails from which each hangs; their collective weight is what keeps them in place but an expanding force from underneath, like sprayed foam, would disrupt that. Terrible because it won't really solve the problem, anyway. Slate roofs are inherently a loose and essentially free hanging roofing material. The foam would inevitably interfere that and would result, I'm pretty sure, in considerable eventual damage when the slates were denied that movement. Slate roofs are completely different from other roof materials in this way. The field of the underside of a slate roof is not intended to be hermetically sealed against water penetration (except around protrusions, valleys, edges, etc., where flashing is used to make a water tight seal.) but instead relies on redundant, overlapping (but loose) slates and the never-failing force of gravity to channel water away safely. That's why the ice and watershield product isn't really a recommended thing for slate. Not detrimental, just not needed. A proper slate roof is laid over builders' paper above 5/4 wooden sheathing, but the builders' paper is not there to make the roof watertight, except during the brief period the roof is being first installed. (And used again if large areas must be later opened up all at once due to casualty or structural changes.) Nor is the wooden sheathing intended to be water tight. Mine, which is nearly 140 years old, was simply rough cut lumber laid up as tightly as the uneven, still bark-edged slabs could be. Both the builders' paper -or what passed for that in 1870 - and the wooden sheathing are absent in about 25% of the toal area of my roofs where you can look up and see the underside of the slates themselves - all without leaks. The wooden sheathing is there for stiffening of the connections among the common rafters and to be nailers for the slate. Ice dams can be prevented or managed by other means from raking to removing and replacing lower rows of slate with flashing in intractable cases that can't be accessed by rakes. How high is your slate roof? Two stories, three? Is there a wing? I live in an older house than yours, timber frame w/o a speck of insulation, and with a slate roof. I'm in northern NY. We use roof rakes to keep the critical roof surfaces clear of ice dams, when and where they are likely to occur, which isn't on all surfaces, and not every winter, or indeed from every storm. Study of each roof and the patterns will help keep the work load at a minimum and still effective. I also have several nearby barn buildings which are completely unheated, some of those roofs develop ice dams on occasion, so despite conventional wisdom, it's not just insulation (or lack thereof) at play in ice dam formation. I also repair all my own slate roofs, all ten of them. I don't think that insulating the underside of the entire roof would be either wise or effective. Ihe ice dams aren't forming on the majority of it and you don't need a totally "cold roof" you just need it above where warm air is rising through the wall assembly, which happens to be the place where the roof plane and the wall plane meet, and hence you couldn't realistically spray anything there. There are other more effective ways to block that convective and radiant channel. With all due respect the Building Science Institute, they can't be talking about slate roofs in this quote: (from Worthy's post above) "Closed-cell spray foam has negligible water permeability, minimal water absorption, and excellent adhesion allowing it to act as a secondary rainwater barrier to limit damage when primary roof assembly rainwater control membranes leak..." (my emphasis) Slate roofs don't have "rainwater control membranes", they rely instead on carefully calculated, redundantly overlapping but loose layers of slates, and of course, gravity. One final thought: slate roofs being actually thin layers of rocks are perhaps the ultimate in a "cold roof". Mine acquire a thick coat of frost inside the attic, easily visible from underneath between sheathing members. This is of no concern because the loose, unsealed nature of a slate roof also means it's extremely self-ventilating and impervious to moisture as long as nothing interferes with that, such as any man-made material (Watershield, closed foam, pink sytrofoam ventilation channels, etc.). When you introduce these foreign, unnaturally tight layers you risk changing the environmental conditions in unforeseen, and possibly detrimental ways. Old houses have survived many decades, and even centuries, because they possessed inherently successful technological systems. Old houses with different technological systems have failed and disappeared from the scene. What remains are building technologies that work. Be careful when considering adding newer systems to the old houses - you may very well be altering a critical factor. A some good resources for you are: John Leeke's website: www.historichomeworks.com (Many topics of old house care maintenance covered from a profoundly conservationist point of view. Particularly useful re insulation and window repair issues.) John Jenkins webite: www.slateroofcentral.com (Site with much info on proper care, repair and installation of slate roofs.) and, of course, the National Parks Service Preservation Briefs Series on variety of topics, including #29 on care maintenance and repair of slate roofs. See link to index of the series below. HTH, L Here is a link that might be useful: Preservation Briefs Topics Indexed

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