there is an old method , you run a strip of zinc along and nail it down under the tabs of the top row of shingles just below the ridge cap. the zinc strip causes the moss to not grow, evidently it works for 10 to 15 feet or so, If your roof is bigger you can use more. The zinc strip comes in a roll about 3 inches wide 50 feet long . Its best to install it so the nails are under the top row of sihingles so the nails are sheltered.
my roof is about 3/4 done and I didn't really want to make nail holes through the roofing or to try to lift up the row of stuck down roofing to tuck the top nail edge under. I'm thinking of maybe using roofing sealant to glue a strip down since I have the ridge cap on half the roof already. to prevent using nails. I guess I can use nails with grommets but I'm not sure if I should trust that. I should have thought ahead more and put some under the top row but they are stuck down pretty good now. the shingles have a tar strip that causes the bottom of each shingle to stick down once they get warm in the sun. it is possible to lift them up on a warm day bit I'm not sure I want to lift them for two rows right across the roof, it might cause damage. the alternative is just to nail the stuff down on top of the roofing but that makes a bunch of nail locations that could potentially leak.
some years ago I heard I could just use the stuff for the lawn to kill my roof moss. its a fertilizer and kills moss. i tried it, its' called moss out. the moss died. i spent a day with the hose from a ladder coaxing all the black lumps down. it did rid most of it , comes back of course. I tried buying some a half a year ahead of time and it went bad, turned to rusty goop so it has a shelf life. i thought it was weird to put a fertilizer on the roof but it did work. of course there are other products designed to kill moss on rooftops.
I tried a product called spray 9 not on the roof but I have a big white van with a raised fiberglass roof and it turned green. i sprayed it on , waited and brushed it all really well and it sure did make the stuff go away. maybe it would be ok for siding? its a bit expensive but works.
there are other things, copper is supposed to work as well as zinc. i wondered if anyone had copper flashing and if it stained the roof or if it kept the moss below it at bay? maybe copper would cause green streaks or something ?
there are various solutions you spray on , some are supposed to dry and precipitate out slowly. the new shingles are supposed to have a moss repellent but I think it's marketing BS because even new roofs seem to have the issue after 10 years.
I think a solution using bleach might work. bleach will kill it but it wont stay around. i spoke to a commercial pressure washer, he said he used some soap but the final rinse must contain some beach, the idea was that if you kill off the spores it doesn't come back so fast. evidently there are a lot of different types of moss. some is black.
one tactic is to spray a moss killer on the roof every 3 years or so. I'm not sure how many actually do that. Its probably not the first thing on the to do list.
spraying chemicals on the roof can cause a backflow. if you can get a situation where the pressure at the hose bib is greater from the drop of the hose than the city water supply, or if the water supply pump goes down or something like a main breaks then it can suck the stuff from your hose down into the supply water and be back fed into your house or neighbors which would be a very bad thing.
modern plumbing code requires a backflow preventer at each outside tap but most of our old houses of course wont have them. if you have one and you lift the hose to the roof it will start draining the hose from the backflow preventer.
my city water pressure is always high so my chances of creating a backflow are minimal but I would definitely consider this carefully if I happened to be on a farm with a well and my own pump.
to get the stuff up to the peak is a bit of a challenge from the ladder if you arent' comfy scaling the rooftop. those garden sprayers only spray so far. i thought of buying a "super soaker" its a toy squirt gun but it evidently has some range.
If you are real brave you can hose from the peak down and get rid of the moss into the gutters once you kill it with chemicals.
wondering what other strategies people are using? the zinc strip flashing seems ugly but maybe effective. evidently it stops working in a few years when it gets oxidized. I saw some on the internet that was sort of like a tin molding with a bump rather than like a roll of tape. it looked a bit like a door threshold or something with a profile stamped into it. I'm not sure if I can find that profiled stuff locally. the tape looks like the stuff you use for ducting only zinc not aluminum tape and no sticky back. i figured it would be a given that someone would make a tape with a sticky backing that you could just apply on top of asphalt shingles but I'm not seeing that on the market. usually they nail it down.
maybe copper would be less unattractive?
I got to thinking of using copper wire. I have a master plan;-) I want to put two posts about 2 feet tall at opposite ends of my peak, then run a copper cable to both and to a telephone poll for an AM antenna. it made me wonder if I could do a loop antenna or something so the extra copper wire would help kill the moss and also function as my AM antenna. I envisioned a bunch of wraps te length of my roof , then it would drip from the bare copper wires and kill moss too,, wouldn't it?
now I'm onto a different subject.. if copper will kill moss like the zinc strip does could I use copper wire to perform a dual function. kill moss,and be an AM antenna? why do I think of such things ?
yes I have a pole, it is old as the house and I wonder if I should cut the thing down or replace it with a pipe or a new pole. It seems sturdy and it was only used for the laundry line which fell down when a buddy backed his van real good into my pole. I figured then , good you tested my pole and it's still sturdy;-) but that was 10 years ago. I bought a new laundry cable with the pulleys to put in its place but I'm a bit worried that if the poll did rot at the base and fall over it could kill someone or at least kill whatever car it fell on. changing a telephone pole sounds expensive.. an electrical mast might work but they are more ugly than my old vintage pole
an alternative to a long wire antenna is a loop antenna, the loop is usually calculated for length and size and that figures in mathematically into the signal range you are trying to receive. the loop antennas are directional so sometimes they make them so they can rotate. if I could do a big loop the width of my roof but with several wraps maybe that wire in itself might help kill moss and maybe function as an AM antenna?
I had a pretty good antenna at my old house, i ran it around near the gutters on porcelain insulators then to a tree. I was amazed how many stations I could receive with that. its a fun cheap thing others may want to try, then you get lots on the AM and that you didn't' know you could receive. most of our old houses did have an AM radio antennas at one time so it is sort of authentic. I have some neat old insulators I could use. normally you also put in a ground rod and a lightening arrester. That's so if it gets hit by lightening the power can jump to the ground rod rather than into the house. the radio also requires a good ground for the antenna to work properly. while there is a lot of math and calculations around antennas if you just get lots of wire up high and away from other things they do receive lots so it doesn't necessarily have to be designed that well to work. people with the knowledge of antennas can run circles around me with techn talk as they do, or can get really complex but the complexity can be sort of skipped and still be functional. one way is that if you live near a tree you can shoot a wire up there with a bow and arrow and pull the wire up to the tree. it isnt; supposed to be electriclly connected to the tree so I guess they use a rope at the end.
the old TV antennas were sort of neat as they reflect upon older times but they are useless now. those are obsolete. I did put up a pole with two digital antennas. I just stuck the poll on my balcony to try pointing it all around. i figure I can stick that on the roof once I'm in the last stages of roofing. maybe attach it to my chimney.
I'm enjoying about 20 stations on TV , it works pretty well. I get the local ones and there are a bunch from Seattle I can get. there are a few others in different directions that I can tune. I think if I tune that better I could get more. I used one that is supposed to be directional and another with a rotator gizmo. Its a cheapo made in china thing. these cheapo antennas are only about 30 bucks or so. I combined the two signals together to try to get as many as I can.
I'm too cheap to pay for cablevision and this works quite well but it depends on your area how many you get. there is a website called TV fool where you can look that up by postal code. maybe by zip code.
the AM antenna should be about 70 feet or so , usually they say as high as you can and as long as you can. if you really dig into that you find there are all sorts of antenna arrangements designed for different frequencies like ham radio. I just want to receive lots of AM signals because I collect old radios.
I got some things from a ham radio operator. that knows more about this these guys study antennas to such a degree it is amazing. , it is a 1:4 transformer, that changes the impedance to match the 75 ohm TV cable , then another goes at the back of the radio. it changes it back to what the radio wants. that cable is shielded and grounded to prevent electrical interference. i ran my whole house with lots of cablevision wire to a central panel the idea is that I can feed the signal to two radios and change which ones are active at the panel. the same guy made me a splitter so I can run any two if I put the splitter int he panel. . you can't just combine all the cable or the signal gets divided too much and weakens. funny thing is the radios receive the signal no matter if they are on or not.
a good FM antenna might help as well.. thats easy to make yourself , it is just basically a piece of that flat cable with two conductors , the length and arrangement is specific but if you look up plans to build a good FM antenna they are really simple to make. all this wire and antennas is a bit of fiddling but not too expensive and then you can really get a lot more on AM FM and on digital TV so its' worthwhile especially if you cut your cable vision off, that saves a monthly bill.
