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Friday, November 25, 2011

Roofers and Website Plagiarism

This preface was written within an hour of the initial posting. After googleing the words "Notify your mortgage and insurance companies the day your roofing job begins. This will expedite the inspection and payment processes" I discovered many roofers with the same page with exactly the same wordage or some slight changes. There was one named "John White Roofing" but he changed his name a little. Ha! After reading below come back and click the link above but not until then. Now to my original jump the gun conclusion:



"What a joke. These guys use other roofers stuff verbatim without shame. They must not have had that course in school. you know: plagiarism. Just glimpse over the first two examples. Too much time to read all.
Example one from a roofer in Kansas:
Free Estimate
The first step in the Garrison Roofing process is handling your estimate request. Whether you call in and speak to us or submit an online estimate request form, we will be able to provide you with a free estimate handled by one of our roofing professionals.
The Contract
Once a roofing professional has come out, you will receive a proposal for the work that we are able to perform. After your approve the proposal, call our office for help with your color choice.
Scheduling Your Job
The third step in the Garrison Roofing Process is to prepare for the work to begin. We will select the best crew for your project and a time for the work to begin (weather permitting). You will be notified with a date for work to begin.

Example two from  North Carolina:
FREE ESTIMATE
The first step in the Graham Roofing Process is handling your estimate request. Whether you call in and speak to one of our team members or submit an online estimate request form, we will be able to provide you with a free estimate handled by one of our roofing professionals.
THE CONTRACT
Once a roofing professional has performed an estimate, you will receive a proposal for the work that we are able to perform. After you accept of offer, your job goes directly into the scheduling department to be setup for completion.
SCHEDULING YOUR JOB
The third step in the Graham Roofing Process is to prepare for the work to begin. We will select the best crew for your project, and a time for the work to begin (weather permitting). Once we are ready to begin the job we will order any material that is needed, and have it delivered, or brought to the job site by the roofers themselves.

Now for the dilly whopper. Here's something I noticed on an Irving Roofer's page:

10. For each day it rains, work on your roof will be delayed. Trident Roofing roofers are instructed not to tear off more shingles than they can replace in one day so that your roof is not exposed to inclement weather.

The problem is that this is not from Trident Roofing's website. The plaigerist forgot to remove the name of the company he lifted the piece from. In fact, the whole page is a copy of Trident's page. Here's some more:
  1. Notify your mortgage and insurance companies the day your roofing job begins. This will expedite the inspection and payment processes.

  2. Be prepared for the noise! There will be constant hammering for one or more days, depending on the size of your roof. You may want to plan a day away from the house while the job is in progress.

  3. When shingles are delivered to your home, please check the color. Notify Evans & Horton Roofing immediately if the color is not what you ordered.

  4. Remove all loose items from wall shelves and walls: pictures, plates, figurines. Hammering may create vibrations that shake these items off of shelves and walls.

  5. Do not loan your tools or equipment to the roofers.

  6. Remove all items from around the house where roofing debris or bundles of shingles might fall: patio and pool furniture, potted plants, gardening equipment, and grills. Leaves or blooms may be knocked off plants near your home during the job. We try to protect the plants but many times the layout of the landscape prevents us from doing so.

  7. Precautions are taken to prevent gutter damage. However, there are instances when damage to gutters is unavoidable, especially on very steep roofs or ones that are completely surrounded by gutters or homes with rusted gutters. Your homeowners insurance should cover any damage.

Now here is Tridents:

Preparing your Residence for a Quality Roofing Job

  1. Notify your mortgage and insurance companies the day your roofing job begins. This will expedite the inspection and payment processes.

  2. Be prepared for the noise! There will be constant hammering for one or more days, depending on the size of your roof. You may want to plan a day away from the house while the job is in progress.

  3. When shingles are delivered to your home, please check the color. Notify Trident Roofing immediately if the color is not what you ordered.

  4. Remove all loose items from wall shelves and walls: pictures, plates, figurines. Hammering may create vibrations that shake these items off of shelves and walls.

  5. Do not loan your tools or equipment to the roofers.

  6. Remove all items from around the house where roofing debris or bundles of shingles might fall: patio and pool furniture, potted plants, gardening equipment, and grills. Leaves or blooms may be knocked off plants near your home during the job. We try to protect the plants but many times the layout of the landscape prevents us from doing so.



  7. Check heater vents upon completion of your roof to make sure that they haven’t become loose in the attic. Also check hot water heater and stove vents. The roofer will do this for you if allowed access to your attic.

  8. Occasionally, we will use power tools to cut decking or shingles. When we do so, please check your power breakers and outside electrical outlets to make sure they are operating correctly.

  9. For each day it rains, work on your roof will be delayed. Trident Roofing roofers are instructed not to tear off more shingles than they can replace in one day so that your roof is not exposed to inclement weather.

  10. We will need access to your driveway to load shingles and clean up. Please park your cars, motorcycles, bicycles, boats, etc, out of the driveway/garage.

  11. Keep small children and pets away from the work area.

  12. Nails that fall from the roof during the job will be picked up with a magnetic nail roller. We will make every effort to pick up all nails. Please be advised; however, that a few nails, hidden in the grass or shrubbery, may remain.

  13. Make all payments to Trident Roofing. Please do not pay in cash and do not make checks payable to salesmen.
If this was purchased content, then the second guy got ripped off. I think the second guy just left some evidence in #10 and I noticed it.

I hope no one is offended because I saw something that I was taught was wrong. Reworking a good piece of writing is great but lifting it verbatim is downright  plagiarism. Here's what Webster's says:

pla·gia·rize

verb \ˈplā-jə-ˌrīz also -jē-ə-\
pla·gia·rizedpla·gia·riz·ing

Definition of PLAGIARIZE

transitive verb
: to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own : use (another's production) without crediting the source
intransitive verb
: to commit literary theft : present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source
pla·gia·riz·er noun



Examples of PLAGIARIZE

  1. He plagiarized a classmate's report.
  2. She plagiarized from an article she read on the Inte
Enough enough. Believe it or not this goes on everywhere, just like false Google Reviews, see Eclat in Dallas and dive back on the people's reviews and see how many places they review all over the country, or John Wade Roofing's attempt to put a low rating on 103 or so roofers in one day. Brad Carver at BC Roofing was really mad as was Ark Roofing, Heartland Construction, Joe Hall Roofing, and the few who saw it before it was taken down. I got pics though.

Hopefully Google, our benevolent leader will police these actions soon and keep honesty as much a part of the net as it can be. Until then keep your eyes open.





Jon Alan Wright
Jon Wright Roofing, Siding, and Windows
1915 Peters Rd., Suite 310
Irving, TX 75061
972.251.1818 Office
214.718.3748 Cell
972.554.8090 Fax
    Follow jwrightroofing on Twitter

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Ventilation or Radiant Barrier?

This post is like eating watermelon in January. it is out of season. But as winter here last about two weeks and summer can last up to ten years, I wanted to beat the heat to the punch, because if you're buying a roof now, don't forget about Ra, Huitzilopochtli, Mithra or Apollo. They won't forget about you when your inadequate attic becomes the blast furnace that eats you alive.

The raging debate amongst the illiterati is whether to vent or to reduce heat with all the newfangled products like Cool Series and Energy Cap by GAF, Solaris by Certainteed, Energy Star colors by Gerard Roofing Technologies, or the new underlayments like Polarium and Energy Q. Below that is the best of the best, Techshield and the imitators like Solar Board. The radiant barrier foil backed decking is, hands down, the best. Painted on reflective coatings and staple on foil don't work near as well.

As heat goes where heat isn't and aluminum has very low emissivity, having the foil on the decking is the best place to have it. Putting it on the attic floor is a giant mistake because convected head lives there and the foil gets loaded with dust. Then all sorts of bad stuff happens. Like your ceilings fall in from humidity!

The answer is in the balance of the two, just like when Plato, using Socrates as his mouthpiece in "The Republic" asks if it is better to use the old country doctor who knows what works or the recent graduate of medical school who knows why something works. Even though this book was written over 2300 years ago, the debate rages.The answer is neither. You want both, the experienced doctor who keeps up his education on leeches, blood letting and spells. (you know Hippocrates called vinegar the first medicine and raw unpasteurized vinegar with mother mixed with local honey cured me of arthritis, acid reflux, and allergies.)

Back in the attic the sun's photons are doing their job and making the temperature rise to millions of degrees kelvin and the pot roast went from frozen to done in minutes. So what's a homeowner to do? Both!

Here's the math: reduce the load in factor of heat with any of these Energy Star products and keep the Venturi Effect racing from the soffits to your favorite exhaust point and the attic won't fill up with excited molecules that keep running into each other because they are hot. Less heat gain and more heat removal equals an attic closer to ambient temperature.

If you use foil faced decking, make sure it is not applied directly to the lathe of the old wood roof because the near 50% coverage results in a lot of conduction. This is why aluminum was used for wiring for years. it conducts. This will super heat your attic.

But ventilation also works in the winter by keeping down humidity and preventing ice dams. If covering your turbines makes your house warmer, you have major problems. you need that old fashioned energy saver called insulation. Once the heat passes your sheetrock, it is gone. Warm attics help no one. You always want your attic to approximate outside ambient temperature. Don't cover your turbines! Never, unless they are leaking. That's leaking water or lava into your attic, not heat outside, contributing to global warming, a plot by the Greenlandic scientists to increase tourism.

Less in, more out. That's the ticket.

Jon Alan Wright
Jon Wright Roofing, Siding, and Windows
1915 Peters Rd., Suite 310
Irving, TX 75061
972.251.1818 Office
214.718.3748 Cell
972.554.8090 Fax
    Follow jwrightroofing on Twitter

Saturday, November 19, 2011

George Harrison's Roof. Ten Years Gone: 29 November 2001


25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001. Those were the years George Harrison was on this rock and did he roll. the song 'While My guitar Gently Weeps" makes me do just that even those his doesn't anymore except on you tube and some of those fancy devices ya'll have that will be obsolete by next week.
now here is his roof, if you wondered what was going on:
 Now why would he do this to the poor roofers.  Look at it. high enough to be a widowmaker and complicated enough to be a head buster (Spanish for puzzle:rompe cabeza).
Now here's a more friendly roof that George built:
Now let's take a look at the first monstrosity from above:


Notice that the roof looks so tall but this is just a mirage. The steep slopes hide the flat roof above keeping costs down in many ways. Less material and labor is needed to build the home. Less time is needed because there is less work making those bankers mad, or happy, or who knows what these days. Also those real expensive materials you can see, like imported Italian tile, which aren't any better than those made in Chicago, are not in is great a demand.
So when you get your first hit album you too can build a mansion that looks more expensive than it really is.

George has been dead for ten years now and very few of us ever call him our favorite Beatle. just listen to one of my favorites and reminiscence;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ITrQXES8kU 





on Wright Roofing, Siding, and Windows
1915 Peters Rd., Suite 310
Irving, TX 75061
972.251.1818 Office
214.718.3748 Cell
972.554.8090 Fax
    Follow jwrightroofing on Twitter

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

50,000th Visit

Since June of 2009,when Google started tracking visits, this blog has received over 50,000 hits. Thank you. I hope you have learned about ventilation, enhanced warranties from the manufacturer, manufacturer certification, ice dams, hand nailing, solar energy, metal roofs, radiant barrier deck, windows, siding, energy Star products, the component parts of shingles, asphalt, tile, slate, and some lousy jokes.



Jon Alan Wright
Jon Wright Roofing, Siding, and Windows
1915 Peters Rd., Suite 310
Irving, TX 75061
972.251.1818 Office
214.718.3748 Cell
972.554.8090 Fax
    Follow jwrightroofing on Twitter

Saturday, November 5, 2011

Solar Certification

Jon Wright Roofing is the first company in north Texas to be certified as a solar installer for Certainteed's solar systems. We first started this journey when GAF said they were going into solar with GE several years ago but then dropped the program.

This weekend several of us went through intense training for our NABCEP training. It was two grueling days. We have more to go.
We have completed Certainteed's training but we want to offer a full line, although what Certainteed has is very nice.

The Apollo system is integrated right into the roof.  That saves money and time. Plus the solar will be covered by Certainteed's extended warranty program.

More to come. Very tired right now.


Jon Alan Wright
Jon Wright Roofing, Siding, and Windows
1915 Peters Rd., Suite 310
Irving, TX 75061
972.251.1818 Office
214.718.3748 Cell
972.554.8090 Fax
    Follow jwrightroofing on Twitter

How To Spot A Liar

When searching for a contractor, look at his home page, not his web page. check the people who made comments by clicking on their name. Go backwards and see if the person has done any of these things:
Left only one comment anywhere on the web.
Has left comments for companies all over the country.
Made bad comments or star ratings for lots of competitors.
Comment sounds like a commercial.
All the commenter use similar adjectives and grammar.
The comments on the page are left in date clusters. These guys are dumb.
The address of the business, when posted into the search bar brings up a postal location and not an office.

In short: look at the dates, the verbage, the number of comments made by each, and the address.




Jon Alan Wright
Jon Wright Roofing, Siding, and Windows
1915 Peters Rd., Suite 310
Irving, TX 75061
972.251.1818 Office
214.718.3748 Cell
972.554.8090 Fax
    Follow jwrightroofing on Twitter