Thread: Props on roof

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I'm sure there are threads about this, but not sure where to look. So, I was thinking about makin' a big spider out of PVC and I would like to maybe put it on the roof. How do you keep props on your roof without putting holes into the roof with screws and such? It also would have to withstand wind since it tends to get breezy here in Western Washington around that time of year (don't even get me started on last years Halloween Eve ).

I used to live in Lakewood, so I know about the weather there. I haven't put props on my roof at Halloween yet, but I do put Santa and all his reindeer on the roof for Christmas. My roof isn't very steep so I set pallets on it and screw my props to the pallets I've been doing it for five or six years with no problems, but granted, they're wire reindeer, so the wind doesn't catch them. I also have turtle vents on the backside of the roof, so I set sandbags I get from Lowes up against them and tie the bags to the pallets. So the bags are on the backside as a counterweight to the pallets on the frontside. If you're going to do this, be very careful climbing up onto the roof with the pallets and sandbags so you don't lose your balance.

I have a roof over my front porch. There are two windows on the wall behind the roof. I put a skeleton hanging from a gallows up there a few years ago. I used a piece of ¾" plywood as a base. To keep it from sliding off, I connected a rope attached to the bottom of the gallows to my bed frame inside the window. The rope couldn't be seen from the ground.

Wait! In Western WA, you won't find huge spiders on your rooftop. You'll find em in your crawl space cause they don't like the wind and rain!

i have a flat roof. i like your pallet idea. we have lots of wind here in iowa. i've even thought of a big, long, wide heavy board. which do you think would work better? do you think sand bags are needed? i want to stretch my blowmolds across the length of my roof. scatterbrains, your house is beautiful. all your decorations are so pretty, but that reindeer and sleigh are about the prettiest i've ever seen.

To put my large pvc spider on the roof, I cut small square plywood for the leg bases and one big one for the center post of the spider. I painted them black and put carpet under them so they wouldn't take the material off the roof. Then I painted the carpet black too so it wouldn't stand out. The center plywood has two eye hooks attached and then I ran black rope from them and over the roof and down to the other side to attach to the gutter and tied it off.

Haunter: Ha! Too funny and too true. That's one of the things I'm NOT looking forward to going back to as I head home in a week now that I've graduated, though maybe I should try to protect them from the birds as they really are a natural prop.

I have a large re-bar framed head on my one roof, covered (originally) with canvas hand sewn (by me).
It must be about 10 foot tall by 10 foot wide. I left it's mouth open to allow the wind to pass through, a good practise with signs too, don't needlessly fight the wind, or at least don't fight it's entire physical force.
I also hinged the head from the reverse slope of the roof making steel supports fastened down into the roof, then sealed with tar. The actual amount of hinge-travel is actually slight but must have been just enough because it's still up there!
The canvas rotted almost completely off the frame now and I'm not looking forward to re-doing it all but such is the price I pay in hours and physical exersion.
One is really not supposed to walk on a cold roof, or an old roof, more than 15 years old but then if you are about to have a new roof installed it doesn't matter as much.
Anything displayed on a roof can vibrate and come crashing down in alot of buffeting wind, wearing holes in the roofing as this happens. The design of the roof mount can generate quite unwanted forces if they become an airfoil, they put those wings on airplanes for some real reason you know!
My house sits behind a tall brick store building in sort of a low location and most of our wind here comes at us from that direction, which also helps alot.

Originally Posted by hallorenescene

i have a flat roof. i like your pallet idea. we have lots of wind here in iowa. i've even thought of a big, long, wide heavy board. which do you think would work better? do you think sand bags are needed? i want to stretch my blowmolds across the length of my roof.

Whether you use pallets or a board, the key is that it's heavy enough not to be carried off by the wind. Pallets can be pretty heavy and they're easy to tie things too.

And be sure that whatever you mount to the boards/pallets doesn't turn into a sail and drag everything off the roof.

The sandbags are just an extra layer of protection....on a flat roof, you can set the sandbags on top of the board to keep it from falling over sideways

Although it wouldn't "tie it off" could you possibly use sand inside the PVC pipe somehow? Just an idea I thought of because we are going to do the same thing and here in AZ we have tiled roofs that make it harder to find things that will lay flat on the roof.