Most people fail to consider the amount of physical stress that goes into redoing a roof. Not only is it exhausting tearing the old roof off, simply getting the materials onto your roof can literally lay you up for days if you aren't in the right kind of shape to do the job. Remember that hauling heavy objects, sometimes overhead, on a skinny ladder requires the use of many different muscles that even people who work out on a regular basis often neglect to attend to.
Not only are you setting yourself up for the physical pain that comes with repetitive roof lifting, this sort of work can make you so tired that you are much more likely to either take a fall or injure yourself in the process of doing work. If this happens, all that money that you thought you where going to save by doing your own roofing job is suddenly going to become a huge expense. Between possible hospital costs, doctor costs and missed work, your beautiful new roof could possibly end up costing you more money than you bargained for.
There are many different types of lifts that you can use both for carrying materials up to your roof as well as for collecting the old roof as you tear it off. Having a roofing scissors lift, a telescopic boom lift, fork lift or even some of the specialty lifts that are out there will certainly save wear and tear on your body as well as free up time so that you can crank out a good job in considerably less time than if you tried hauling thousands of pounds of shingles up and onto your roof. Anyone who has ever done some roofing will tell you that this is literally back breaking work!
A wise way to go about getting one of these lifts is to either use the internet, or the telephone pages and look up a local roofing supply company. Even if a place like this doesn't have the right vehicles for you to rent, they will certainly be able to direct you to one. If there happens to be no local roofing supply, you can always contact a general contracting supply warehouse. If for some miracle you cannot locate one of these, a call to your local hardware store should be enough to find the information you need to find someone to rent a lift from.
Once you have planned out your tear off, plan to take a few days getting your shingling nailed back onto your roof. Big projects like these often end up taking longer than expected. Work this out with the people you are renting your lift from and see if they can be flexible with the time they need their lift back. Though keeping one may end up costing you more money, it is worthwhile to continue to use it until the job is completely done. As I mentioned before, when you consider the savings in terms of injury and making sure the job is done properly and unrushed, you will actually be saving money in the long run
