Each year, thousands of Arizona residents email or call Rosie Romero’s radio show with questions about everything from preventing fires in their chimneys to getting rid of tree roots invading their sewer system. His goal is to provide answers that suit the specific lifestyle wherever someone lives in Arizona.
QUESTION: We have a deck on our house that is partly covered by our flat roof. We sit out there all the time. The problem is that a post is holding up the beam that supports the roof. My wife wants it removed! A span of about 15 feet is supported by the beam. We have had two contractors out to give us an estimate. Both priced the job at about the same amount. The difference between them is that one would use a solid wood beam while the other would use a laminated one. What do you recommend?
ANSWER: We prefer the glu-lam or glued laminated beams due to their dimensional stability and built-in camber — that’s the curve in the beam that helps compensate for taking out the post. A glu-lam is comprised of multiple members glued together under high pressure and heat to provide more predictable performance over the long haul. They don’t split, check, crack and warp like a solid wood beam will.
Glu-lams will work better in Arizona in general. When the solid beam is cut from the tree, it is not kiln-dried so its moisture content is very high. Then we bring the wood to Arizona and subject it to single-digit humidity levels. So all the moisture in the wood evaporates, and the wood starts to shrink. The inherent stresses will force it to take on its natural shape, sometimes not too straight and true, as it was when it was milled.
Q: I have a new home that has low-e windows, and I want to install sun screens for extra protection from summer heat. I have heard that doing that might void the warranty on my windows and cause possible warping or damage to my low-e windows. Is that true?
A: Low-e coating, of course, is a sprayed-on coating applied to the interior of the outboard pane of glass, and it’s generally a pretty durable coating. It’s applied to the interior surface of the windows so that it will not get scratched by contact or washing operations. On the other hand, sun screens are installed outside the glass with space between the screening and the outside of the window. That way, the sun screens allow for ventilation of trapped heat. I have to say that I have not heard about sun screens adversely affecting the glass or the coating itself. But to confirm warranty limitations, you should check with the window manufacturer to see what may compromise that warranty.
Q: We have tomato plants that we grow at a community garden but the leaves at the bottom of the plants keep getting yellow and brown and falling off. We keep the plants covered with 30 percent rated shade cloth. The tomatoes are also watered regularly by the garden for 25 minutes at 6 a.m. and 25 minutes at 3 p.m. every day. What are we doing wrong?
A: It sounds as if your tomatoes are getting plenty of water; it may be that the lower leaves are turning brown because of a lack of nutrients in the soil. However, at this time of year – although it’s cooler in Tucson than Phoenix – it may be getting too hot to keep tomato plants going. Hopefully, you had a lot of tomatoes this spring; now it may be time to pull out the plants and prepare the soil for planting winter vegetables in the late summer and early fall.
