Mexican thatched roofs
Even though we chose to reuse
metal from the old house that used to
stand on our property when we constructed the East Wing, I've always
had a soft spot in my heart for thatching. Wouldn't it be great
to grow your own roof and then add the biomass to the compost pile once
it's passed through its natural life span rather than ending up with a
lot of toxic material to send to the dump? Although thatched
roofs do require more upkeep than metal, some sources suggest that a
well-thatched roof could last as long as shingles do.
Given my obsession with
thatching, you shouldn't be surprised to discover that around 5% of our
cruise photos consisted of shots of various thatched structures.
Since we couldn't take you all along on the cruise, I figured I'd show
you the cream of
the crop of Mexican thatched roofs.
The first four photos
are
from the mainland of the Yucatan peninsula, where palm fronds are the
primary thatch material. Notice in the top, right-hand picture
(which is a view of the thatched roof from below), that the palm fronds
slide over wooden supports, making construction simple. In case
you're wondering what the picture above is doing here, that's
proto-thatch, aka a palm.
Starting with the photos
below, we've moved to the island of
Cozumel, still in Mexico. The
roof I got to spend time with on Cozumel was made
of some sort of grass or reed tied into bundles. We saw a
truckload of these bundles between Tulum and Calica on the mainland of
the Yucatan too, so clearly this alternative thatch material isn't
just for islands.
Thatching
with reeds/grass looks like it would
be a lot more time consuming than thatching with palm. It looks
like
you first tie the individual leaves into bundles, then you tie the
bundles onto
the wooden supports. From the bottom-up photo, it also looks like
this particular roof is going to leak at least here and there where
light shines through. It's still a beautiful structure, though.
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