by Alice Rush
LAST YEAR we changed homeowners insurance companies for a better and more responsive agency. We now have much better coverage if the worst should happen, and the coverage is combined with our car insurance, saving us money on both sides. However, last year the new insurance company sent someone out to see the house, and that inspector told us that there were too many pine needles on the roof. We live in the woods. There are always pine needles on our roof, a potential fire hazard. In order to keep our coverage we were obligated to clean the roof. So began what is to be an annual event, it seems.
No one inspected our home this year and told us that we needed to remove the needles, but having been made more aware of the issue last year, this year we paid attention. Yours truly climbs a ladder carefully held secure by my husband. He then hands me the leaf blower when I am almost to the top, so that I can rest that on the roof as I crawl onto it and up to the peak. We are very fortunate to not have a very tall roof. We were guessing that it is approximately 15 feet up, so it is really not bad.
From my peak vantage point I can blow pine needles off either side of the roof inching my butt along from one end to the other. It made me consider though, surely this same problem exists in wooded areas in Holland? After all, my husband and I are reminded every day of grenenhout, which is what pine trees are made of. Any time you see town names such as Greenbush, Greenfield, Greenwich, all of which exist in Maine, they have nothing to do with the color green. America was founded by the Dutch. Green refers to the Dutch word grenen, to wood, so Grenenbos, Grenenveld, Grenenwijk.
I’VE SPENT most of my visits to Holland in cities, so I’ve never noticed whether roofs are covered by pine needles. I have noticed the thatched roofs here and there in the cities though, and I thought of the insurance situation that we had. Our insurer was concerned that the pine needles were a fire hazard, which makes sense. How is a thatched roof not a fire hazard though?
Once when I saw a new thatch being applied to such a roof in the city, I was fascinated. I wanted to watch for a while, but we had somewhere to be, and I was the only one in our group who found roofing interesting. I like knowing a little something about how work like that is done, even though it is something I would never do myself. The thatch is really attractive, and maybe of some historical significance? In the U.S. if you live in a historical building, you are obligated to maintain it according to rules set by the historical society. This can be very expensive. I wonder if there is a similar arrangement in the Netherlands?
Luckily, there is nothing historical about our house. We can do as we please with improvements, and at some point we are thinking of replacing the roof with a metal one, which is fairly popular in Maine. The snow slides right off of a metal roof, and pine needles will too. It will be significantly noisier in a rainstorm, but we like the sound of rain on the roof. This thought brings me back to the thatched roofs. How do they dry out well enough not to mold or rot when the weather is particularly wet? Since I’m not the best at small talk, I’ll keep this in mind for a topic of conversation next time we visit the Netherlands.
* Alice is a Maine realtor and a licensed helicopter and fixed wing pilot. She first met her Dutch husband in Maryland in 2005, and married him four years later.
