Do I understand correctly that someone has proposed spraying closed cell foam on the underside of your slate roof to insulate it and create a so-called "cold roof"? That sounds like a terrible solution to me! Terrible because it goes against the way slate roofs actually work. Terrible because it will cause damage to the slates themselves over time because slates must be fairly loose to succesfully withstand extreme temperature changes over the course of a year. Terrible because it will make any subsequent repairs very difficult, if not impossible. Terrible because the foam expansion could force the slates, which now lie flat against each other, apart actually creating places for water to enter where there are none now. Slates are not sealed or nailed down tightly to the roof beyond the two nails from which each hangs; their collective weight is what keeps them in place but an expanding force from underneath, like sprayed foam, would disrupt that. Terrible because it won't really solve the problem, anyway. Slate roofs are inherently a loose and essentially free hanging roofing material. The foam would inevitably interfere that and would result, I'm pretty sure, in considerable eventual damage when the slates were denied that movement. Slate roofs are completely different from other roof materials in this way. The field of the underside of a slate roof is not intended to be hermetically sealed against water penetration (except around protrusions, valleys, edges, etc., where flashing is used to make a water tight seal.) but instead relies on redundant, overlapping (but loose) slates and the never-failing force of gravity to channel water away safely. That's why the ice and watershield product isn't really a recommended thing for slate. Not detrimental, just not needed. A proper slate roof is laid over builders' paper above 5/4 wooden sheathing, but the builders' paper is not there to make the roof watertight, except during the brief period the roof is being first installed. (And used again if large areas must be later opened up all at once due to casualty or structural changes.) Nor is the wooden sheathing intended to be water tight. Mine, which is nearly 140 years old, was simply rough cut lumber laid up as tightly as the uneven, still bark-edged slabs could be. Both the builders' paper -or what passed for that in 1870 - and the wooden sheathing are absent in about 25% of the toal area of my roofs where you can look up and see the underside of the slates themselves - all without leaks. The wooden sheathing is there for stiffening of the connections among the common rafters and to be nailers for the slate. Ice dams can be prevented or managed by other means from raking to removing and replacing lower rows of slate with flashing in intractable cases that can't be accessed by rakes. How high is your slate roof? Two stories, three? Is there a wing? I live in an older house than yours, timber frame w/o a speck of insulation, and with a slate roof. I'm in northern NY. We use roof rakes to keep the critical roof surfaces clear of ice dams, when and where they are likely to occur, which isn't on all surfaces, and not every winter, or indeed from every storm. Study of each roof and the patterns will help keep the work load at a minimum and still effective. I also have several nearby barn buildings which are completely unheated, some of those roofs develop ice dams on occasion, so despite conventional wisdom, it's not just insulation (or lack thereof) at play in ice dam formation. I also repair all my own slate roofs, all ten of them. I don't think that insulating the underside of the entire roof would be either wise or effective. Ihe ice dams aren't forming on the majority of it and you don't need a totally "cold roof" you just need it above where warm air is rising through the wall assembly, which happens to be the place where the roof plane and the wall plane meet, and hence you couldn't realistically spray anything there. There are other more effective ways to block that convective and radiant channel. With all due respect the Building Science Institute, they can't be talking about slate roofs in this quote: (from Worthy's post above) "Closed-cell spray foam has negligible water permeability, minimal water absorption, and excellent adhesion allowing it to act as a secondary rainwater barrier to limit damage when primary roof assembly rainwater control membranes leak..." (my emphasis) Slate roofs don't have "rainwater control membranes", they rely instead on carefully calculated, redundantly overlapping but loose layers of slates, and of course, gravity. One final thought: slate roofs being actually thin layers of rocks are perhaps the ultimate in a "cold roof". Mine acquire a thick coat of frost inside the attic, easily visible from underneath between sheathing members. This is of no concern because the loose, unsealed nature of a slate roof also means it's extremely self-ventilating and impervious to moisture as long as nothing interferes with that, such as any man-made material (Watershield, closed foam, pink sytrofoam ventilation channels, etc.). When you introduce these foreign, unnaturally tight layers you risk changing the environmental conditions in unforeseen, and possibly detrimental ways. Old houses have survived many decades, and even centuries, because they possessed inherently successful technological systems. Old houses with different technological systems have failed and disappeared from the scene. What remains are building technologies that work. Be careful when considering adding newer systems to the old houses - you may very well be altering a critical factor. A some good resources for you are: John Leeke's website: www.historichomeworks.com (Many topics of old house care maintenance covered from a profoundly conservationist point of view. Particularly useful re insulation and window repair issues.) John Jenkins webite: www.slateroofcentral.com (Site with much info on proper care, repair and installation of slate roofs.) and, of course, the National Parks Service Preservation Briefs Series on variety of topics, including #29 on care maintenance and repair of slate roofs. See link to index of the series below. HTH, L Here is a link that might be useful: Preservation Briefs Topics Indexed

An emphasis on students finding information for themselves, and focusing on topics that they are interested in, is important throughout school, and I would argue, grows more important as students grow older and are able to make better choices. Here is an article that studied how children retrieve information from a library online catalogue. Without intending to, the author found that students being taught with a more student-centered curriculum (he doesn't use that term) were far better at finding information creatively - the way we all do in life, with no multiple-choice options. It is kind of a long article, but here is an excerpt: "Important contributors to children's information retrieval behavior are their motivation, purpose, and interest in their topics. During the course of this study, it became clear that some students were more involved in the information retrieval process than others. For some, it was an adventure and challenge that carried them to new understanding of the material they were studying. Their products went beyond copying facts from their readings to point out discrepancies and unanswered questions and, thus, to display their critical thinking skills. These children's experiences also led them to develop more advanced information skills, which they needed in order to pursue their interests in depth. For instance, the group of first graders studying planets soon began to share information about their planets and to propose theories that related the characteristics of the planets to their size and distance from the sun. Their written reports contained ideas and questions about such matters as what it would take to allow people to live on presently uninhabited planets. "For others, that spark of interest was missing. These children found the minimal information they needed to satisfy the assignment but contributed little of their own thinking and did not advance their information skills. Their products were simple lists of facts without interpretation or comparison. For instance, when fifth graders were asked to write reports about the states, their assignment sheet contained a list of pieces of information to be included in each report (e.g., population, area, major cities). Not surprisingly, their actual reports provided 'just the facts.'" Here is a link that might be useful: Children and an OPAC

I would like to boast that I am the amateur exception to the rule, but, alas... We have drawn up our own additions twice and the contractor pointed out some things that "might not look right," and he was correct. So, for an entire house, I can think that there could be any number of things you could live to regret. I have a friend who did an addition and thought it was a good idea to add a half bath here and closets here and here...long story short--she had not a single wall to place a couch on in her family room, due to all those doors--an error she didn't notice until the job was done. An experienced architect or contractor (her husband and friends did the work) would have pointed that out just from seeing the drawing. I think that if you ARE going to make your own design, it would be a good idea to hire an architect to review the drawings and point out shortcomings in the design.

Thanks. This is why I spoke of my lack of experience, being a suburbanite. Our DS (50) and family do live in the city, and he will be the landlord. We've had strange tenants in SFH, too. One alcoholic who was to be evicted the next morning turned on all the gas in the kitchen and lay down to die. The sherrif's oficers found her in the morning, hung over, but alive. The gas had leaked out of the old farmhouse. (Same woman had earlier slit her wrists in the bathtub.) I know there are hazards -- just asking about those peculiar to MFUs. I'd been concerned when we bought the vacation rental, too, but it turned out to be pretty easy, especially with guests we booked ourselves. Our bookings were almost always better guests than agency-booked people. I think that was because we'd become 'real people' to them before they arrived. Update: Today we cancelled the contract on this property. I was mistaken in thinking we could buy something and use 1031 escrow to renovate. I'd missed the difference from the way we purchased the condo twenty years ago: That seller did the renovations out of our escrow *before* the closing. Now we'll look for something to more fully use up the escrow and not plan on using taxed boot to improve it.