Prim & Copper

St. Mary’s Catholic Church in High Hill is getting a new roof on the church steeple. The front of the church is currently clad with an intricate network of scaffolding to allow workers access to the one of the tallest points for miles around.

“We did some roof work a couple of years ago with some structural beam replacement on the steeple,” said Forrest Lauher, one of the church’s maintenance coordinators. “After we did that work we found out we had water intrusion coming in from the steeple.”

Lauher said it took about a year to plan the repairs.

“The scaffolding was a little tricky,” he said. “But here recently we pulled the trigger.”

The copper roof on the steeple dates to the mid 1980s, he said.

“(Back then,) they installed that roof on the steeple hanging from bosun’s chairs on hooks,” Lauher said. “It’s not the kind of job you’d like, because they were hanging from swinging ropes. But now we’ve got some scaffolding. We’re going to do it properly and it should last much longer.”

St. Mary’s contracted with Cadillac Roofing of New Braunfels to complete the work. The company Brand-Safeway provided the scaffolding. The work is expected to take about two months, and the workers are almost halfway done, Lauher said.

“Originally we were told we couldn’t scaffold off the church roof,” Lauher said. “So we were going to have to build this big cantilever scaffolding, which would have cost about three times as much.”

Lauher said he and Brand-Safeway came up with a plan to attach the scaffolding to the belltower, which cut the cost by more than half. Even with the savings, Lauher said the scaffolding system along with the massive lift they had to rent cost about a third of the entire project.

“The other two-thirds is the copper roof,” he said.

Lauher fully expects the project to be complete in time for the High Hill Picnic, which takes place the Sunday before Labor Day.

“We’re already ahead of schedule,” he said.