Will the roof hold?

Here and there, roofs have collapsed under the weight of the snow. This reminds me of a thrilling anecdote, which my father once made notorious in Barneveld and the surrounding area. From 1960 to 1963, my father was a municipal inspector for the municipality of Barneveld.

The inspector visits the construction site to check whether it meets the structural and permit requirements.

In the youth village De Glind in the municipality of Barneveld, also known as the foundation Rudolphstichting, a gymnasium hall with a flat roof was built. The roof of a building must be able to support a prescribed weight. How do you check this? Usually by placing building props (extendable metal supports) under the ceiling and adjusting them to the prescribed distance the roof may (and must be able to) sag, the tolerance, and then applying a test load to the roof. This was often done by placing cement bags on the roof. There's plenty of stock on the construction site, the weight of each bag is precisely equal and known, relatively easy to install and remove. Place the prescribed weight on the roof and check that the top of the props (just) doesn't touch the underside of the roof.

Still, lugging cement bags up and down the roof is quite a chore. My father saw that it was just lunchtime and the staff from the adjacent office wanted to get some fresh air. Inventive and unconventional as he was, he suggested that the staff go up onto the roof. Average and total weight aren't difficult to estimate, and the job would be done in barely ten minutes. No sooner said than done. A little later, the roof was tested and approved.

Whether the explanation had been clear enough remains to be seen, but in any case, the concept of props and tolerances hadn't fully sunk in. Years later, the story still circulated about Lont who had chased the office staff onto the roof. If you fall through the roof, it's condemned. If you're still alive and well at your desk after lunch, the roof has passed the test. The staff of the Rudolph Foundation paid for the gymnasium roof inspection with their own lives. "Gespaard en bewaard", spared and saved, as my father used to rhyme every day during his prayer of thanksgiving at dinner.

>>> Translated from Dutch