Three generations on the same reed beds
My grandfather cut reed on the Gouritz flats and my father sewed his first ridge in 1979. Dekriet Thatchers has been registered since 1994, working out of a yard on the R325 outside Albertinia, and there are eleven of us on the ladders now. We do not subcontract. The man who measures your roof is on site every day of the job, and the foreman who signs it off is the one who quoted you. Most of our work sits between Mossel Bay and Stilbaai, though we have laid roofs as far as Nieu-Bethesda when the trip was worth it. Four things decide whether a thatch roof lasts forty years or fifteen. We are stubborn about all four. The reed — Albertinia dekriet only, cut April to August, stacked eighteen months in the yard before it is laid. The ridge — sewn in the same reed as the roof, never glued, and renewed on a twelve-year cycle. The wire — galvanised 2.5mm on treated SA pine battens, never nylon and never staples. The pitch — 45 degrees at the minimum. Below that the water walks instead of running, and no amount of good reed saves it.
