Roof Leaks and Karma
And now from our sponsor, a lesson in karma.
A couple weekends ago, I found out at church that we were being asked to go up to the girls' youth camp in Wyoming and cut and move timber affected by the beetle kill. It takes nearly 2 hours to get up there. I have to admit I wasn't happy about losing my whole Saturday for the service activity, but I was planning on going. As the weekend drew near, the weather got very sour, and so did my attitude. I murmured. By Friday night, it was pouring in Colorado-Spring style.
A short detour: Amy is definitely her father's child. When I ask her to do something, she often comes up with ways to flat out tell me no, or to--in my words--dilly dally her way around to get her way. This has been status quo for some time. Routinely I will send her to bed only to have her still milling around 30 minutes later doing some terribly important task. As a dad, that gives me material to launch into her. End detour.
That Friday night at about 10pm, I sent Amy to bed and she commenced in her usual (I thought) dilly dally routine. A while later she came in to talk to me and I immediately launched into her about how she couldn't be obedient, etc. I thought I was being a good dad and teaching her to do as she was told. She said only one sentence, which stopped me in my tracks.
"Dad, my wall has a blister."
Uh oh. I had had issues last year with some small leakage in her ceiling, so I knew just what she meant. I ran upstairs and looked at her wall and found a fist-sized blister of water just below the ceiling. I called Jolayne and ran for the ladder to get up into the attic. I then spent the next 90 min or so hanging from joists and eating insulation while I tried to figure what was going on. Turns out it was the fireplace vent that was leaking, and my fix-it job from last year was, shall we say, not completely appropriately.
Jolayne lanced our wall blister and got things cleaned up while I got buckets in the attic. I later found another location that was leaking from our furnace vent, although not as badly.
At this point, I knew I couldn't go to the girls' camp for timber day. Instead, I had a lovely Saturday of moisture in my future. I should have chosen girls camp. Ain't karma a wonderful thing?!
I spent 4-5 hours on Saturday up on the roof and inside the attic figuring out how to get these leaks fixed. Luckily, I was able to find some really well documented information on the Internet, which showed me exactly where to look.
Isn't the Internet absolutely amazing? I'm floor that some guy took the time to document with minute detail how to fix a leak. He had probably 20 pictures, documented each step of the fix process, and then put it all together. Amazing stuff. Thanks random internet guy!
I think it was the sealant on the flashing that had simply become brittle and chipped apart. I made a nice mess of some high-temp silicone caulking on both vents and hope to have the problem resolved now. This was the first major house issue we've had here, so it's sort of a milestone for us (not one of those good ones, though.)
So the lesson here is that I need to not murmur or something will pop up that's even less fun than what I've been invited to help with. Lesson learned (or as they say at work, learnt). I also learned that Amy is ALWAYS dilly dallying (just most of the time!) Sorry Amy. I'm ready for better karma now, please.
We'll find out soon if I did the job right this time. This is a pic of my attempt to keep the caulk dry (in the rain) while it set up.
The buckets are still up in the attic and the next time it rains when I'm at home I need to climb up and see if there's anything still dripping. I sure hope not. By the way, the view from my second roof (there are two levels) is really quite good. You should come over and check it out.
August Update: After waiting for a good rain storm while I'm actually at home, I climbed up into the attic in my undies the other night to find out that my fix is holding nicely and there's no more water leaking in. Hallelujah. That one ranks right up there on the "crappy daddy jobs" list.
A couple weekends ago, I found out at church that we were being asked to go up to the girls' youth camp in Wyoming and cut and move timber affected by the beetle kill. It takes nearly 2 hours to get up there. I have to admit I wasn't happy about losing my whole Saturday for the service activity, but I was planning on going. As the weekend drew near, the weather got very sour, and so did my attitude. I murmured. By Friday night, it was pouring in Colorado-Spring style.
A short detour: Amy is definitely her father's child. When I ask her to do something, she often comes up with ways to flat out tell me no, or to--in my words--dilly dally her way around to get her way. This has been status quo for some time. Routinely I will send her to bed only to have her still milling around 30 minutes later doing some terribly important task. As a dad, that gives me material to launch into her. End detour.
That Friday night at about 10pm, I sent Amy to bed and she commenced in her usual (I thought) dilly dally routine. A while later she came in to talk to me and I immediately launched into her about how she couldn't be obedient, etc. I thought I was being a good dad and teaching her to do as she was told. She said only one sentence, which stopped me in my tracks.
"Dad, my wall has a blister."
Uh oh. I had had issues last year with some small leakage in her ceiling, so I knew just what she meant. I ran upstairs and looked at her wall and found a fist-sized blister of water just below the ceiling. I called Jolayne and ran for the ladder to get up into the attic. I then spent the next 90 min or so hanging from joists and eating insulation while I tried to figure what was going on. Turns out it was the fireplace vent that was leaking, and my fix-it job from last year was, shall we say, not completely appropriately.
Jolayne lanced our wall blister and got things cleaned up while I got buckets in the attic. I later found another location that was leaking from our furnace vent, although not as badly.
At this point, I knew I couldn't go to the girls' camp for timber day. Instead, I had a lovely Saturday of moisture in my future. I should have chosen girls camp. Ain't karma a wonderful thing?!
I spent 4-5 hours on Saturday up on the roof and inside the attic figuring out how to get these leaks fixed. Luckily, I was able to find some really well documented information on the Internet, which showed me exactly where to look.
Isn't the Internet absolutely amazing? I'm floor that some guy took the time to document with minute detail how to fix a leak. He had probably 20 pictures, documented each step of the fix process, and then put it all together. Amazing stuff. Thanks random internet guy!
I think it was the sealant on the flashing that had simply become brittle and chipped apart. I made a nice mess of some high-temp silicone caulking on both vents and hope to have the problem resolved now. This was the first major house issue we've had here, so it's sort of a milestone for us (not one of those good ones, though.)
So the lesson here is that I need to not murmur or something will pop up that's even less fun than what I've been invited to help with. Lesson learned (or as they say at work, learnt). I also learned that Amy is ALWAYS dilly dallying (just most of the time!) Sorry Amy. I'm ready for better karma now, please.
We'll find out soon if I did the job right this time. This is a pic of my attempt to keep the caulk dry (in the rain) while it set up.
The buckets are still up in the attic and the next time it rains when I'm at home I need to climb up and see if there's anything still dripping. I sure hope not. By the way, the view from my second roof (there are two levels) is really quite good. You should come over and check it out.August Update: After waiting for a good rain storm while I'm actually at home, I climbed up into the attic in my undies the other night to find out that my fix is holding nicely and there's no more water leaking in. Hallelujah. That one ranks right up there on the "crappy daddy jobs" list.
Comments