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Water, We Hates It
Jan. 11th, 2017 11:19 amSo the weather services were predicting a truly apocalyptic storm this last week. Especially over the weekend, they were pretty much saying, "Stay inside if you don't need to go out, or you might die."
It was pretty ridiculous, especially when you saw the hours of mere drizzle throughout the day.
Despite the inanity of their hysterical warnings, the truth is that it was an unusual amount of rain for such a short period, and that does put pressure on our infrastructure. So, rivers are raging, and aquatic park is flooded.
And, and our house is leaking.
Dammit.
What a crappy start to the year.
The problem is in the back of our kitchen, between the cupboard, back door, and bathroom. Water is coming down through the big beam that marks the original back of the house and also through one of our new windows.
And darn it, I hate mysteries, and this is another one. Because the rest of the ceiling, including the five feet or so of ceiling between those two places, looks fine. So where is the water coming from? Dunno.
(Presumably: from the flat roof right above, one of two small flat roofs in our house, both representing extensions of the original house.)
Oh, and let me say, water suddenly coming down in your kitchen at 6pm, when there is a storm thundering by outside: not very pleasant for your stress and mental health, especially not when poor Kimberly has been sick abed since New Year's Eve.
I thought for a minute we might be in luck, because our roof has a shocking 18-year warranty on the workmanship and a 40-year warranty on the materials.
Except, it turns out, not the flat roofs. Those only had a 10-year warranty.
(I can't really complain about that; flat roofs are tricky.)
Here's the real problem: when we put in that flat roof, they had to rip out the house's old deck. No problem. It was rickety, looking like it'd been built by an 8-year-old with misshapen Lincoln Logs(tm).
We just finally rebuilt that deck several years ago. 2012, I think. Then we just spent a hard day improving its weatherproofing last July.
And now it seems likely that they're going to have to rip it out again to get to the roof.
@#*)@#(*@#.
(The deck was totally sour anyway: it gets too much sunlight and that reflects off the white walls, and it all turns into a blinding furnace. So it's never gotten a lot of use. But, darnit, it was also supposed to improve the value of the house when we rebuilt it, so I don't want to be right back where we started.)
This is just a continuation of water hating us over the last year.
First we had our old water heater go out and we were forced to replace it with a tankless. And now it looks like our installers did something bad with the electricity because we've had the circuit pop three times. Want to know when it did last? That'd be this morning, as I stepped around recycling bins under leaks, to get to the bathroom.
Second we had the mysterious leak in our bathroom which was never entirely solved to my satisfaction. I *think* the problem was poor grouting in our new tub area by our ex-contractor, as regrouting parts of it seem to have lessened, maybe even solved the issue. But our handyman didn't investigate the tub very thoroughly, and so there's still cracked, broken grouting I can see with my naked eye.
The lesson here seems to be: don't engage in home improvement. Too many of our problems seem to come from work we've had done. Like the deck and bathroom.
Current status: wait and see. Hope tonight's storm doesn't do too much damage.
Kimberly has been a total champ and contacted several roofers, including the people who did the initial work.
(I was going to say poor work, but actually the roofing has been fine up until this, and I can't argue with a flat roof having an issue 17 years later. But they did awful work on the gutters, which they literally left dangling from the house until we argued them into coming back to fix it. I was a bit offended, however, by their attitude today, because it was so two-faced. When we thought it might be under warranty they had no one available for days, then when we realized it wasn't because it was the flat roof we were "at the top of their list", and then they called back and said, oh, since we were in Berkeley, they didn't do repair. So much for the top of their list and that extremely high level of service they provide to out-of-warranty customers.)
But, there's no one scheduled to see us yet, let alone solve the problem, let alone tell us the cost in decks and dollars. Kimberly is continuing calling about, and I've told her to let me know if she gets too tired out, as she is still recovering from the flu.
Edit: A Few Hours Later, The End of the Story? After calling numerous roofers and setting up a few appointments for tomorrow, Kimberly got someone to come out today.
They arrived, immediately spotted that the roofing material wasn't well-attached to the stucco, and recaulked it. They did ominously say that the roof should be replaced sometime, due to the poor work (c.f. our problems with the original roofers), but that again hits the deck problem, so we'll hope there aren't any more issues and that they did solve the problem.
Cost was $350, which is a lot for half-an-hours work, but they said it was their minimum, and I had no particular objection after an evening and morning of stress.
So fingers crossed.
It was pretty ridiculous, especially when you saw the hours of mere drizzle throughout the day.
Despite the inanity of their hysterical warnings, the truth is that it was an unusual amount of rain for such a short period, and that does put pressure on our infrastructure. So, rivers are raging, and aquatic park is flooded.
And, and our house is leaking.
Dammit.
What a crappy start to the year.
The problem is in the back of our kitchen, between the cupboard, back door, and bathroom. Water is coming down through the big beam that marks the original back of the house and also through one of our new windows.
And darn it, I hate mysteries, and this is another one. Because the rest of the ceiling, including the five feet or so of ceiling between those two places, looks fine. So where is the water coming from? Dunno.
(Presumably: from the flat roof right above, one of two small flat roofs in our house, both representing extensions of the original house.)
Oh, and let me say, water suddenly coming down in your kitchen at 6pm, when there is a storm thundering by outside: not very pleasant for your stress and mental health, especially not when poor Kimberly has been sick abed since New Year's Eve.
I thought for a minute we might be in luck, because our roof has a shocking 18-year warranty on the workmanship and a 40-year warranty on the materials.
Except, it turns out, not the flat roofs. Those only had a 10-year warranty.
(I can't really complain about that; flat roofs are tricky.)
Here's the real problem: when we put in that flat roof, they had to rip out the house's old deck. No problem. It was rickety, looking like it'd been built by an 8-year-old with misshapen Lincoln Logs(tm).
We just finally rebuilt that deck several years ago. 2012, I think. Then we just spent a hard day improving its weatherproofing last July.
And now it seems likely that they're going to have to rip it out again to get to the roof.
@#*)@#(*@#.
(The deck was totally sour anyway: it gets too much sunlight and that reflects off the white walls, and it all turns into a blinding furnace. So it's never gotten a lot of use. But, darnit, it was also supposed to improve the value of the house when we rebuilt it, so I don't want to be right back where we started.)
This is just a continuation of water hating us over the last year.
First we had our old water heater go out and we were forced to replace it with a tankless. And now it looks like our installers did something bad with the electricity because we've had the circuit pop three times. Want to know when it did last? That'd be this morning, as I stepped around recycling bins under leaks, to get to the bathroom.
Second we had the mysterious leak in our bathroom which was never entirely solved to my satisfaction. I *think* the problem was poor grouting in our new tub area by our ex-contractor, as regrouting parts of it seem to have lessened, maybe even solved the issue. But our handyman didn't investigate the tub very thoroughly, and so there's still cracked, broken grouting I can see with my naked eye.
The lesson here seems to be: don't engage in home improvement. Too many of our problems seem to come from work we've had done. Like the deck and bathroom.
Current status: wait and see. Hope tonight's storm doesn't do too much damage.
Kimberly has been a total champ and contacted several roofers, including the people who did the initial work.
(I was going to say poor work, but actually the roofing has been fine up until this, and I can't argue with a flat roof having an issue 17 years later. But they did awful work on the gutters, which they literally left dangling from the house until we argued them into coming back to fix it. I was a bit offended, however, by their attitude today, because it was so two-faced. When we thought it might be under warranty they had no one available for days, then when we realized it wasn't because it was the flat roof we were "at the top of their list", and then they called back and said, oh, since we were in Berkeley, they didn't do repair. So much for the top of their list and that extremely high level of service they provide to out-of-warranty customers.)
But, there's no one scheduled to see us yet, let alone solve the problem, let alone tell us the cost in decks and dollars. Kimberly is continuing calling about, and I've told her to let me know if she gets too tired out, as she is still recovering from the flu.
Edit: A Few Hours Later, The End of the Story? After calling numerous roofers and setting up a few appointments for tomorrow, Kimberly got someone to come out today.
They arrived, immediately spotted that the roofing material wasn't well-attached to the stucco, and recaulked it. They did ominously say that the roof should be replaced sometime, due to the poor work (c.f. our problems with the original roofers), but that again hits the deck problem, so we'll hope there aren't any more issues and that they did solve the problem.
Cost was $350, which is a lot for half-an-hours work, but they said it was their minimum, and I had no particular objection after an evening and morning of stress.
So fingers crossed.