Water Where It Should Not Be
During the recent rain, I started hearing sounds suspiciously like dripping water coming from the ceiling of the front bathroom in Fernley House. Yesterday, I saw where some of that water had appeared, and it wasn't great news.
Here is where some of the water that had got through the roof had pooled: behind the paint on one wall of the bathroom. The bulge was about 30 cm wide. When we poked a hole in it, we were able to drain the water away, and fortunately, it turned out to not be as much water as it appears when you look at it here. But water in this place is not good.
Checking from outside the house, this plumbing vent over the bathroom looked to be the source of the problem, but it was difficult to see from ground level what was actually happening.
Later in the day, Lisa went up onto the roof (which can be accessed from the second-floor balcony) to inspect the situation. She carefully went over to the vent and determined that the seal around it had failed and was letting water through the roof around the base of the vent, where it was probably dripping down the outside of the vent pipe and getting into the ceiling. Because we get so little rain here, this was not much of a problem in the past, but of course we do need to fix it because we do get some rain and snow. It's unclear how much damp we have in the ceiling, and it's a difficult place to access.
Lisa also discovered that a small number of roof shingles had come loose, and one was completely gone. We headed to Lowe's to get repair material.
Well, not a hole, actually; just a missing shingle along the roof line. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be a simple thing to get just one new shingle, and we had to spend $65 to buy an entire box of them just to get one of them. Lisa climbed back onto the roof, where she first nailed back into place those shingles that had come loose but not blown away, and installed one new one to cover the spot where a shingle had gone missing. She suggests that in the longer term, since we had to buy all of those shingles anyway, she will want to replace the entire line of shingles along that part of the roof.
Besides the new shingles, we bought a couple of cans of roof gasket sealant. When things dry out (which should be by this weekend), Lisa will go back up there and re-do the seal around the vent. There are two other vents up there for other plumbing in the house, and she'll take the opportunity to do those as well.
Here is where some of the water that had got through the roof had pooled: behind the paint on one wall of the bathroom. The bulge was about 30 cm wide. When we poked a hole in it, we were able to drain the water away, and fortunately, it turned out to not be as much water as it appears when you look at it here. But water in this place is not good.
Checking from outside the house, this plumbing vent over the bathroom looked to be the source of the problem, but it was difficult to see from ground level what was actually happening.
Later in the day, Lisa went up onto the roof (which can be accessed from the second-floor balcony) to inspect the situation. She carefully went over to the vent and determined that the seal around it had failed and was letting water through the roof around the base of the vent, where it was probably dripping down the outside of the vent pipe and getting into the ceiling. Because we get so little rain here, this was not much of a problem in the past, but of course we do need to fix it because we do get some rain and snow. It's unclear how much damp we have in the ceiling, and it's a difficult place to access.
Lisa also discovered that a small number of roof shingles had come loose, and one was completely gone. We headed to Lowe's to get repair material.
Well, not a hole, actually; just a missing shingle along the roof line. Unfortunately, it does not appear to be a simple thing to get just one new shingle, and we had to spend $65 to buy an entire box of them just to get one of them. Lisa climbed back onto the roof, where she first nailed back into place those shingles that had come loose but not blown away, and installed one new one to cover the spot where a shingle had gone missing. She suggests that in the longer term, since we had to buy all of those shingles anyway, she will want to replace the entire line of shingles along that part of the roof.
Besides the new shingles, we bought a couple of cans of roof gasket sealant. When things dry out (which should be by this weekend), Lisa will go back up there and re-do the seal around the vent. There are two other vents up there for other plumbing in the house, and she'll take the opportunity to do those as well.