Wednesday 26 September 2012

More rain, more rot, more leaks

The drywall dudes showed up Monday morning and within 2 hours, they had drywalled the new kitchen, and an hour later, the guy was there to start the mud and tape process.
First layer of mud done
The roofer dudes couldn't come Monday, but arrived Tuesday morning -- just as the glorious weather of the last 3 weeks turned south. They peeled off another section of roof, and found one of the roof sheets over the master bedroom was totally rotted out.
Rotted panel removed
We suspected this panel would be rotten. This is where we had the small leak in February. We have confirmed now that this leak was because the bathroom fan ventilated straight into the attic. Moist air froze on the underside of the roof sheeting, and in the right conditions (a sunny February day with temps just below zero) it melted and ran down the roof sheeting to the window, leaking in. Given that this had been going on for at least 40 years, the rot was to be expected.

While the roofer dudes were stripping the roof, the contractors replaced the window header, re-insulated and installed vapour barrier.
Fixed, awaiting drywall
Around here, it started raining. Hard. The roofer dudes quickly put down the water/ice barrier on the stripped section, re-tarped me and left.

And 4 hours later, the roof started leaking at the newly insulated and plasticized stairwell.
Water source circled. Hole cut to get it out 
Puddles on the plastic
I rigged up some drain systems and collected about a gallon of water over the next 4 hours, half from each leak. The leaks continued for about 2 hours after the rain stopped.

Today, it dawned foggy, but became sunny by this afternoon. No more rain is scheduled for several days. The roofer dudes returned, and more stripping is going on as I type this.

The contractor dudes returned this morning and undid all the nice insulation and plastic they did yesterday. On the bright side, the plastic and insulation allowed us to discover that in fact we had 2 leak sources, about 3' apart. One is inside the sunroom roof, at least ten or more years old, probably associated with the skylights. It's the primary cause of all the rotten would and mold that we found. It's also the leak that someone found and covered up in the distant past (covered it up but didn't fix it, as I described here).

The second leak is associated with removing the roof and re-building it in order to fix everything correctly. We tarped to cover the second -- apparently not well enough, though.

We now have to wait several days for the inside of the roof to dry (again) before re-insulating it. And we're also going to wait for the roofers to finish, to stop the leaks permanently. We were premature once. Not again.

1 comment:

Roofing Contractors Portland Oregon said...

Very informative! Thanks for your generosity of sharing these information. More power to you!