Roof Update

Our roof guy called and let us know that there are a few missing and/or broken slates up towards the roof ridge that are probably causing our leakage. So we'll be setting up our roof appointment very soon. But probably not soon enough to avoid Friday's 80% chance of rain. Argh. What to do about that? Towels in the attic? An elaborate system of plastic sheeting? A whole-house umbrella? Suggestions welcome.

Also, in other news, Lucy had her Birthday yesterday and will have her daycare party tomorrow. So far she has really enjoyed being the Birthday Girl.

Roof Results: Inconclusive

Jake went up the attic hatch, but sadly, has not been able to determine the source of the leakage into Lucy's room. We have a call into our roof guy, and we await further information. Or rain. So far, clear skies ahead until Friday. Updates as events warrant.

Roof Woes

There is a leak in the roof. We must investigate tomorrow. While we were away this weekend, it leaked into Lucy's room. This makes me very sad, because Lucy's room was the one we fixed up (insulated ourselves) and had drywalled just two years ago (yes, she's almost 2!).

Argh.

Further updates as we figure out what's up.

Cold Shower

This morning, we woke to find that our "water heater" can no longer be called by that name; it is now demoted to "large, useless tank of cold water."  The water heater has been at the top of the appliance failure-watch list for quite some time, but did it have to go today?  I guess it's as good (or bad) as any other day, eh?

No News is Good News

Not much new to report from 83 Durant. We've been busy with non-83-Durant work, sadly. We did get an estimate on replacing the back flat roof with a white rubber roof, which offers both improved durability and energy efficiency. They will also take care of the front door overhang and the rotten soffit/fascia boards (the ones that are invitations to every critter in the world to come live in our house). We'll probably be getting this job underway in the next month or so. We also got an estimate on getting drywall installed in the spare bedroom. Jake and I are going to do the demolition ourselves, which will include ripping out the horse-hair plaster and lathes, and then installing new insulation. We'll get the professionals to install drywall. This project will probaby wait until after school is over. Should be good and messy, but also exciting to see what's behind those walls!

It's pouring rain in Lowell, so we're glad we made a quick window-well cover yesterday. I bought a big piece of plexiglass yesterday. We'll eventually reinforce it with a wood frame (I think) and we still have to do some brickwork around the well, but for now, it's keeping the rain out quite nicely!

MacGyvering Madness at 83 Durant

Yesterday, in an attempt to stem the tide of water entering through the basement window by the driveway, I put a heavy-duty trash bag into the big open well area that normally lets water seep into the window. [Normally, such a window well should be several feet deep and filled with drainage rock at the bottom; ours is about four inches deep, and solid concrete. No wonder the window leaks. We need more of a submarine porthole.]


My trash bag and towel solution worked beyond my wildest dreams, and seems to have kept a LOT of water out of the basement, which is always a good thing. But it created a rather amazing trough of water outside. You can kinda get the gist of it here:

We figured having a pond of water there wasn't such a good idea, so we went about a bailing out program, helped by our trusty SHOP VAC. We heart our shop vac!

The drainage pipe in the middle of the driveway has frozen up (not surprisingly) so all the melting snow water is just sitting there. We devised a plan to clear out and then defrost the ice plug. Here's shop-vac in action:


After sucking all the water out, we tried adding a couple of kettles of hot water, to no avail. Jake tried using a metal fence post to assault the ice plug, but it was also sadly unsuccessful, unless you want to call breaking off a part of the pipe successful. We then tried using a little electric water heater -- the kind you use to heat up a mug of tea. It too was unsuccessful, although admittedly, we didn't try for too long, as we started to get nervous about all the extension cords and potential fire/electrical hazards we were creating.

We'll hope things warm up enough tomorrow to get some movement. For now, all is well.

On Calculations and Basement Hydration

Our insulation arrived today, via the friendly Man in Brown. I was rather shocked to see how very large the four boxes were. I did in fact order four packages of insulation, but somehow, I thought they were going to be...uh...smaller.

Here are the specs I read on the website, and which you also see above on the packaging:
Sq.Ft. 48.96
6-1/2 Thick
Wdth. x Lgth. Ins. 15 x 94
Includes 5 pieces

So I thought each package contained 5 pieces which, together, were 94 inches long. Since we had four empty bays in need of insulation, each 93 inches tall, I ordered four packages. It seemed perfect.

(You can see for yourself if this is a reasonable mistake to have made by looking at the site where I bought it here. Perhaps mistake number one was having no idea how much insulation should cost per foot. I dunno, it seemed reasonable.)

It was brought to my attention by my mathematician husband that in fact, the packaging meant that there were 5 pieces, EACH being 94 inches long. So we now have FIVE TIMES the insulation required for this job.

I feel kinda dumb.

On the bright side, we do have plans to tear out the plaster in the spare bedroom, which would be the ideal opportunity to add more / put in new insulation there, and these batts will be perfect for it.

Also, I like that they're KRAFT-FACED BATTS. I wonder if the Kraft food people are the same people responsible for the Kraft paper on the insulation. I wonder if Kraft cheese provides any insulating benefits. Many readers are already aware of my previous encounters with bats, so the fact that I would welcome this many batts, kraft-faced or not, is rather surprising.

_____

While I was telling my mom the above story, she happened to ask if we had any water in the basement (the presence or absence of water inside our house is a regular discussion point for us). I realized I hadn't checked the situation with the problematic basement window by the driveway lately. We've just had a ton of rain on top of snow and sleet, so it seemed wise to investigate. There were, predictably, some very wet towels inside that window. No surprises; fixing that is a spring plan, and the towels were doing just what they should. You can see the state of things here:














The surprise was water on the floor in several previously dry places. None of the water was by walls, so it seems that the water was seeping up through the floor, through various patched cracks in the cement. Oh dear.


It's not an enormous amount of water, but still, I don't like that it's there. Water is our enemy. [A colleague in my department told us that, in a frightening, dead-serious way.]

We're not on red-alert, but we do need to keep an eye on this new development. Sigh.

In which we break our house

It has been raining a lot. The chimney has been leaking a lot. This has led to the discovery of water in the spare room closet. It's obvious that this has happened before, but it's the first time we've seen an active leak. So it was not so surprising exactly, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. The plaster is all wet and soft, so we decided to take out a big hunk of it, both to get rid of some of the wetness and (we hoped) expose the leak so that we could direct it more productively (say, into a bucket, rather than into the rest of the plaster).


It's rather shocking to see a hammer knock off plaster.

With our shop-vac, we sucked up all the mess. Jake hung some towels from the laths, hoping to direct the water seepage out of the walls. There's not any active driping at this point. I think we actually contained a fair amount of the drippage in the attic by putting more plastic up there.


Incidentally, horse-hair plaster is crazy stuff. There are CLUMPS of hair in there. I am not kidding. We took some pictures, but you can't really see it; you'll just have to take our word for it.


So that's where we stand. I don't know if there's anything else we can do at this point, other than wait for chimney-repairing weather, which may be a few months.