Things Got Worse
Remember last week, when I mentioned water seeping into my studio just before Christmas? And the 14" of snow on the ground? Yeah, about that…
What came next was a substantial warming trend that began to melt all the accumulated snow and ice. And rain. Lots of rain.
And of course water started coming into the studio in a more serious way. It filled the lamp shade and dripped onto the carpet. From there it went through the floor and down into the garage where it dripped onto my table saw, causing rust.
I discovered this on the morning of Christmas Eve and we scrambled to staunch the flow. Too much time working on ladders (despite the ice and snow that was still present) and several pitchers of hot water later, we’d managed to melt the ice out of the scupper and water stopped coming in.
The downspout itself had never clogged or frozen, but there was a lot of ice on the upper roof, and it came all the way into the scupper.
Wait. Every time I talk about this someone is confused by what I am dealing with. Here are some photos (taken at other times) that may help explain things.
First, this is the upper roof, and shows the opening through which most of the water that winds up on that roof must flow through to get out:
As you can see, it’s a tunnel through the parapet. It’s not a large opening, only 4" across and a bit taller. It goes through the parapet and out into the scupper. And just what is a scupper? Here’s a local manufacturer’s web page showing one:
The idea is that water flows through the opening on the end and out through the tube that projects off the bottom. The point of the scupper is that it is water tight and it drains into a downspout. Roofing materials seal to the copper so that there are no leaks around it, and all the water flows out into the downspout that goes around the tube on the bottom.
To better explain it, here are two photos showing a different scupper on our roof. It’s a bit easier to understand because it is more exposed.
The first shows the scupper from the top. It has a leaf strainer inserted into it. Water flows off the roof and the goes down through the opening. The second photo shows the same scupper from the outside. The downspout is slipped over the tube coming out of the bottom of the scupper and carries the water away.
As you might guess, the weakness of a scupper is clogging. That can happen if debris blocks the opening in the scupper itself, or if water freezes in the downspout. We knew about those from past experience, but it turns out there is a third way these things can become a problem.
Over several days the temperature never rose above freezing, and we had tons of snow. Heat from the house would slowly escape through the roof and melt a bit of snow, but the temperatures would go down to well below freezing at night, and that water would turn to ice. Over time that ice built up on the roof, in the tunnel through the parapet, and in the scupper itself. It was about 2" thick. Oddly, it did not clog the downspout. Instead it stayed frozen on the roof and in all of the scupper.
With the warm weather and the rain, liquid water built up and needed to go somewhere. But the only outlet was through the scupper which was full of ice and thus clogged.
When I discovered the leak I had a look at the problem scupper, which looks like this in good weather:
Past experience with clogs led me to add the wire mesh to keep debris out, and to cut the side down so water could escape without getting into the house (in theory) if the scupper should clog up.
But it was full of ice and water was actually spurting out in odd directions. Some of it was getting into the house somehow, causing the previously mentioned issues. It was a real mess.
Hopefully that helps with what was going wrong and I can return to what we did to address it. Hot water melted the ice in the scupper (poured over both sides) and that let water start flowing off the roof without going into the house. It only took three or four pitchers of water to get things flowing, but we spent hours making sure the problem was handled (or avoided) in other places as well.
A few days later when there was a break in the rain, I went looking for how water was getting into the house. The entire tunnel through the parapet appears to be sealed with roofing cement. The only possible places where water might be getting in were in the caulk around the scupper itself. That seemed unlikely, but it was all I could find. I re-caulked what I could.
So far things have remained dry in the house. So far. But it hasn’t snowed again, and temperatures have remained above freezing.
This is part of the mess we’re going to talk with the roofer and contractor about. A permanent fix for this is definitely required.
As you can tell, Christmas Eve was far too exciting.
But not all is doom and gloom.
A dehumidifier dried out the studio pretty quickly, and the rust on the table saw will come off easily with a bit of elbow grease. And once Christmas was over and we were back on a normal schedule, I got back to working on the interior of the house.
The first thing I did was trim out around the back door.
Simple trim should not be a big deal, right? That’s true, but…
- There isn’t room for full width trim at the top thanks to the position of the beam.
- There’s a notch in the trim near the bottom left for the box around the radiators.
More specifically, here is the upper left corner:
It still needs some minor sanding, but if you look closely you’ll note that the upper trim is not as wide as the side trim. I had to figure out how to make that happen. Turns out that instead of cutting the miter at 45° the answer was to cut one side at 35° and the other at 55°. Then I had to rip the top trim piece down appropriately and file a bit in the very corner to get the profiles to match.
Here’s a closeup of the notch in the bottom:
That was carefully carved out with a sanding drum in a moto tool.
It took hours for me to get all of that right.
Next, I painted a wall in the guest bedroom:
It was painted ages ago and has been used by guests, but when we redid the windows something caused a crack in the drywall that needed patching. And once that was done we had to repaint, but of course we’ve changed paint brands at least five times so far thanks to the pandemic (some paint suppliers were unable to get stock reliably for the longest time) and it’s not possible to match a sheen exactly if you’re using different paint from different companies, or even different paint varieties from the same manufacturer. Thus the entire wall had to be repainted. No one notices a minor sheen change in a corner.
Next up in this room is to put the outlet covers back on, hang the new blinds, and paint the window sills. Those are on my to-do list for this weekend.
And finally, I finished painting in the conservatory, where we replaced a door with a window:
You can still see the masking tape on the floor where I was painting the baseboard. That’s been removed and the room is back to being as done as we can make it. No more work in there, at least for now.
There is so much more to do. I have to sand and prime around the back door, and do the same around the sliding door upstairs. I also need to paint window sills in three rooms, not just one. And the entire living area downstairs needs paint as well.
Clearly my future lies in paint. And in keeping a wary eye on the weather and figuring out ways to keep our home from becoming an aquarium.
May your future lie in things that are much more fun!