when it rains it pours..

[muldoon]

what a storm this morning. I sat here watching the stormy weather blow in after the satellite tv went out. It rained pretty good last night and really dumped twice this morning. I was watching the water in my backyard keep rising, it was 4-5 inches deep in the middle and creeping its way towards the back door. It got about 2 feet from the backdoor when I started getting nervous. It seems a few of the hangers from the gutters busted off from the wind/weight of the water and the storm all drained into one spot where it had nowhere to go fast enough. I put a huge 50gallon trash can under the waterfall only to see it fill in less than 2 minutes. no help there.

So I spend 45 minutes in the pouring ass rain trying to re-hang the gutters, afraid were about to flooded. I do manage to get it rehung .. and manage to drop my cordless dewalt in 6 inches of rain/mud water in the process. nice.

Looking at the front yard, the street is flooded - leaves in the gutter four houses down. The rain has crept up over the front yard, and is halfway between the sidewalk and front door. yikes.

Before I could even go look at that, as I am toweling off in the garage from the back gutter work - my wife says come look at this. Water is pouring from my attic door down into the main hallway. holy crap. I pull the waterlogged door down and go in the attic to find the ac/furnace vent (where the vent penetrates the roof) is leaking and water is streaming in. All the wood in a 4foot by 4foot section is visibly wet, the insulation is soaked. Seems the wind was strong enough to knock the exposed stack sideways about 45 degrees and tear the seal around it. Not much I can do with that until I can get on the roof - so I put a big 96 quart cooler in the attic to catch the water and a towel around the vent pipe. I'll get on the roof tomorrow and see what needs to be done from there.

I have to go to a wedding in a few minutes and wont be home for 10-12 hours. Hope my house is ok when I get home. Looks like I'm going to be quite busy tomorrow. (and it wont be brewing as planned )

[ScottA]

Sounds like a really crappy weekend. Tie off that vent in the attic with some metal straps so it can't move after you get the leak fixed. Good luck. Maybe the sun will come out tomorrow.

[MountainDon]

G/L with all that muldoon.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Muldoon, sorry to hear about all that mess. It does seem like when it rains it pours.  Hope you dry out soon and that the fixes are less major than it might seem.  Poor folks getting rain like that on their wedding day!  Hope it is an indoor wedding!!

[glenn kangiser]

Crimoney, muldoon.  That is crappy.  Where did you ever get so much water?

I'm not used to seeing a place where the water builds up like that.  Here it all runs down hill - except where I've been with the Bobcat - that makes a muddy mess.

Hope things get better. 

[Sassy]

Well, we did have a flood in the office in our house in the valley...  I usually keep the door closed as we don't use it anymore - it's got lots of outdated computer equipment & lots of paperwork stored in there...  I went to look for some manilla envelopes & stepped on soggy carpet.  Lots of the boxes of records/paperwork were soaked, mildew on the walls - don't know how long it was wet like that.  Got everything off the floor & ran a fan for days in there.  Now the carpet needs to be pulled out but there are great big computer desks in there with stacks of computer stuff that Glenn has collected over the years.  I don't know what to throw away or what to keep...  So, now that the floor is dry, I just keep the door closed 

Sorry about your experience, Muldoon    Yours sounds a bit more extensive... 

[peternap]

Dorry Muldoon. Had those days and I have nothing but sympathy.

[muldoon]

thanks for the kind words guys.  got home from the (indoor) wedding to find the house in good shape with no further troubles. 

Scott, the attic side looks good, the vent is already strapped in and seems solid.  Only wishy on the the top after the roof penetration. 

went up this morning to look at the roof and found the trouble quite quick.  Seems the folks who had the house before me had the furnace vent cap replaced at some point.  (perhaps it was not above the ridge originally and they corrected it at some point?) anyway, when they did that they used two storm collars at the seam between the new top and the existing vent - however they neglected to anchor or seal them.  Apparently at some point in time the wind knocked the bottom collar up and created a gap where rain could come in.  This is just horrendous. 



I added silicone to the bottom two seals - then wrapped the entire seam with aluminum tape.  heavily.  sealed it quite good and burndished all the wrinkles out.  It was solid and waterright then, but just looked horrendous.  Like I had wrapped the vent in aluminum foil.  I sprayed it with some brown rustoleum paint to semi match the house and roofing.  Doesn't look terrible, and its fixed at least.  I'm not particularly happy with it, but I am not going to replace the entire vent and cap either.  It's gonna have to do for now. 



As the the backyard - I have been "putting off" the french drain for over a year now, looks like I really need to get serious about it.