It’s raining

A big storm has been rolling through much of the Midwest. Here in Indy we got a fair bit of rain, a good steady soaking all through the day yesterday and much of the night. Inside it stayed mostly dry, which is a good thing. We’ve just recently had the roof replaced by a contractor who has a great reputation for being very thorough, which we like, but since he works alone (sometimes his daughter helps), it took him a little while to get the roof done. He had gotten the old shingles off and new tar paper on when a big rain storm blew in over night. I got up early and went into the attic to see if things were holding up, they weren’t. We had about a dozen leaks through the roof into the attic, we scrambled for as many buckets and pots as we could. Our contractor came right over and tarped the whole roof which took care of every leak except one around the chimney. The water from this leak was running across the rafters above the living room and dripping into a bowl on the couch. He worked a bit on that leak and finally got it stopped. When the rain let up he finished the roof and it looks great.

Insurance paid for the bulk of the work thanks to a spring hailstorm (the same one that blew over the hickory tree that we’re now splitting). Just in time too, the old roof was in pretty poor shape, many of the shingles had lost all their gravel and more than a few were cracking. We opted for better shingles than were on the roof before. We had the choice of regular three tab 25 year shingles or 30 year laminated shingles. Since the house exterior is brick the laminated shingles, which have a sort of shake pattern, help to break up the square lines from the brick. It looks very good.

The basement last night did not fair so well. Along with the roof the gutters are being replaced and were removed when the dumpster was here. Unfortunately the gutter guy is behind and hasn’t gotten to us yet. All that rain on the roof fell right along the house and soaked through the foundation. This was a real problem when we moved in, clogged dry wells and gutters meant that the basement leaked consistently. I cleaned the gutters (often) and diverted the down spouts out of the non-functioning dry wells and away from the house. This really dried the basement nicely. It wasn’t perfect but we were almost there. Another problem we have is that there are places around the basement where the grade runs to the the house rather than away. We have a pile of dirt left by the previous owners and I’ve got to get around to filling in these low spots sometime. Anyway, the leaks in the basement last night weren’t too bad, mostly just a thin layer of water in much of the basement and some of the garage. There’s no carpeting down there so no harm done.