January 4, 2021 The morning of Saturday, January 2nd it started raining, and then it turned to snow… in the AM, there was one leak in the tower, in the PM there were many leaks in the tower. You’d think this would get old after a while, huh?
We texted Munch with pictures and a video, who said he’d come on Monday, and he did. This time he and his guy cut out some of the wall on the interior of the window room to see if the east wall was leaking as well as the north-facing wall with the door and porch, which they believed were now watertight. There was water in the wall, so up they went to discover the source. Munch said that water was dripping/dribbling off the tower roof, down the siding and going between the siding and the sheathing all the way down the wall to the level of the porch, then running inside the house and down the interior columns and walls. He described there being a gap where the siding met the angled roof line (see red arrow) that was improperly flashed, which he proposed to fill with silicone until spring. Of course, the temperature was in the 30’s and we had already established that it needed to be in the 70’s for the silicone to cure. Munch described how he used a small propane torch and proceeded to heat the tube of silicone until it was warmed to his satisfaction. Then he lay on his stomach on the roof by the hatch, leaned over the edge and filled the gap, poking it down into the hole with the pull down rod from the staircase (since we had cleaned up all the random pieces of wood and crap he would have otherwise used). Can you picture that? I’m pretty sure that maneuver was not anything close to OSHA approved…. and so glad we didn’t have any idea in advance of what he planned to do!!!
So, why was this gap there? And what was going on up there, in an area so far from the ground (87 feet) that we couldn’t really see? By enlarging these photos, taken on my phone in the fall, we were able to see that the repair of the lightning gash really didn’t look very tight. Tongue and groove siding needs to be fitted properly, especially when it is vertical, and this looked wrong, even to the untrained eye. And why was the flashing not corrected? Sigh. If only we knew then what we know now….
Supposedly we are good until spring. It may not rain until then, but there is always melting snow… which probably behaves a lot like rain! 🙂
Two positives – while on the tower roof, Munch adjusted and tightened the flag to fly straight, thanks! And also he re-aligned the weather station to actually point north, thanks again!
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