AlanW
12-02-2003, 08:59 PM
I have a bizzare situation and associated story that goes with it.
I inherited a house that belonged to my dad. This was a house he and I built together on weekly paychecks and through lengthy illnesses requiring surgery and extended hospital stays. At the time, dad had no insurance, so the $15K that his operation cost came out of the sale of our Bethel house, a tiny ranch style on a corner that had just seen city sewer/water come in. Forced to move into our unfinished new house somewhat before it was ready, a lot of corners were cut on construction.
We moved in without heat, running water, plumbing or electrical outlets.
Power came from a single extention cord run out to a tree with a temp hookup.
Toilet was a camping type with 5 gal tank.
Heat came from a Reznor gas unit with forced air.
Water came in plastic milk jugs we filled while visiting friends and family.
We drove around in an old VW beetle with no working heater that could barely make it up the hill we live on.
Now you have a sliver of the picture of our life in 1970.
Now for the house.
It is a nicely constructed home in many respects, but for the fact that some shortcuts were made out of stupidity and lack of funds.
The house has a shed roof that has a pitch of only 2' over 36'. The east end of the roof is the lower end. It has NO overhang! it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that means in terms of wall rot.
The roof also had a plastic liner in it. So it couldn't breathe. During the late 1980s, we had lots of leaks and sections of roof have rotted. Dad just kept patching over these with another layer of mineral faced roll roofing. That's all we could do, as the roof would be exposed to the weather and this is not a dry climate.
By the early 1990s, dad got the 'bright' idea to build a combination shelter over the damaged roof and also to use that as the beginning of a new master bedroom and library/study. I told him on more than one occasion he was nuts!
Despite my attempts to reason it away, he stubbornly went ahead to make one of the worst mistakes and build a half-assed structure with two roofs that face each other and have a steeper pitch. This structure covers 60% of the total original roof area.
Dad passed away before he could finish it. That was 1998. What's there is a framed in structure that looks more makeshift than architecturally permanent. It's got a crude roof on it with roll roofing on the top level roofs. The exterior walls are covered in 15lb tar-felt.
This structure was NAILED down into the already rotted roof and is not very well attached to the house. But so far, it hasn't blown off, even with 80+mph gusts.
The major problem is that the roof under this structure is in various stages of rot. Much of the original roof has nothing more than the joists with the sheathing in between having long disintigrated. The roof has gullies at which the bottoms of these gullies is cracked and holed. If you stepped there, your foot would go right through to the sheetrock beneath. Certainly not the least bit water tight.
Now here's my immediate problem:
We had some strong winds last month. Immediately following that, we had some rain, and for the first time since that addition has been there, we got streams of water coming through the ceilings in the livingroom, down through the central load bearing wall and through the carrying beam below, where it flooded my office in the finished basement.
What appears to have happened is that the roll roofing was lacking in edging trim to hold it down. It was left to hang over the edge, flapping in the wind. Well after 10 years of flapping, some of it got ripped away. At the apex where the two shed style roofs meet at the highest point, the rool roofing is folded back and partly torn from the roof. Now when it rains, water comes in through that roof, down through the rotten original roof, and finds its way along the sheetrock to various openings where it drains like a water faucet.
I made an attempt to get up on a ladder and see if it were possible for me to climb up on that roof to make the repair myself. But I have some medical conditions that cause me to have a severe balance problem and weakness in my legs. I almost got stuck on that ladder unable to get down and nearly had to have the wife call 911 to get help. I did manage to get down off the ladder, but the incident underscored the fact that I am in need of outside help.
I'm quite a capable carpenter, but age and health are starting to put limits on what I can do now.
I have been doing a major renovation job all summer on this house, despite extreme fatique and an increasing weakness and loss of stamina.
I somehow managed to replace a 100 square foot section of the original roof that is under that shelter, gutting it completely (as that section had collapsed after harboring families of squirrels for ten years or more) and re framing with pressure treated lumber, then putting down sheathing and rewiring the whole bathroom, adding insulation, sheetrock, etc.
I rebuilt the exterior wall from the inside. Leaving the exterior siding intact. the whole time. I tore out the walls a section at a time, and built new modular frames from pressure treated lumber, put my 30lb asphalt paper on the plywood side of each frame, and pounded them into position. I had to rebuild the floor joists before I could do the walls even!! The bath is on a 3' overhang, so I was able to reach the underside from a low scaffold about 4' off the ground and since I'm 6' tall, I was able to comfortably reach the 10' high overhang and raise a new joist frame into place in one corner where the joists were completely gone. I rebuilt all the rotten floor joists, put down new underlayment and flooring and then did my wall.
That's all behind me now... it took from July to November to complete the major parts and get it weather proofed. The wife bought Mills Pride bathroom vanity / closet kits and I assembled them and installed new plumbing and started to put the finishing touches in. The bath is coming along very nicely now.
But this upper level roof problem is threatening the whole house now.
I need help with that.
I have taken photos (with the aid of a long pole attached to a digital camera) of the top roof (the lower roof is accessed by a staircase my dad and I built) and can see clearly that it is a one day job for someone with some reasonable all-around carpentry/roofing skill.
The problem is, I can't find a contractor who wants to help. I even tried online and got back a negative response after five days searching their database. seems the contractors around here are busy building so many new homes and can pick their best jobs.
I am wondering what I can do to get this roof shored up so it will make it through the winter.
I am in the beginning stages of gutting a bedroom on the east side (next to the bathroom that I spent all summer gutting and rebuilding down to the new frame). My wife's expecting our first child in April and I am working like a banshee to get this spare bedroom renovated.
The room is probably worse than the bathroom was. It's partlly under the upstairs structure but 60% of its roof is open to the sky.
This room literally had a waterfall flowing INSIDE the east wall!!
The room has been sealed off for 3 years.
I entered this month to begin working on it. I discovered that the windows and frames had falled out of the walls--they just disintigrated until the glass fell out.
When I started taking apart the wall, I found nothing left between the sheetrock ond the asbestos exterior siding. All the insulation, studs and sheathing had vaporized. I found a pile of mulch-like material at the base of the wall behind the heating convector, after removing the sheetrock. The exterior siding is barely holding together, but for the strenght of RTV rubber silicone glue that was used to seal the seams!
I have my work cut out for me on this room.
But in the meantime, I need to find a solution to repairing my roof. I have called friends who knew this or that person who was in the business, but after a week of no calls returned, I'm quickly running out of time.
Is there anyone in the western Conn area that can spend a day and shore up some roll roofing and maybe nail down some strips to stop the wind from tearing the overhanging flaps?
I'm looking for ideas, volunteer help, paid help (at modest rates--I'll pay cash).
Any constructive and thoughtful ideas are welcome at this point.
'Hope I haven't bored ya'll too much with this story..
I inherited a house that belonged to my dad. This was a house he and I built together on weekly paychecks and through lengthy illnesses requiring surgery and extended hospital stays. At the time, dad had no insurance, so the $15K that his operation cost came out of the sale of our Bethel house, a tiny ranch style on a corner that had just seen city sewer/water come in. Forced to move into our unfinished new house somewhat before it was ready, a lot of corners were cut on construction.
We moved in without heat, running water, plumbing or electrical outlets.
Power came from a single extention cord run out to a tree with a temp hookup.
Toilet was a camping type with 5 gal tank.
Heat came from a Reznor gas unit with forced air.
Water came in plastic milk jugs we filled while visiting friends and family.
We drove around in an old VW beetle with no working heater that could barely make it up the hill we live on.
Now you have a sliver of the picture of our life in 1970.
Now for the house.
It is a nicely constructed home in many respects, but for the fact that some shortcuts were made out of stupidity and lack of funds.
The house has a shed roof that has a pitch of only 2' over 36'. The east end of the roof is the lower end. It has NO overhang! it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what that means in terms of wall rot.
The roof also had a plastic liner in it. So it couldn't breathe. During the late 1980s, we had lots of leaks and sections of roof have rotted. Dad just kept patching over these with another layer of mineral faced roll roofing. That's all we could do, as the roof would be exposed to the weather and this is not a dry climate.
By the early 1990s, dad got the 'bright' idea to build a combination shelter over the damaged roof and also to use that as the beginning of a new master bedroom and library/study. I told him on more than one occasion he was nuts!
Despite my attempts to reason it away, he stubbornly went ahead to make one of the worst mistakes and build a half-assed structure with two roofs that face each other and have a steeper pitch. This structure covers 60% of the total original roof area.
Dad passed away before he could finish it. That was 1998. What's there is a framed in structure that looks more makeshift than architecturally permanent. It's got a crude roof on it with roll roofing on the top level roofs. The exterior walls are covered in 15lb tar-felt.
This structure was NAILED down into the already rotted roof and is not very well attached to the house. But so far, it hasn't blown off, even with 80+mph gusts.
The major problem is that the roof under this structure is in various stages of rot. Much of the original roof has nothing more than the joists with the sheathing in between having long disintigrated. The roof has gullies at which the bottoms of these gullies is cracked and holed. If you stepped there, your foot would go right through to the sheetrock beneath. Certainly not the least bit water tight.
Now here's my immediate problem:
We had some strong winds last month. Immediately following that, we had some rain, and for the first time since that addition has been there, we got streams of water coming through the ceilings in the livingroom, down through the central load bearing wall and through the carrying beam below, where it flooded my office in the finished basement.
What appears to have happened is that the roll roofing was lacking in edging trim to hold it down. It was left to hang over the edge, flapping in the wind. Well after 10 years of flapping, some of it got ripped away. At the apex where the two shed style roofs meet at the highest point, the rool roofing is folded back and partly torn from the roof. Now when it rains, water comes in through that roof, down through the rotten original roof, and finds its way along the sheetrock to various openings where it drains like a water faucet.
I made an attempt to get up on a ladder and see if it were possible for me to climb up on that roof to make the repair myself. But I have some medical conditions that cause me to have a severe balance problem and weakness in my legs. I almost got stuck on that ladder unable to get down and nearly had to have the wife call 911 to get help. I did manage to get down off the ladder, but the incident underscored the fact that I am in need of outside help.
I'm quite a capable carpenter, but age and health are starting to put limits on what I can do now.
I have been doing a major renovation job all summer on this house, despite extreme fatique and an increasing weakness and loss of stamina.
I somehow managed to replace a 100 square foot section of the original roof that is under that shelter, gutting it completely (as that section had collapsed after harboring families of squirrels for ten years or more) and re framing with pressure treated lumber, then putting down sheathing and rewiring the whole bathroom, adding insulation, sheetrock, etc.
I rebuilt the exterior wall from the inside. Leaving the exterior siding intact. the whole time. I tore out the walls a section at a time, and built new modular frames from pressure treated lumber, put my 30lb asphalt paper on the plywood side of each frame, and pounded them into position. I had to rebuild the floor joists before I could do the walls even!! The bath is on a 3' overhang, so I was able to reach the underside from a low scaffold about 4' off the ground and since I'm 6' tall, I was able to comfortably reach the 10' high overhang and raise a new joist frame into place in one corner where the joists were completely gone. I rebuilt all the rotten floor joists, put down new underlayment and flooring and then did my wall.
That's all behind me now... it took from July to November to complete the major parts and get it weather proofed. The wife bought Mills Pride bathroom vanity / closet kits and I assembled them and installed new plumbing and started to put the finishing touches in. The bath is coming along very nicely now.
But this upper level roof problem is threatening the whole house now.
I need help with that.
I have taken photos (with the aid of a long pole attached to a digital camera) of the top roof (the lower roof is accessed by a staircase my dad and I built) and can see clearly that it is a one day job for someone with some reasonable all-around carpentry/roofing skill.
The problem is, I can't find a contractor who wants to help. I even tried online and got back a negative response after five days searching their database. seems the contractors around here are busy building so many new homes and can pick their best jobs.
I am wondering what I can do to get this roof shored up so it will make it through the winter.
I am in the beginning stages of gutting a bedroom on the east side (next to the bathroom that I spent all summer gutting and rebuilding down to the new frame). My wife's expecting our first child in April and I am working like a banshee to get this spare bedroom renovated.
The room is probably worse than the bathroom was. It's partlly under the upstairs structure but 60% of its roof is open to the sky.
This room literally had a waterfall flowing INSIDE the east wall!!
The room has been sealed off for 3 years.
I entered this month to begin working on it. I discovered that the windows and frames had falled out of the walls--they just disintigrated until the glass fell out.
When I started taking apart the wall, I found nothing left between the sheetrock ond the asbestos exterior siding. All the insulation, studs and sheathing had vaporized. I found a pile of mulch-like material at the base of the wall behind the heating convector, after removing the sheetrock. The exterior siding is barely holding together, but for the strenght of RTV rubber silicone glue that was used to seal the seams!
I have my work cut out for me on this room.
But in the meantime, I need to find a solution to repairing my roof. I have called friends who knew this or that person who was in the business, but after a week of no calls returned, I'm quickly running out of time.
Is there anyone in the western Conn area that can spend a day and shore up some roll roofing and maybe nail down some strips to stop the wind from tearing the overhanging flaps?
I'm looking for ideas, volunteer help, paid help (at modest rates--I'll pay cash).
Any constructive and thoughtful ideas are welcome at this point.
'Hope I haven't bored ya'll too much with this story..