|
|
|
reality based roofing
Saturday, October 15 2005
I think I might have gotten up at 5am this morning. The day was mostly cloud-free so I was able to see the sunrise hours later when it finally happened. We usually miss out on sunrises at our house because of our tendency to sleep in late, but our house is ideal for watching them; out of our bedroom window we can see eastward as far as the hills of Connecticut.
I'd been concerned about the wiring I'd done for the Solar hydronic system's control unit, since it had been acting strangely two weeks ago and I'd been forced to leave it in a jury-rigged state to be sure it would supply hot water during my absence. Today, though, I hooked it up in the non jury-rigged way and it seemed to work exactly as planned. I did have to fix a single broken solder connection, though I can't understand how that would have caused the anomalous behavior I'd been seeing. In any case, it was good to have a big thing to scratch off on my mental to do list, what with the fresh new item of fixing a leak in the roof, one for which I only had myself to blame.
I set up the tallest of our extension ladders so it would reach from the driveway up to near the southwest pillar's contact point with the laboratory roof. It wasn't anywhere near long enough, but it would allow me to get close enough to do work. The only problem was powerful gusts of wind which came out of nowhere and threatened to throw me from the ladder unless I grabbed onto the pillar for dear life and held my body flat against the roof.
I slathered on some more roof repair goop, being careful to work it into seams between the shingles near the pillar in hopes of blocking possible sideways avenues for water. Then, because it wasn't raining, and because I'm not a faith-based roofer, I hauled a hose up onto the solar deck and used it to thoroughly soak the footing area for about twenty minutes.
I would have gladly soaked it for much longer, but in about twenty minutes the roof was already leaking again, so I stopped the experiment and searched my synapses for possible solutions.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?051015 feedback
previous | next |
