Water in the Basement

The tenant came home one night to find water in her basement.

The first thing you do whenever there's water in your basement is look for the source (duh). In this case it appeared to be coming from the furnace or the condensation pump.

I took the furnace inspection panels off and looked all inside. No water there, so we focused more on the pump. We poured more water into the pump to see if it was working and it was.

Hmmm.

The best guess was with the exhaust pipe.

Notice where the pipe exits the foundation? It appears to be only a couple of inches above the ground. There's a standard distance the pipe should be above the ground for clearance of things like snow. Not meeting that standard, they put in a 90°, ran a vertical piece the standard, then added another 90°.

The nights previous to the water in the basement had been really cold (single digit cold). Our theory was the steam passing through the vertical piece during the cold quickly condensed and froze. When the temps warmed up, all that ice melted and ran back down to the pump overwhelming it.

Ok, so how do you fix that?

It turns out the "ground" beneath where the pipe exits isn't really the ground. It's a raised flower bed that robs the pipe of the clearance it should have. In the spring the plan is to dig out that part of the flower bed so the pipe can horizontally run out of the foundation at the proper height. That should cure the condensation problem of the vertical pipe on really cold nights and remove two 90°s, thus increasing flow.

At least that's the theory.

- b

For Caulk Sake

So the day before I noticed a huge split between my wood siding behind one of my gutters.

We need new siding. That's just plain and simple. The splitting is nothing new. A few years back I spent a few days caulking the entire front of the house (needs to be done again) hoping to get a few more years before we actually had to get new siding.

But this split takes precedence. This one is cause for concern. It's on the western side of our house. It takes the brunt of the majority of the weather we get. Also I have suspicions the effects of this one has actually penetrated the house.

In our living room, at the ceiling along that side of the house, we have this funny thing going on with the paint. It appears to be bubbling.

Typically when paint bubbles there's some kind of contaminant. Now our house originally had popcorn (i.e. textured) ceilings. It could be this is some kind of leftover from the work done to remove the texture. Either way, I'm not taking chances and the fix (even if temporary) isn't that difficult.

So up the ladder I went.

The split was pretty bad. There appeared to be things living in there.

The bad or missing paint is where the gutter was. It really wasn't hard removing and replacing the gutter. Why the painter didn't do it (LAZY) is anyone's guess.

After cleaning out the crap, I stuffed as much of the gap with backer rod (strip of foam to fill up the space too big for just caulk).

Then caulked it. Considering the western orientation and my possible moisture infiltration, I went ahead and caulked this entire section. It's about five and a half feet wide between the chimney (which I caulked too) and the front edge of the house. I think it took three tubes of caulk, which meant a trip to Home Depot for more (I should just keep a case of the stuff around).

In the caulking mood, I decided to tackle a similar job at the pool.

Since replacing the pool skimmer, the expansion joints between the concrete pads and coping has been missing or damaged. Not only is it unsightly (especially if you're considering selling), but it can cause damage if water gets in there and freezes over the winter. The expansions joints that were there are made of some kind of really hard, yet flexible, plastic. It's a real pain to remove or work with, so I spent most of the time since the skimmer job trying to figure out the best way to remove it. Finally it came to me. I could use my pneumatic cut-off wheel to just cut it out, so that's what I did. I got the majority of it cut out and cleaned up. To replace it, I'll use pool expansion joint caulk. It's a self leveling super durable caulk that does the same thing as the plastic. It just comes in an easy to use dispenser.

I got it all cleaned up, dry and filled with sand (sand is cheaper then backer rod, since I had it free in my yard, with cat crap no extra charge!), then went to apply the caulk.

The reason why I was doing any of this caulk stuff that day was mostly because of the weather. It was sunny and 65° F all day. That's great weather for caulk. As I'm reading the pool caulk instructions, I see it's application is good down to 0° F. Knowing that, I decided to leave the spot alone for a day or so to dry out more. With a temperature rating that low, I could effectively apply the caulk one night after work regardless of outside temp (at least for a few weeks), and instead spend more time caulking other things that did have temperature limitations.

Back to the siding.

This is on the front of the house. I re-caulked (the previous owner had done it at some point) the front of the house two years ago. Most of it is still ok (just ok, not fine). I'm guessing because of the window install the integrity of this caulked area was lost. In the bottom of the gap, you can see the backer rod I put in two years ago.

The gap had gotten so big, it required two more pieces of backer rod (Yeah I know. This is like using a band aid for an amputation).

So now I'm really in the caulking mood and proceed to check out what else is in need.

Of course everything needs it. All the windows in our downstairs haven't been touched since we moved in.

Then I find our bay window is like this.

And suddenly I get bored/tired of caulking. It's late anyway. At least that helps explain why our bay window leaked last year.

At this point, all I can muster is filling some carpenter bee holes.


You'd be surprised how roomy those little holes can be.

- b

The Attic Sucks

Since yesterday was supposed to be rainy and semi-cool (70° F isn't exactly cool, but it was raining), I decided to get up in the attic and hopefully finish that job.

You may remember last spring I started putting in rafter vents so the air from the soffits could more easily travel between the rafters up to the ridge vent. This is done for two reasons. In the summer it helps to cool the attic. In the winter it helps to dry the attic. When our roof was replaced in 2006, I think nearly half the plywood was replaced because it was rotten from too much moisture. The previous owner stuff the insulation too close to the soffits, thus stopping the air flow and trapping moisture in the attic.

I had something like 30+ of these vents to install. I wanted it done and over with so I didn't have to go in the attic again. I put on my attic garb and headed up.

While working at the western most part of the roof I found this.

I put my sweaty fingers near it and the wood felt damp beyond the dampness of my fingers. When I could hear the wind outside, I could feel it on my fingers. Crap.

Have I mentioned how much I loved our roofer.

For comparison here's a spot that used to be wet, was fixed, and has since dried.

I climbed out of the attic, took off my gear and went outside to investigate. The obvious part was this was happening near the chimney, so I got out the ladder and climbed up.

I found two spots that looked like they could use some caulk, so I caulked them.

While I was up there, I noticed this huge open gap in the seam of our wood siding behind the gutter. Guess what I'll be doing today?

Later, back in the attic, I was at the far western edge and checked my possible fix. I put my fingers back up to the wet spot and thought I felt a breeze, but it was pretty stormy outside. With all the rafter vents in place in that part of the attic, it's breezy in general. So I'm kind of stuck. It's a really difficult spot to get to in our attic with all the insulation I have up there. The ideal way to check if the caulk fix worked is to go back in a few weeks and see if the wood has the past wet now dry look to it like the picture above. The other option is to call the roofer and have him get up there. His work was guaranteed for 5 or 7 years, but he's a pain in the ass.

I'm really not sure what I'm going to do at this point.

Somewhere around 6pm, I got sick of the attic and came down.

My sick of the attic shot with the new camera

I got one half of the attic completely vented and insulated to R40+. All that's left is 9 or so more vents and some insulation. Hopefully I'll get to that today or sometime this week.

By the way. I also found another fossilized mouse. Nothing but fur and bones. I think that makes 30 something dead mice found in this house since we moved in.

I hate the attic.

- b