Once again, I have other things I should be doing, but I wanted to at least follow up on that roofing story.
For a bit of background, I should mention that we’ve had a leak in our roof for about a year now. I started trying to get someone out to fix it the day after I noticed it, but due to several irritating factors (companies that said they’d come and didn’t show up, for instance), we weren’t able to get someone out to look at it for a couple of months after I noticed it. We finally got someone out to look at it and they told us that it looked like it was a ridge vent problem. They went up to fix it but told us that it would really be best if we could get a wider ridge vent. They tried to sell us on a new vent system, but between the cost of the system and the fact that we’d have to ok it with the HOA, we said we’d rather not do that if they could just fix the existing system. The subject was dropped and they nailed, caulked, and generally sealed our roof.
Only it didn’t work. The drip onto our master bathroom ceiling became a hole in the ceiling which dripped onto the floor. I lost track of how many times they came back to try again. They finally replaced the existing vent with the same type in case there was a small bend in it they weren’t seeing or something. It still leaked. By now they were working free of charge because it had been so long since the problem had started and they hadn’t been able to repair it.
We put in another call to them not long ago when one of the latest heavy rainstorms caused quite a flood in our bathroom. This time, Joel went up in the attic when it was leaking and borrowed my parents digital camera to take pictures of the leak… leaks, really. He found another one while he was up there. Anyway, we were able to show them the pictures of the vent and a nearby nailhead that seemed to be the leak point.
One of the guys came to check it out, and he told Joel that he was going to try to get us a deal on that new ridge vent system since he was pretty sure that would take care of the problem. He said he’d have some guys come out and get up on the roof soon to fix it up for us. Then we awaited a phone call.
I got a call yesterday morning from one of their front desk ladies who said that the roofers would be there in a couple of hours if that was ok. I had a chiropractic appointment, but since they wouldn’t need to get inside the house at all, I said that was fine. Of course, I was thinking they were taking care of that nailhead Joel had pointed out. The matter quickly left my mind in the hustle and bustle of trying to get an almost three year old and a one year old out the door and to the chiropractor’s office.
Joel goes to the chiropractor’s office with us, partly for an adjustment and partly to help me with crowd control. 🙂 Anyway, on our way back to his work to drop him off, he got a call on his cell phone. We’re out of minutes now (our plan rolls over in a couple of days) and the number was unfamiliar, so he didn’t answer it. When he checked his voicemail, it was a guy saying, “Hi. We just wanted to let you know we’re on our way to the house to install your new vent.” AAAAA!!! What? Install? Ack!
Then commenced a crazy hour or so. Joel ran in to work to call the company back, but the front desk lady didn’t know much about it. She tried to contact the guy who had put the order in, but couldn’t reach him. She said she’d keep trying, and Joel mentioned that it would also be good to try to catch the roofers before they started the job. Then he sat and waited for a call back.
I got home about a half hour later and saw a ladder being taken around to the back of our house by two guys I thought I recognized from our other roofing adventures over the past year. I opened the van door so the girls would be ok air-wise, and ran down the sidewalk to catch them. The discussion we had was very confusing since they hadn’t heard anything about a nailhead or about stopping what they were doing. All they knew was to install a new vent system. 😛 So much for communication!
From that point on, I was on the cell with Joel and talking to the roofer simultaneously. After much discussion between us (and including, at one point, another guy on the roofer’s cell phone), we finally decided that the roofers would just try to find the problem nail and would give us a chance to get the new system approved by the HOA. We thought about just having them put the new system up there and then having it approved after the fact; Joel tried to describe it to our HOA president over the phone and he said he thought it would be fine, but that was before we had a really good description of what it would look like ourselves. The HOA tends to be pretty picky, so we decided against doing that. It was nice to find out that cost wouldn’t be a factor since the roofing company is going to do it for free. 🙂
Anyway, now we have our paperwork together to send to the HOA and it should go in the mail tomorrow. I put a note on it explaining the situation, and hopefully they’ll give us a quick response since delaying could cause further damage to our house. 😛 We’ll see how fast they move, I guess, and whether they’re willing to approve a different type of ridge vent than any of the other houses has. I’m not getting my hopes up too far. 😛