Young House Love

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How To Fix A Leaky Roof Yourself

Last week was shaping up to be pretty good week. Sherry celebrated turning 30. We declared the kitchen done(-ish). Spring was in such full bloom it was practically summer. In fact, we even got a pretty awesome thunderstorm one night. Seriously it rained buckets. Faster and harder than we had ever seen since moving into our new house. And then around midnight, it happened…

Leak 2 Drip On Beam

We were watching some TV when we heard a sudden, loud rushing sound. Like someone dumped a gallon of milk on the floor in the kitchen. Our first instinct was that the new-ish-ly installed dishwasher was leaking, so we both dashed towards the kitchen – only to stop in our tracks when a stream of water hit us from above before even entering the kitchen. It was coming from one of the beams in the living room. And then we noticed a pretty steady stream coming out of a nearby wall too. Crap.

Leak 3 Crying Wall

It all happened so fast. We scrambled to grab a bucket to catch the water streaming out of the beam and stuffed a big ol’ towel at the base of the wall that was dripping. Since it was still pouring outside (with a fair amount of thunder and lightning), our only plan of attack was to go into the attic to see what was up (since going outside with a big metal flashlight or ladder sounded like a really bad idea). So I crawled up into the attic with a flashlight and my iPhone (so I could document the damage for Sherry by snapping a picture) while Sherry stood in the living room and tapped on the beam so I could orient myself in the attic and follow the sound. Sure enough, I found a general area where water seemed to be seeping into the house. Did I say “crap” already? If so, here it is again. Crap. It was so bad that Sherry came up into the attic with me and we both just sort of crouched there staring at it.

Leak 4 Attick Wet

The area was too narrow for me or Sherry to get into (there’s no flooring in that area) and since things were starting to dry up outside (thank goodness!), we decided to call it a night. At this point it was around 1:30 in the morning, and we figured that in the am the roof would hopefully be dry enough for us to get up there and see what was going on (you know, without getting hit by lightning). The stream from the wall had stopped and we left a bucket out to catch anything else that decided to drip from the beam – but that had pretty much stopped too since the storm had finally passed.

Leak 5 Bucket

As if this weren’t bad enough on its own, it had now gotten too late to finish our DVR-ed episode of Dancing With The Stars. Tragic, we know. Watching Urkel strut his stuff would just have to wait.

Leak 1 DWTS On TV

The next day was sunny and hot, so we figured the roof would have dried by the time Clara was down for her nap that afternoon, which was the first moment of the day that we both could tackle the roof thing together. First we headed back into the attic to see if the spot had dried up. Yup, it mostly had.

Leak 6 Attic Dry Check

Next I went up on top of the house to try to identify whatever was causing our leak while Sherry “Afraid Of Heights” Petersik watched from the ladder. I sort of half hoped for / half feared finding a big gaping hole. At least then I would know what needed fixing. Oh and it bears mentioning that this roof (a 30-year asphalt shingle one) was installed the spring before the previous owners sold us this house, so it’s only a few years old.

Leak 8 Roof

And yes, we do have quite the smorgasbord of rooflines. In case you’re totally disoriented, here’s roughly how this lines up with the floor plan below (note the chimney, which connects to our fireplace which is between the kitchen and living room – that’s usually what I use to orient myself).

Leak 8 Roof With Labels

When I headed to the area above the leak, it was pretty obvious that I was looking at the culprit. Not a big hole, just a big ol’ pile of leaves.

Leak 9 Leaves On Roof

I try to keep the roof pretty clear of sticks and leaves, but I guess this pile had collected since I was last on the roof in the fall. And since it’s completely invisible from the ground, I had no clue this troublemaker was lurking up here. So after a few sweeps of the rake, the leaf collection was no more.

Leak 10 Wet Spot From Leave

How does a pile of leaves cause a leak? It wasn’t so obvious to me at first, but having googled “find source of leaky roof” a bit the night before, I had a better idea. Shingles are overlapped in a way to allow rain to flow down over them. But when water flows up them, or rather builds up around them (like if there’s a leaf dam preventing water from moving off the roof quickly enough), it can seep under them and find its way into nail holes or other less waterproof surfaces. And you can see from the wet mark above just how high the water had built up. It must have finally found a way in, and swoosh, down it came, into the attic and the living room below.

Leak 11 Lifting Shingle

I couldn’t be 100% sure that clearing the leaves would solve our problem, but I was pretty darn hopeful. Hopeful enough that I was even able to enjoy being on a roof a bit. Why yes I did tell Sherry to go into the sunroom and look up at one point. Skylights = a rip roaring good time.

Leak 12 John In Skylight

We got to test our repair theory when we got a lot of rain over the course of a few storms that came through Richmond in the last week since the leak. It rained for hours on more than one occasion. And we were actually happy about it for once since it meant that we could test Operation Leaf Removal to make sure we had truly solved the issue.

Leak 13 Raining Again

After we survived about 5 hours of rain in the first of two storms, we decided it was time to check the attic to see if perhaps the water just hadn’t made its way into our living room yet (but was stealthily building up in the attic or something). Thankfully the attic looked totally dry. Victory!

Leak 14 Dry In Attic

And we had the same luck with the second big rainstorm (once again we checked the attic, and it was nice and dry). So for the time being, we’re considering the problem officially solved – and thanking our lucky stars that the leak didn’t ruin anything in our house, and didn’t cost anything to fix. And now we’ve learned our lesson about letting so many months go buy without checking the roof for leaf build up since there are some spots that we can’t see from the ground – and apparently leaves can be sneaky little buggers. We’re mainly just beyond grateful that the leak didn’t happen while we were in Hawaii. We can’t imagine coming home to a living room full of water.

Who else has a leaky roof story to tell? Was yours easy fix? Did it do more damage? Did you catch it just in time? Did you think your dishwasher was leaking at first? Any tips to pass around to the group about preventing, finding, or fixing leaks would be much appreciated – especially since we felt so inexperienced and unprepared this time around!

Comments

  1. Vanessa says

    The only thinkg worse than water is an ice dam.

    We had one the night before we were catching an early flight to Florida. We noticed a big brown spot on the ceiling in our dining room. When my husband climbed the roof – on a rickety ladder in 5 feet of snow (panic attack for me) we figured out what it was. All he could do was chip away at it and wait for it to melt. Vacation was spent worrying that we would come home to a flooded dining room. Thankfully it did not thaw fast and we were able to control it when it did.

    Of course this happened after we had already planned to have the roof replaced that spring. Blerg.

    Reply

  2. Jeanne says

    *raises hand* I just got a new roof two days before Christmas. I noticed my dining room ceiling was peeling a bit in one spot and ignored it for a while. Then I noticed it was getting worse so I went up in the attic to check it out, just as you did. Lo and behold the insulation and wood below the insulation (above dining room) was soaking wet. Right above that spot was a roof valley that I figured was leaking (with leaves, like yours).

    I had several companies give quotes and the first contractor who came to the house cleared the leaves off. After he did that it rained a few times and less leakage happened (but I did keep a bucket in the attic). My roof was 25 years old, so I figured it was time to get a new one anyway. But I learned my lesson about the leaves as well!! Water backs-up under those babies.

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  4. Jen M says

    Glad this didn’t cause any major repairs for you guys! Though I want to warn you… keep an eye on those skylights. Our house is only 12 years old but a few months ago I was sitting on the couch and felt something drip on my arm and I looked up to see that the corner of our skylight was leaking! Even though we tried caulking it for a temporary fix, we ended up having to replace it soon after. Fingers crossed yours hold up for a while!

    Reply

  5. Lisa@wanderdownpennylane says

    Sooo scary! When we rented a house a few years back we had a huge leak from a bathroom on the second floor. It was a such a mess in the living room while we tried to find the exact source. Glad yours was easier. I have to check out our leaves situation when I get home.

    Speaking of water (but in a much happier way) we just relived our falls hike in Kauai, HI. Luckily we didn’t come home to any scary surprises from that trip. http://wanderdownpennylane.blogspot.com/2012/03/flashback-friday-kauai-hi-falls-hikes.html

    Reply

  6. Jackie says

    That stinks, but glad it was an easy fix! Last summer we came home one night to see water leaking into the ceiling of my husband’s office. Worst feeling ever for a homeowner! Good news is that we had three separate roofers confirm that our 12 year old roof is in great condition, but we needed to replace and reseal some of the flashing up there. We had a ton of rain and strong wind in 2011 up here in NE Ohio so I am guessing that’s why we had a problem. I am hoping for no more roof problems!

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  7. Matt says

    You mentioned that the spot in the attic doesn’t have any flooring for standing. But is there enough of a floor for water to accumulate? If so, you may want to consider putting a Leak Frog (a leak detector that “ribbits” when it detects water) in that area. It’ll compromise your insulation, I’d guess – but it’s spring, so it should be fine until air conditioning season starts up.

    It may not give you much warning, but it also may give you enough time to run towels or a shop vac up there in case something more severe happens. (Though I’m going to guess you two’ll have your heads poked up there during the next rainstorm…)

    Reply

  8. Mary says

    When we were a younger couple, we moved into a ranch style home in New England. Like most homebuyers, we hired a home inspectorb before moving in. Everything checked out fine, including the roof. Then comes the first big rain. Not only did our roof leak in one place, it leaked in 3 places. Unfortunately it wasn’t leaves piled up – it was an older roof going bad. The home inspector was either not thorough or not honest with us. We put on a new roof ourselves and are much wiser now about such things. Glad your experience turned out well, John and Sherry :-)

    Reply

  9. Amy says

    We’re actually finally dealing with a continuing issue this week. We were getting water in the area above our fireplace, including a little bit of the ceiling. The culprit was a leaky chimney. This week it’s been re-tuckpointed and waterproofed, and new flashing is getting installed.

    That area above the mantel had a Venetian plaster finish that is all bubbled up and destroyed. The wall itself is cement but we’re going to need a plaster guy to fix the ceiling. Wish us luck finding one!

    Reply

  10. Sabrina says

    Oh Boy! Glad it all seemed to dry up. While we were away for a week, we had a pipe burst in our downstairs wall. Turns out (via the plumber) he remembers our house being a dog grooming salon like 10 years ago. Instead of properly taking care of the pipes, someone just capped it and built a wall over it. It must have been leaking for years, slowly without anyone noticing, and decided to burst while we were away.We have mold and have to redo the entire downstairs. We are still working on it!

    Reply

  11. The Mrs @ Success Along the Weigh says

    Oh man, I would’ve been freaked out thinking was a huge costly problem and here it was a pile of leaves! But I NEVER would’ve thought of that so thanks for that!

    I have to know, when you see something like that where most of us would be freaking (and I’m sure you guys were too) do you say “man this stinks but it’ll make for a great blog post!” I do that way more than I’d like to admit with mini-tragedies!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Haha, just picture us in the middle of the chaos screaming “get the camera! we have to document this for the blog!” – so we snap, snap, snap and continue freaking out. Haha.

      xo,
      s

  12. Ty Lee says

    You guys seemed way more calm than I would have been in a situation like that. I would have been frantically running around, threatening to call my lawyer (no idea who I’d be suing, but SOMEBODY would pay! LOL), and forgetting to use child-safe swear words around the kids who would then spend the next week repeating everything I said to random people at the grocery store.

    I’m so glad it was an easy fix! And dang, your roof line is all sorts of crazy! I never would have imagined it looked like that up there!

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  13. AntiCookieCutter says

    We also had a leave dam form and cause the roof to leak in the house. After removing leaves we caulked the edge of the shingles all the way down the valley – just in case!

    Reply

  14. Alison says

    Well thats good to know! We are buying a house in Dallas this summer and the weather here can be a little crazy. I never would have known that the leaf thing would be an issue. Always a learning moment on YHL!!!!

    Reply

  15. Emily M. says

    I can’t think of many things that are worse than a leaky roof. Glad to hear you were able to identify the problem. Love the photo of John in the skylight. Happy weekend.

    Reply

  16. Alanna says

    y’all are so lucky that it was a cheap (free!) and easy fix! we had some major roof problems last year, but ours were anything but easy or cheap.

    we knew when we bought our house that there had been roof problems in the past, but we were under the impression that they had all been taken care of. a few years later we noticed a small leak in our family room we quickly had “fixed”. a year later the leak was back (http://alanna-wendt-to-tennessee.blogspot.com/2011/04/when-it-rains-it-pours.html). and to top it off we had just installed new sheet rock in our family room and kitchen that was at risk of being ruined… it was absolutely terrifying! we were in the middle of a big kitchen renovation and hadn’t budgeted for this type of expense. we weren’t sure if we should just patch it or replace the whole thing. thankfully, in the end i was able to convince my husband that a roof isn’t something to take a gamble on… and in the end we bit the bullet and had the old roof replaced entirely (http://alanna-wendt-to-tennessee.blogspot.com/2011/05/back-in-black.html). and i’m happy to report that so far we haven’t had any more problems!

    Reply

  17. Meg says

    When I started reading this, I felt almost the same dread for you as when we discovered our major roof leak in our workout room (bonus room of the house). We had to get an entire new roof – down to the plywood! – late last year. The leak got so bad it caved in part of the ceiling in the workout room… but it had been gathering water for some time before it caved. The insulation was soaked and moldy!

    Turns out that when the last owner put the addition on, her friends who helped her build it did the roof too, and did a terrible job! There was so much wrong with it… basically, everything! When we finally got a good roofing company out they said the entire thing would need to be replaced, because the remaining part of the roof was older than the old owner let on and pretty damaged because that wasn’t installed properly either.

    Sooo that was not a fun way to spend our Christmas and year-end bonuses, but if we didn’t, we would not have a functional and dry roof over our heads!

    I’m so glad it wasn’t nearly that bad for you guys! Nothing like buying a house you love only to find a huge, major problem like this, and there’s nothing you can do about it other than pay to have it fixed.

    Reply

  18. Christine says

    Glad you solved the problem! By the way, seeing that picture of your patio reminded me that I wanted to ask you a question: Do you have trouble with weeds/grass growing up between the cracks of your pavers? I see some green stuff in the picture but is that as bad as it gets? We also installed a patio (about 2 1/2 years ago) and are having major problems with all kinds of things growing on it. Unlike you guys, we didn’t use the polymer stuff, just sand. I wonder if it’s worth pulling out every single weed (and let me tell you, there are A LOT) and putting the polymer in between the cracks?

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      That’s actually a picture of our driveway, which is super weedy! We actually don’t have any weeds on our patio because we used polymeric sand between the pavers (love it) and totally plan to use the same stuff on our very very weedy driveway!

      xo,
      s

  19. Marriah says

    As soon as I saw that first photo, I wondered if leaves might be the culprit. We had something very similar in our guest bedroom last year. We only have guttering partially around the house and way too many trees in our neighborhood. They got clogged so easily any time there was a storm, even if they were freshly cleaned that day. Our leaf pile started at the end of the roof guttering and overflowed up onto the roof. We cleared the leaves the next day and installed gutter guards (mesh half circle coverings to help keep everything flowing and we haven’t had a problem since. And if you might recall, Memphis had some pretty historic flooding last fall, in which lots and lots o’ rain was partially to blame. We have also learned where our tricky spots on the roof and gutters are… that helps to be able to spot clean those places more often. So glad that it was the same fix for you guys as well. I had that same sickening feeling as well as we had only moved into our house a few months prior (with a new roof less than three years old).

    Reply

  20. Sarah says

    Here in Oklahoma (where the wind comes sweeping down the plains), 30 year roofs literally only last about 10. We had a microburst (a sudden, isolated tornado-ish storm with powerful straight-line winds) that was literally just about a mile wide. It hit our neighborhood and in 10 minutes while on a date for our two-year wedding anniversary, we went from having a perfectly fine roof to having a dead roof.

    It worked out well though. Instead of getting snow cones to top off our wedding anniversary date, we got a new roof compliments of the insurance company! We upgraded to this super mega lifetime roof that saves us quite a bit on homeowners insurance every yeah. So hopefully no leaks anytime soon. Considering we live 10 miles from the site of the largest tornado in recorded history, there’s really no guarantee!

    Reply

  21. Elisa says

    Holy smokes, so scary! When my parents got a second-story addition built onto the house over 10 years ago they didn’t realize the contractor didn’t properly ventilate the attic. We found this out when I noticed water dripping into my room, a few years after the addition was built. The mold was UNBELIEVABLE. I’m shocked none of us got sick, and they had to have professionals come out and kill everything. It was like living on the ET set! Plastic tarps everywhere.

    So glad it was an easy fix, just keep a close eye on your attic for the next few months!

    Reply

  22. Melissa says

    OMG how crazy! We had a similar thing happen to us the day before Thanksgiving. We noticed that after a huge storm one of the corners in our house started leaking…Little did we know it had nothing to do with the roof but everything to do with our laundry exhaust going directly into our house and not pushing the hot air outside. We recently fixed this ourselves saving us a ton of money but boy was that a pain :)

    Reply

  23. Emily F. says

    Thank goodness for an easy fix! We haven’t had a leaky roof but we did have a leaky basement window. The summer we moved into our house we decided that the first things to go were the horribly ugly, overgrown evergreen bushes in the front.

    Well, our first big rainstorm after the removal of the bushes showed that the bushes were protecting the window well there. We were upstairs and heard a running water sound coming from the basement. We ran downstairs to find water literally pouring down the basement window! It was like a waterfall down the cinderblock! My husband ran out in the rain with an empty rubbermaid tub to cover the window well while I used every free towel we owned to try to mop up the water (we didn’t own a wet/dry vac yet).

    Now, there’s a lovely clear window well protector there while our new landscape is growing to cover it up a bit and thankfully, we hadn’t painted or covered the old linoleum down there with carpet yet so all is well now!

    Reply

  24. Callie says

    Yipes, scary!! I love the problems that are so easily fixed :)

    By the way, for future reference of attics – you most likely have beams running across the attic under the insulation. You can walk across the attic on the beams, if you are careful to always distribute your weight between a couple beams. Or if you need to work in one area, lay down a nice big square of plywood or other wood to distribute the weight for you – instant floor! My dad is an awesome handy man so I have learned from him – recently I installed a new electrical outlet in our kitchen, adding the junction box up in our attic that looks a lot like yours! :) (I also took some electronics classes in college, thus the electrical skills)

    However insulation is v. annoying to deal with. I try to minimize moving any of it around, wear a face mask and gloves and long sleeves/pants and shoes that I can shake out/wash afterward. Yay for careful! ;)

    Reply

  25. Alayne says

    After the earthquake that hit last summer, followed a few weeks later by the hurricane we had a pretty big size leak in our family room. We hadn’t noticed any dameage to our house at all after the earthquake (my hubs didn’t even feel it! My neighbors assured me that they definitely felt it. I was in Richmond for the day), but when we got the rains from the hurricane we knew something was wrong. Once the weather cleared the hubs got on the roof and noticed the ridge vent had seperated.We ended up replacing the ridge vent, removing a 3×4 foot section of dry wall from the celieng and living with a hole for 3 months. I wanted to make sure we had really taken care of the problem. We finally replaced the dry wall and patched and painted. Thankfully it wasn’t anything more serious!

    Reply

  26. John@Our Home From Scratch says

    Cheapest roof repair ever! I can comiserate with Sherry and heights. Not. a. fan. Even on our shed, http://www.ourhomefromscratch.com/the-shed/ which I built, I was not comfortable being on the roof even though it’s like 10 feet off the ground. AND highrise hotels with balconies!! Forget it!! I have to stay on the first or second floor. In Oahu, I even drove out to Ko Olina to avoid the high rise hotels in Waikiki. My old house had a flat roof though, which wasn’t that bad.

    Reply

  27. Rebecca says

    Ooh, sharing time!

    We bought our townhouse January 2011, so the inspector wasn’t able to go on to the roof that was covered in 6+ inches of snow (I’m in Ohio here). We knew there had previously been a leak in the roof because in our bedroom there were water marks and worn down ceiling plaster. The inspector tested it for moisture and said we were good. Fast forward to the night we got back from our honeymoon. We had a HUGE storm with high winds, first since purchasing. Around 1:30 am I woke because of not the thunder and lighting but dripping. Thankfully we had one of our luggage cases with a towel still in it right under the dripping of the leak (so our new carpets wouldn’t take the hit). I went and got our biggest pot to use for collecting water the rest of the night and left my husband to keep and eye on it hoping it wouldn’t get bigger. I went to another room to sleep since I was working the next day and he had the sense to take an extra day after the busy wedding/honeymoon. The handy hubby has since went into our attic crawl space and fixed it, thinking the problem to be lose casing around a roof vent. The high winds combined with lots of rain were our problem, because no other rain event had ever been a problem. No problems since….fingers crossed, knock on wood, wishing and hoping….

    Reply

  29. josiedelaney says

    Yikes. Something similar happened to us our first big storm this year. Leaves on the roof can be a really bad thing! We’ve had over 10 inches of rain since that storm and no leaks, so luckily our story had the same ending yours did.

    Reply

  31. Hanna says

    We had a really nasty roof leak once. The water just poured down our walls and out of our ceiling. And to give you an idea of how bad it was, we are on the ground floor of a four story condo building.

    Apparently while some work was being done on our flat rubber roof, some of the equipment that was crane lifted to the roof knocked out the cover to the roof drain without anyone knowing. And then it POURED. So instead of all the water on the roof flowing to this area and down the pipe, it all flowed to this area and went down the sides of the pipe, taking out every bathroom and hall closet on the way down until it hit the basement. The basement storage unit right below this pipe? Ours. And they were not able to fix it for an entire weekend of pouring rain, so for days we just watched the water stream down our walls.

    The bummer is that we had literally JUST finished redoing our bathroom a month before and were ready to put our unit on the market. And when I say redo I mean we ripped it down to the studs and cement subfloor and built it all back DIY style. But we were grateful the next week when we saw what happened to the top units in the building. We just had to redo some walls and ceilings. The top unit had to rip out all their hardwoods that had been warped, and take down about half the drywall in their entire unit (that had basically turned to mush).

    To combat mold we ripped out a few walls and the ceiling and used dehumidifiers and some bucket things full of crystallized something-or-other that is supposed to suck up moisture (very technical terms here). And then we left it open for about a month, just to be sure that 1) it was really dry, and 2) it wasn’t going to leak again.
    Now, A YEAR LATER, we have finally finished redoing the bathroom AGAIN, and in addition we now have a lovely new organized closet with wooden built-ins that we made ourselves rather than the yucky wire shelving we had there before. AND we became rather proficient in one-man and two-man dry walling during nap time. So all is well that ends well!

    Reply

  32. Mallory says

    Last year we found water leaking in our guest room, seeping along brand new ceiling and drywall. We found the culprit to be the flashing along the chimney, so we tore the chimney out, (here’s the post showing my crazy boyfriend throwing the chimney brick by brick into our backyard: http://our1stnest.blogspot.com/2011/04/how-is-santa-going-to-visit.html)! Actually, we had planned on doing it down the line to make room for renovations in the bathroom and kitchen, but the water leaking set off a whole slew of projects that included buying/installing new high-efficiency water heater and furnace, tearing out the chimney, patching the roof, and finally fixing that darn 8″ of ceiling that got damaged. Isn’t it funny how something as simple as the equivalent of a couple cups of water can do so much damage?

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  33. Tamara says

    Oh man, I have been PLAGUED by a leak in my roof. I had a roofer come 3 times to fix it last year, and when it finally seemed to be repaired I did dry wall repairs and repainting in the room where the leak would happen (which was harder than normal since my walls are textured). Then, lo and behold, last week the darn thing came back with vengeance. I live in the Phoenix area so we don’t get a lot of rain. So annoying!

    Reply

  34. Kerri says

    When I still lived with my parents, we had an incident with water pouring down a dining room wall in a crazy downpour-type storm. Unfortunately, no attic, so my dad and sister went outside (in the storm) and my dad went on the roof with 3 huge tarps and a bag of ropes (it pays off that he has way too many tarps and ropes) and basically tarped off the front of our house. The issue was that our roof was 10-15+ years old and in need of replacing. Luckily it didn’t rain much til the roofers had time to come fix it!

    We’ve also had some water incidents from lots of snow on the roof and having to shovel that off.

    Glad everything worked out for ya!

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Wow- so smart to have tarps on hand. We didn’t have any, and at 1 in the morning we couldn’t think of a way to get any even if there wasn’t lightning everywhere (meaning we couldn’t go up on the roof anyway)!

      xo,
      s

  35. Laura Jinkins says

    So glad it wasn’t super serious! And amen to glad it didn’t happen while you were in Hawaii. I had a window shutter client a couple of years ago who went to Japan for two weeks. Didn’t realize the water line going to the toilet in the powder room downstairs had a small leak. When they returned home, they opened the front door and two inches of water rushed out to greet them. :( Fortunately, it’s a two-story house, so they were able to live upstairs while they repaired the downstairs. They now turn off the water lines coming into each and every toilet in the house before going out of town for any length of time. I’d be a bit paranoid, too, if a wall of water (albeit a small one) greeted me when I returned home from a long trip!

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  36. Georgia says

    Thanks so much for this post. My daughter has a leak in her bedroom that drips down through the light in the middle of the ceiling. But only sometimes. I have got up on the roof sooooo many times to try and find the source of it, but have been totally flummoxed by it. I had a suspicion that it was somehow getting up under the roof from the guttering, but I couldn’t see anything obvious, and caulking all the way along there didn’t help at all. But I can see now, that it may only happen when there is a build up of leaves. Awesome!

    We have also had problems with our weekender in VT where we know the roof needs replacing. Over the summer I did a bunch of work to the old wooden facade, using a special 2 part epoxy stuff to shore up rotting wood (basically rebuilding sections) and caulked all around the storm windows which also need replacing. I spent weeks up a ladder. First storm of the season and we had water pouring in through the upstairs window, down into the dining room below. I still don’t quite understand what I’ve done to upset the delicate balance of where water was going before (it’s a 200 year old house), and I have to wait until the weather is warmer and we have a taller ladder to get up there and see. AH, old houses and leaky roofs.

    Reply

  37. Katie says

    I have the ultimate in leaky roof stories…
    Last year we decided it was time to redo the roof. OUr roof had been built around the turn of the century, and near as we could tell they just kept piling the shingles on. We had to scrape off everything and our roof had a really bad angle. Like it was really steep. WE had 2-3 layers of shingles and then a layer of the original shake over most of the roof. We had to lay down new plywood because there wasn’t any up there. We were good and did it in stages knowing we couldn’t do it in one day. We got the main roof done, and then we were working on the addition. (Which didn’t need plywood). Well, we got as far as we could one night and turned in. And a major storm came. The entire back part of our house was leaking. It was our kitchen, our storage room, our (only) bathroom, and our boys’ bedroom. It was running through one cabinet (although we never found a lot of that water, we think it ran mainly straight down the wall behind the counters and cabinets and straight to the basement), it was coming in the boys’ wall so badly that it ruined the kids’ backpacks and all the stuff inside, and it totally ruined the ceiling in our bathroom and part of our kitchen. We thought we had it under control with some buckets (because what else are you going to do?) When I looked up in the dark and thought the ceiling doesn’t look right. The ceiling in the bathroom was starting to bulge so we quickly got a screwdriver and poked a hole in the ceiling and gallons upon gallons of water poured down into our buckets. IF we would have stopped for a second, we could have put the hole right over the bathtub, but it was late and we weren’t thinking. So then we had to stand while the ceiling emptied out. I didn’t sleep well for weeks and every time it rained I had to walk around the house and make sure nothing was leaking, just for peace of mind, even after the roof was done.

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  38. Cassandra says

    Literally the day after finishing a HUGE renovation on our sun room at our old house (you can see the finished room here http://madelinescastlepage.blogspot.com/2010/11/finished-products.html) we had a huge storm and the rain was pouring down… inside the sun room. It woke me up from a dead sleep it was so bad. To make things worse we also had just re-roofed the room with ice shielding so we were pretty confident it wasn’t that. We also waited until the next day with buckets and towels soaking up the water and the next day investigated. It turned out that one part of the gutter had somehow gotten a bit wonky and was sending water down the siding and it was going around the door trim that we hadn’t caulked yet. Lucky for us it was also an easy fix but I was pretty devastated for about 24 hours.

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  39. Wendy says

    We had water coming through our ceiling once. It was because our upstairs neighbor (a “recovering” alcoholic) had gotten drunk, decided to take a bath, and passed out in the tub with the water filling it up. We woke up to a downpour in our apartment. Not cool at 5am. We lost a lot of stuff, and it took quite a while for everything to get fixed. Needless to say, that tenant was booted…he’s lucky he even lived and didn’t drown. We decided right then and there we were going to start our house search and nix the apartment living.

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  40. Jen says

    Our “leak” was actually our water heater bursting. To make the replacement even more fun, the brilliant previous home owners had installed it behind the fridge, about six feet off the ground when they renovated the kitchen years ago.

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  41. Jessica says

    I’ll never forget the night my dad went up to the attic to check on a leaky roof and as my mom and I were sitting in the living room watching television, the ceiling collapsed and my dad came crashing down…..it’s hilarious to think of now, but at the time, it was a HUGE mess and not fun at all to clean up or deal with. The culprit was a crazy rainstorm in the middle of a new roof installation. The contractors had covered it with a tarp before the storm hit, but some water seeped right on through. Luckily they were there the next day to fix it and put a pretty new textured ceiling in the living room too! :)

    Reply

    • YoungHouseLove says

      Oh man! So scary at the time, but agreed that it’s hilarious to think about later. I joked that John might fall through the ceiling while I was standing under him knocking on the beam but I’m so glad it didn’t come to that!

      xo,
      s

  42. megs & bacon says

    Oh yes… I had 8 gallons of water gushing in per day, for over a month. I’m in the middle of telling this saga over on megs&bacon. It’s sort of epic. I’m so glad you guys found an easy fix!

    Reply

  43. LauraC says

    Wow, glad it turned out ok. But I learned a lesson, I was reading, thinking, yeah, this will never happen to us, the roof was brand new when we bought our house. Then John said your roof was only a couple years old, and I though, what?! Glad to hear the solution was simple and hope it stays that way. Fortunately I won’t worry about leaf build-up because our roof is one big upside down V, nothing for them to stick on.

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  44. Karyl says

    Does anyone else have Richmond SPCA in green blocks as the background of the YHL page? It happened yesterday afternoon but it’s still here today. I’m reading this on an iPad if it makes a difference. I can’t use my laptop since it picked up a bad virus so now I’m wondering if the YHL site is corrupted. While trying to fix the virus I found that some WordPress blog sites have been corrupted. Anyone have any ideas?

    Reply

    • Karyl says

      The green blocks are now gone but there is still an underlayer of “Clara’s photo project” in block tiles underneath all the postings. the little hearts wallpaper is gone…hate to be paranoid but am I the only one seeing this?

  45. mribaro says

    What is that fluffy stuff on the floor of the attic? Is it some kind of termal insulation or something else?

    Reply

  46. annie says

    Glad all went well and didn’t cost you too much time or money. Not that long ago our gutter had popped loose (honestly the only explanation could be fat pigeons or seagulls trying to sit in it, by the way it was dislodged) and was unloading a tonne of water over our front porch roof, the front porch is flat so we were worried it might leak with the amount of rain we had but my rather helpful father-in-law clambered his 5’5″ self up and put it all right…. Our porch is converted into a downstairs hallway type thing, I just realised a porch might be something completely different over the ocean.

    Reply

  47. Elizabeth says

    Yikes! So glad you were home and could get a handle on it before any major damage happened! Two years ago we had ice dams (the ice acted like the leaves did on your roof) and every exterior wall in our entire house had to be gutted! We moved out and then diy’d new walls, insulation, ceilings, electrical, etc, etc. And while we were at it, we gave ourselves a new kitchen and fun touches! We blog about it all and what to watch for with insurance companies so people know how to handle it. SO glad it never got to that point for you!

    Reply

  48. Melissa says

    We woke up one morning and the tub was half way full. Since neither of us had taken a bath in a month (we have a shower, promise we are not grody), we looked up ward. Sure enough we had a leak from the ceiling. Go to the attic, everything is dry. For the life of us we could not find the leak from the roof. Long story short, turns out the leak (which was easily fixed with some glue and one new shingle) had traveled over ten feet running along the base of a pipe and happened to choose to drip directly over the can light over our tub. A little paint, and you can’t even tell!

    Reply

  49. Annette Shively says

    How fortunate are you that it was JUST the leaves!! Kuddos to you for searching for the problems and fixing them yourselves! You could have spent a small fortune having a “roof guy” (i know thats not the proper name) tell you it was something it was’nt!!

    Reply

  50. Greg Summerhays says

    We haven’t suffered from roof leakage, instead the other day we came downstairs to find a puddle of water on the floor of our kitchen. Our shower upstairs was leaking! We’ve spent the week ripping out the tile and drywall and hopefully next week we can get it all put back together.

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