THE OLD HOUSE DOCTOR

9-27-12

GET TO WORK

 

You sit there all fat and happy, thinking, “Damn, I'm still running my air conditioner and it's October!” Okay, the summer’s lasted since April, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the fact that your old house has been aging and falling apart beneath the couch that supports your fat ass. Get up and gather some tools, me bucko, because I’m puttin’ you to work.

Yes, it’s time to think about winter.

I know, I know. Footble’s beginning and baseble’s just getting interesting and the Fed Eggs Cup’s finished and all that. Shut up and grab a ladder or you’re really going to be sorry when your house collapses on you during the Superbole.

I KNOW you don’t have a ladder, but you know someone who does. Let them borry your Stop Making Sense DVD and you borry their ladder; that’s the way it works.

Get up and examine your roof. Be careful; all these things are dangerous. You’ve been warned.

If there are leaves in your gutters, wait until the trees start to drop them before you clean them out….but wait! Because you’re ESPECIALLY lazy, you didn’t clean them out LAST year. Put on some gloves and pull that yuck out of the gutters or they might collapse with the extra weight after flooding your precious wood eaves with overflowing water. Tap on your upper downspout elbows; if the ring hollow, you’re blessed, and if they sound full, you are in league with BeezleBoob hisself. But even BB can be handled if you dig the goop from the elbows, put a coathanger down them (unwind it first, you dope), and flush them out with your hose. Whattaya mean you don’t have a hose?! BORRY one, dammit! Bribe someone with some brownies (easy on the hash, you stoner!) or let them watch your “Bewitched” DVD collection. Who can resist Lizzie Montgomery? Not me, that’s for sure.

Maybe you don’t have gutters. Maybe you don’t have a roof. Maybe you live in a cardboard box under the Markham Street Viaduct. If that’s the case, I know what this paper’s going to be used for once you’re done reading it.

But if you don’t have gutters, look for leaves gathered in your roof’s valleys; they can hold water and cause backup leaks during the winter, especially when they ice up.

If your roof is too steep to comfortably walk on, stay off it and put a long extension on your rake to reach the leaves in the valley. Do this while it’s dry and it will be a lot easier than after the rains start.

If your roof is walkable, you might as well check your roof vents and metal flashing for gaps. If gaps are found, they should be cleaned out then filled with clear silicone or polyurethane caulk. Do not use water-based caulks like painters’ caulk or cold-process tar-in-a-tube. The tar dries out and crax and the painters’ caulk will dry, separate, and grow mildew. Soon the spores will enter your brain and you’ll start listening to Raunch Limburger as you beat people to a pulp with you protest sign reading “WE DON’T KNEED KNOW HELTH CAYR.’ Which is kind of oxymoronic, if you really think about it. Don’t think about it. I tried, and now my head hurts. Mighta been that guy with the sign.

While you're up there you might as well look for gaps around your chimney/roof joint. Push on the roofing around the roof near the chimney to find any soft spots; that's where water tends to penetrate and rot the decking below.

Another thing you can do to check for leaks around your vents is to look where they penetrate the decking from below, which means you need to get up in your attic with a flashlight. Don't walk on the spaces between the wood joists or you'll fall through the ceiling, you dope. If you check the vent penetrations (pipes that go through the roof)  while it's raining outside it'll make the exam easier. Also look around for squirrel nests (bunches of sticks and leaves piled up near the eaves), light coming through the eaves, and bats roosting in the rafters. Clear out the squirrel nests during the day (squirrels are diurnal, and if you don't know what that means, buy a frickin' dictionary) and leave the bats alone until summer. I'll have written an arktickle about how to humanely remove them by then.

One thing about silicone and polyurethane caulk. They must be cleaned off your hands with mineral sprits (which is certainly NOT turpentine), or you’ll end up with black marks on your hands, and those won’t come off until the Springsteen Administration. The marks, not your hands.

If you have gable vents (those triangular slats below the pointy part of your roof; God, I don’t know how your species has survived to this point), check them while you’re still laddered. Be careful! Wasps love to nest up there. You should have screen or hardware cloth behind them, in the attic. If it’s missing, get back up into the Hot Place and tack some up. Otherwise you’ll become host to many more little bats, which are nice to have because they eat mosquitoes, but you really don’t want them in your house. They tend to stink it up even worse than what YOU managed to do. Hard to believe, I know.

Once you're back on terra firma, close your foundation vents until it gets hot again, probably February next year (thanks, Exxon/Mobil and the coal industry!). Tap the bottoms of your downspouts like you did up on the ladder (you DID thump them while you were up there, didn't you?), and if they don't ring hollow, take them apart and clean them out. If they drain into an underground conduit, put a hose into the conduit and see if it's really draining. Many old clay pipes have roots clogging them; if the drain backs up you can have The Rooter Guy snake it out (oh my!) or you can bypass it entirely, letting the downspout drain on the ground. If you do, add an extension to keep the water away from your foundation.

So, there you have it. Ladders, Talking Heads, Coathangers, Rooter Guys, BeezleBoob. It all leads to disaster. I suggest you get some gin and tonic and remember summer the way you should; in a drunken stupor. But only AFTER you’ve got the leaves from where they oughtn’t be and  done all that other stuff I tole you to.

I’ll ignore as many letters posted to my blog as you can send. Just go to http://oldhousedoctor.blogspot.com.You’ll wish you hadn’t. Once you've become disappointed in that, check out http://architecturalvestiges.blogspot.com . Then you'll REALLY be depressed. You cretin.