a leaky situation.
jenn pan
california is in a major drought right now, and since we moved into the house in march 2013, we can count on one hand the number of times it has rained. the last time it rained however, we noticed that the window in the living room between the chimney and the television had a leak. there is a huge overhang typical of craftsman homes over the window, so we knew it wasn't the window itself that was leaky. the water was coming in somewhere higher up, and into and through the wall. you can see the drippage below if you look closely:
we suspected the chimney right away. when we had a chimney inspection done during escrow, we were told that the chimney was cracked at the roofline. james has also been on the roof before and seen how shoddy the flashing and shingles are done right around the chimney. we did our best to direct the leaking, especially since there is an outlet and the router right under the window. since the water was coming in the seams of the window, we couldn't even just put down a bucket, but used plastic bags and packaging tape to get it up off the walls and drip into our chosen receptacles..
in anticipation of the rain we are supposed to get this week, james went up on the roof and rubber-spray-patched all around the chimney on saturday. yup, we totally bought a $13 can of (as seen on tv!) flex seal from target. i didn't go on the roof myself, so i don't have any pictures of his handiwork, unfortunately.
it rained gently on and off all sunday, and everything seemed okay. then it rained most of today, and pretty hard for some of it. when we first got home from work, we were really excited because we didn't see any moisture on the window. however, after closer inspection, we realized it was still leaking, though far less seriously than before. enough that we have to keep our ugly water-catching-solution around for awhile longer. we'll have to wait until the rain stops and we have a dry spell to try and do more sealing. then wait for it to rain again to see if it worked! the bad news, obviously, is that there is still water in our walls. the good news is that we're clearly targeting the right places! (and really, it doesn't rain enough here for this to be a serious problem...)