Snow, Part Three

When I woke up Monday morning and saw the snow, I was smug with my cleverness. I had taken the day off and it snowed. There was no need to get up early to blow out the driveway. No need to fight through poorly plowed roads or drive on snow compacted highways. Wasn't I clever for arranging to get a day off, on the day it snowed. I took my time shoveling and snowblowing the driveway and sidewalks and did a thorough job.

Lest my ego get any larger, Mother Nature put me back in my place. It snowed again on Tuesday night, which meant when I got up for work Wednesday morning, I did have to get up early and blow out the driveway. I did have to fight through poorly plowed road and drive on snow compacted highways. And I wasn't so clever, because I didn't also ask off for Wednesday.

We ended up getting four or five inches in total. We've probably gotten almost a foot in the last couple of weeks, although I'd say there's only six or seven inches on the ground at the moment.

Today I need to put in a call to our gutter guy, Roger. We had a bit of a thaw over the Thanksgiving weekend, and the snow on the roof and in the gutters melted. As I was leaving the house through the back door (the one that gets snowdrifts under it), I noticed a drip pattern on the sidewalk under the eaves. Looking up, I saw a drip of water on the fascia, slowly coalescing and then falling to the sidewalk with a "splat".

Looking back now, it's funny how a single drop of water made me so furious. I was outside alone (no children present) and I let loose a string of expletives that was a grand culmination of two year's of experience with Irish cursing. I went into the garage, took out the large fiberglass ladder, and put it in place, on the snow and ice. At that point I was too angry to be careful.

Climbing up the ladder I looked at the roof and the gutters. Neither looked like it was leaking, but something was. Considering how the roof is built and where the water was exiting (at the fascia), I was fairly certain that it was the gutters. I was able to remove a few of the soffit vents (which I should really take a picture of someday) and get my arm up into the eaves to feel underneath the gutters. Sure enough, the decorative front piece was wet. Water was leaking from somewhere, flowing along the decorative front piece underneath the gutter, until it hit a spot where the decorative piece tipped back towards the house. Then it flowed along a joist, hitting the fascia board on the backside and dripping down to hit the sidewalk. I went into the house too, to check the inside of the attic, just to make sure there wasn't a leak with the new shingles. The attic was as dry as a bone.

I decided it would be good to wait a bit before talking to Roger or blogging. I was too mad to be coherent. So I'm now a little more calm and will call him to see when he can come out and resolder the joints on the north side of the house. Hopefully they can be resoldered. I don't want to consider what my options are if they can't be resoldered. And of course it makes me suspicious about the quality of the rest of the work.

In hindsight, hiring Roger was a bit like hiring somebody who is an expert with a crescent wrench to work on your car. The man knows how to use his tools, but he is not a mechanic and still could use a good mechanic to lead him along. There is more to gutters and moving water off of a roof than I would have guessed.

The weekend is coming soon and I have next Monday and Tuesday off. A nice long weekend to relax and get one or two things done around the house.