This cOld House 6.1

As is often the case, I spoke too soon...

As I was blissfully blogging a few short moments ago, Dan was enjoying a glass of scotch, watching TV and listening to the soft pitter-patter of rain, er, hang on, that sounds like a small stream, is that the TV?? (mute the TV) uh, that sounds awfully close, is there water running somewhere?? er, are the windows leaking?? HOLY SH*T!

There was in fact a steady flow coming in under the wall in the corner of the living room, draining to the crawl space underneath. It was POURING into the house, creating a lovely water feature, splishing and splashing this way and that.

I donned a raincoat and proceeded with flashlight and umbrella out to the suspect area to find that the downspout was CLOGGED and the entire front southwest quarter of the roof of the house was draining into our crawl space.

NOTE: Yes, the gutters were cleaned TODAY!!! I'll be following up tomorrow to check if they also say they did the downspouts.

Dan and I returned with a pair of pliers and unclogged it, reattaching the snake that pulls the water four feet away from the foundation. That slowed the interior stream to a fast drip.

We saw signs of this problem when Rick fixed the floor a couple of weeks ago. There is a sill plate, (piece of lumber) between the poured foundation wall of the crawl space and the brick and stucco wall of the living room. The sill plate had completely rotted away. At the time we all just thought, well, the wall isn't moving so I guess there's not much we can/should do about that.

I'll be needing a bid from Rob to excavate the entire exterior of the living room and waterproof it. Particularly the gap left where that lumber has rotted away.

Dan and I, drenched from our impromptu repair, stood dripping in the living room, laughing hysterically. I believe we are going mad.