Rushing, rising rivulets

It looked pretty ominous as I left the office, and was beginning to drizzle by the time I got to the car. It turned into a major torrent by the time I was on 285, on my errand to Katherine’s school — an “everyone slows down to 40 and even on high it’s hard to see through the windshields and some cars are taking shelter under the overpass and I’m glad I have all-wheel drive” sort of torrent.

It eased up a bit, but after I left Katherine’s school, the radio was interrupted for a weather alert, and Stephen Hawking (or someone who sounded like him) got on and started talking about a major storm cell that was dropping 2″/hr, and was stopped over central Centennial. Eep!

Called Margie, and she agreed that it was Raining Really Hard, but she sounded a bit distracted …

It rained only cats, or occasional dogs, on the rest of the trip, and I pulled up into the house, walked in …

… and discovered that water had been dripping down into the downstairs bathroom from the ceiling. This was not unprecedented, as we’ve noticed water damage there before, but we’ve never had actual water flow that was visible. We’d always assumed it was a problem with the master bath caulk, or sloshing from Kitten’s bathtub, or …

So, anyway, water from the ceiling — a full floor down from the roof. That’s not good. Margie had removed the lightbulb from the cannister lamp, and turned the switch off, and put a towel out …

Upstairs, Margie was on the phone with, of course, her Dad (that’s not sarcasm, that’s who I would have called). The access panel to the attic was open, the light on up there, a ladder in place.

Margie, bless ‘er, had gone up into the attic and discovered the problem. Around where the furnace vent goes up through the ceiling, Margie noticed that there was a substantial gap in the plywood and flashing, though the shingles were in place. That pipe then goes down to where the waste gas pipe runs across there, which leads down to the downstairs bathroom, which … well, you know the rest.

Margie had put some towels in place. Why it had suddenly started substantially leaking today is more of a mystery. Serious downpour, of course, though I’m not sure it’s unprecedented. Vibrations from all the siding work, perhaps. Or just cosmic rays.

On the down side, it means some roof repair of some sort.

On the up side, it means we know what’s been causing the water damage in the downstairs bathroom ceiling, which means we can repair the drywall as part of the Grand Drywall Mudding Project of Sometime in 2004 (Hopefully).