Courage

Your intrepid correspondent bravely scaled a ladder this morning. Then with the assistance of  two rectangles of thick foam to kneel upon, he courageously climbed onto the flat roof of our extension.

When we first moved into this house in 1989, a long thin garage connected our property to Tony and Jill's house next door. The house was built in 1925 but I expect that the garage was added during the 1970s.

In 1998, we decided to convert the garage into extra living accommodation. The builder we engaged was a very pleasant and competent fellow called Paul who knew what he was doing and cared about his clients. He was able to extend our kitchen by nine feet while also creating a  ground floor shower room and a study as well as a little corridor connecting the three rooms. He did a grand job.

I say that the roof of this extension is flat but actually it enjoys a small gradient meaning that rainwater never settles upon it. It always flows into the gutter. 

Mostly, we have no problems with that roof. Months, even years can pass with no ingress of water but two weekends ago, during a long spell of rain, we suffered a leak in the kitchen and had to use towels and a couple of buckets to collect the unwelcome visitor.

Because of the rain, I could not get up on the roof to take remedial action and I needed to wait for a couple of dry days to check out the situation.

As expected, there were no obvious signs of where the water had got in. The roof was unblemished but I know that water cunningly finds its ways and the sources of leaks are invariably hard to find. The problem had to be with the joint between our almost flat roof and next door's side wall. The joint runs for twenty two feet.

When I think about temperature variations that have occurred in our city this year, they have ranged between -5°C  and +36°C.  Flat roofing material and joints will expand and contract and over time weak points like connecting joints will often be affected. It should come as no great surprise.

I bought the Thompson's "10 Year Roof Seal" pictured at the top and painted the entire roof joint - being generous with the overlapping sealant. It was bloody cold up there today - not the best drying conditions. Of course I do not know yet if my "fix" has worked. That can only be confirmed during another spell of sustained heavy rain.

At lunchtime, Mr Brave swung his legs back onto the ladder, his trepidation eased by the presence of his helpful female assistant whose was holding the ladder with  her on the bottom rung.

Job done...for now!