(With apologies to the Morton Salt people for messing up their motto.)
I've lived in my little house-on-a-slab for 30 years. It had a new roof when I moved in. The new roof was layered over the old roof, so there were at least two layers of shingles up there with very little chance of a leak. But I DID have a leak. Why, you may ask? Because my house was built on a concrete slab.
One might also ask why a leak in the ceiling would be caused by concrete in the floor. If you're very, very bright, you might figure it out. There was no central air in the bungalow when I bought it. The only AC was a window unit in a back bedroom in line with the hallway. I asked the previous owner to take it with him (which he gladly did) because I didn't have the strength or desire to move it in and out, seasonally, and also didn't want to mesx with covering it on the outside. It was my intention to install central AC. Meg and I moved into the house in late March of 1992. By June, I already had contracted a guy to put in the unit. Hallelujah! My home was air conditioned!
Air conditioning not only cools the air; it also removes the moisture from the air. That moisture becomes "condensate", which means "water". There is a condensate pump that sends the collected water outside the house, somewhere. In my house, it can't go through a crawl space because there is no crawl space. So, where does it have to go? Up through the attic and outside. Even though the attic is insulated, it still gets cold up there above the insulation. (Are you following me so far??)
When the AC was installed, a copper tube drained the condensate up into the attic via a condensate pump, and out through an outlet on the ground in the back yard. Not long thereafter, a "handy" friend of mine volunteered to install ceiling fans in three bedrooms. That meant a trip to the attic. Truth be known, the attic is nasty in temperatures over 70 degrees F. I wouldn't send my worst enemy up there in warm weather. It's too hot to sustain life!
Somehow in the process, the copper tube was accidentally kneeled on (since one can't stand up in my attic). That created a crimp in which water pooled at the end of the air conditioning season, only to freeze and crack the tube in the winter. The next spring, as the water thawed, I had ceiling leaks that occurred in two rooms. Called the AC guy who came out, found the problem, and encased the copper tubing in a section of garden hose to solve the problem. Hooray!
Fast forward MANY years--like all the up to just three years ago. My house was paid off. I was switching homeowner's insurance companies. The company of choice sent out a dude who said they would not insure the house because the roof was covered in moss. Yes, I knew this. I had already been talking to my bank and roofing sources to find my cheapest options for getting that little detail taken care of. I contracted a local company who came two days later to install a new roof.
In the meantime, a ceiling leak developed in a back bedroom. Since I'm rarely back there, it wasn't noticed for awhile. And then another leak spot showed up. It had to be a slow leak because nothing dripped. It just moistened the drywall, but it was problematic. One person even suggested that it could be animals in the attic and that the wet spots were critter urine. Ack! I called my roofing company. They sent out a small team to take care of the problem at no charge to me. We have taken steps to watch the spots to see if they get wetter or bigger. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!
I'm chuckling at myself here. Who would think that a whole wordy blog post could be made out of a roof leak? You ain't seen nuthin' yet!
