PULPVILLE-6

There is no escaping this thing that surrounds us.
An entire legal industry is devoted to its rights. It batters our homes and sweeps them aside in
moments, yet usually breaks and enters through pinhole-sized passageways. It can destroy our homes
with a terminal, unthinking, and unblinking tenacity. It is a changeling, a shape shifter, mutating with
ease from a hard thing buried in the ground one moment to a nebulous cloud the next.
While we do all we can to protect ourselves from it, we spend billions of dollars annually to bring it into
our homes. We pipe, drain, filter and divert it. We drill thousands of feet into the earth to find it, and
remodel the natural world to store it.   As we continue to wrestle with it, we ultimately find we are battling
ourselves.
If the Earth is a living organism, as some people suggest, then water is the sweat and tears of the
world.

Most of us love to listen to the rain or the sound of water. It evokes a primeval connection with the
natural world. Men and women can find it romantic; untold numbers of artists and composers are
inspired by the stirring natural cacophonies of lightning and thunder sweeping across the heavens. Yet
homeowners cringe if they know their home is wounded and unable to face the elements alone.
Over time, the sound of the elements tinkling or dripping caused dread to surface in the heart of Allan
P____. The owner of a brand new home, he confessed to me that he broke into tears and sobbed
during the middle of his first night in the cursed house.
In terms of sheer economics, the place was a steal. Overall, it was a nightmare. The property was
finished shortly before the recession, and sat on a corner lot in a prominent high-end development for
many months. Money was tight, interest rates were rising, jobs were scarce, and the housing market
had dried up. The developer had to dump it.
It was a handsome white stucco with a concrete tile roof. A nice move up home if your goal is a
$500,000 house. The problem was, everything leaked. The roof, the windows, the foundation, and the
exterior walls offered no resistance to the forces of nature.
On that first night, a heavy storm rolled in from the north. The sky blackened late in the afternoon and
bore down upon the unsuspecting new owner before he had unpacked much more than a bed.
Winds battered the rain sideways into his home. A fierce electrical storm that lit up the night gave way
to a series of sodden, mournful showers. Water pooled on all the window sills and then ran downhill into
the basement, streaking the bare concrete walls until their entire breadth glistened from the leaks above.

   The drains deep in the wells of the basement windows were never connected properly, their fittings
smashed from gravel, the perimeter drain undulating up and down like a series of low, rolling hills. The
sump pit, designed to collect this water, was always dry.
  After midnight, water began to rise above the window sills. By dawn, the windows held back two feet
of water as best they could, the liquid fear spritzing through the weatherstripping.
Smelling the wet concrete, hearing the windows hiss, he felt his home sink into the muck.
Dryer and vent penetrations were not flashed and caulked, the number of downspouts was inadequate
for the amount of roof, and the stucco detail around the windows was snot installed strictly to the
manufacturer's specifications. Some of the weatherstripping on the windows was removed to allow
room for the metal cladding. When the alarm guy drilled holes for his sensors in the bottom of the now
leaking window sills, he created a perfect trap door in each window for water to run down the walls and
into the basement.
And the roofers!
Originally, the house was going to have a cedar shake roof. At the last minute, cedar was changed to
a concrete tile. The crew worked on a weekend and their installation was never inspected "mid-roof."
They eliminated flashing and felt where it suited them. Bear in mind that flashing and felt is what keeps
the house watertight. Concrete shingles only protect the flashing and felt and provide a nicer
architectural detail to a half-million dollar home than tar-paper could ever accomplish.
The battens that kept the tiles off the tar paper were skewed and diverted water to gaping holes
alongside the chimney and second story walls. Once water finds a pathway into a home, a trickle soon
develops into a stream, and if the problem isn't corrected soon enough, you're looking at the Grand
Canyon several times over as water carves its way behind the walls.
Nervous! That's what Allan was. Whenever snow melt dribbled down the roof on a sunny afternoon or
spring shower greened up the flower beds, he searched the windows and took photos of the basement
walls with a dull blue eye. His scrapbook, every print carefully dated, chronicled the fall of his house into
the maelstrom.
  We often stood in deadened silence, Allan wondering aloud if I heard the tell tale trickle behind the
walls.
Allan was certain that water droplets conspired at night on how to best inflict their misery on him.
He lived about three aeronautical miles to the south of my home, and when thunderheads built up after
work and a storm pounded the region to the south, I knew my pager would soon vibrate as Allan
endeavored to provide a verbal record of the indignities inflicted upon him as he sat awash in a sea of
leaks.
  I felt sorry for him, now unable to enjoy the cooling, transcendental soothing of a summer shower from
the comfort of his bed, by many accounts one of life's little pleasures.
  We all felt sorry for him. The builder, the window guy, the building inspector, and the neighbors. My
turn to tackle his leaks eventually surfaced in the natural order of things, and by the time my shift was
over his home was imperious to all but the worst storms. On one occasion the building inspector, due
to Allan's conniving, ambushed the roofer in his front yard. He threatened to shut all of his jobs down
unless the roof was corrected by the end of the month.
  Every window was carefully examined by a rep from the window manufacturer, and weather stripping
was reinstalled. The alarm sensors were moved to the top of the windows, their holes plugged and
caulked. Another 589 tubes of caulk sealed around any and all vent penetrations, windows, and
exterior lights, especially the ones that had one-half inch romex cable protruding from fist-sized holes
behind the fixtures. More downspouts were added. The holes from eight inch gutter spikes that
perforated the fascia board were sealed with silicone caulk. Perimeter drains were dug up by crews
that tunneled ten feet below the lawn's surface, and reconnected. Concrete slabs were topped with
flagstone, their new veneers pitched to ensure positive drainage. Self-leveling polyurethane caulk
sealed the slabs tight to the house. Window wells were dug out and flashed where heavy timbers had
punctured the foam behind the stucco. A second story deck was partially torn up, the planking under
the sliding door properly flashed. Stucco repairs were made.
  There were probably over 200 distinct and separate leaks that contributed to Allan's nightmare, and it
took a couple of years to sort through them all. The tide was turned a drip at a time. Now his home is
imperious to all but the most sustained deluges, but it may be a while until he sleeps through a drizzle.
  I drove past his house last week, and noticed it was for sale. The disclosure statement should make
fine reading.