Actually, it was Chris who saved the day – I was getting my hair done.
In my defence, I had made the appointment the previous day when it hadn't been raining and before anything had actually happened and well before we (alright Chris) knew how bad the situation was. But if Chris had told me how bad it was, I would have cancelled the appointment to head back home to help out, but he didn't so I didn't but luckily it all worked out in the end.
Since the middle of November, our house has not had a roof. We have, therefore, been relying on various tarps to ensure the house is protected from the elements, which in Vancouver means rain. This method worked well for us as the laws of physics were working in our favour. This changed the last Friday of November.
The construction crew had started to build up the upper floor walls. They had also put up temporary posts in order to mimic a roof peak from which the tarps were tied and allowed to simply drape over the side of the house. There was nothing, as shown in the photo below, to support the tarp across the gap and thus nothing to "encourage" the water to slide all the way down the tarp rather than pooling before it reached the side.
So one rainy night, as you may have guessed, the tarp sagged enough in an area just over the stairwell and water began to collect. And collect. And collect.
So what happened on the other side of the house, as the tarp was slowly dragged back over that roof peak by the ever-increasing weight of the accumulating water? Eventually the tarp moved over so much that there was no protection over the east wall of the house. This allowed water to run down the inside of that wall and from there into our living space downstairs. The first we knew about the problem was when we walked into the living room area on the Saturday morning to find water was dripping inside a windowsill on the east side of the house. We figured a tarp must have moved a little, or that the crew hadn't put enough of them up, but didn't worry too much. It was not until an hour or so later that we discovered another leak, this time in the middle of the suite. Hmm... well, both issues could probably be explained by simple tears or leaks in the tarp roof and while annoying, could be resolved by Chris while I went to my hair appointment and went gift shopping.
What neither of us knew at the time, and I didn't hear about until I got home 2 hours later, was the existence of the by-then absolutely enormous pool of water suspended in the tarp above the stairwell! The leaks we had found in the basement were nothing compared to the damage that would have ensued if the tarp had torn and all that water had flooded into the house! After recovering from the initial shock, Chris very carefully cut a small hole in the tarp under the "puddle" and began a one-man bucket brigade, shuttling at least 40 5-gallon buckets of water out of the house and onto the back lawn. It is a testament to his support for this blog that he actually considered first getting a camera to take a photo of the awesome sight, but in the end sanity prevailed. An irate phonecall to the crew foreman, suggesting that he get to our house ASAP, brought in the help needed to add some proper supporting boards under the tarp, and we breathed a great sigh of relief. Naturally, that Saturday marked the end of a month of ceaseless rain, rendering the entire tarp setup obsolete.
So what did we learn from this experience?
- Check the house every morning and evening to see if anything looks off, damaged, or like a disaster waiting to happen.
- A roof-sized tarp can accumulate a lot of water in a rainstorm, suggesting that a gutter-fed rainbarrel system ought to work pretty well in Vancouver.
- Chris needs a camera on his phone so on-the-spot photos can be taken as needed.
- Roof = good, tarp = bad. (Though we would probably still do it the same way again given how much cheaper the tarp was versus a big shrink-wrapped scaffold setup.)
- There can sometimes be a high price to pay for having nice-looking hair.
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