Tag: storms

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Last Year’s Hail Damage

Christine
Last spring we had a wicked, nasty storm. Lewis was at home, but I stayed put at work because we weren’t sure it was really safe to travel. Better to stay in safe shelter than risk getting caught in a bad storm in the little VW, blowing all over the highway.
Anyway, when Lewis first called to tell me how bad it was at home, I couldn’t really understand him. I thought he was going through the automatic car wash!
When things subsided a bit he went outside with the camera.
big hail
hail-littered lawn
poor posies
garden recovered, but zucchini leaves took a beating
When the skies cleared, Lewis realized that we were very lucky. No broken windows, only some broken tree branches, no downed trees. But the siding, oh the siding…
that arc to the left of Oliver isn’t dirt

those streaks aren’t dirt, either

 


The hail actually struck the house so hard that the paint has been scraped away, right down to the bare metal. When you run your hands over the siding, you can feel all the pits and dents caused by the hail.
pits, dents and no paint

So, a project we though we were going to put off for several more years got bumped to the top of the list. And, you know, it isn’t such a bad thing. While we have the siding off, we can remove all the old, unknown layers and we will be insulating from the outside in. While we have all the walls open, we are getting air conditioning (yay!), and replacing a few damaged windows. Also we are going to be getting the roof scraped and re-painted and we are getting new gutters. Gee, is that all… it seems like there is something else…

All you old house owners out there know what it is like. One task leads to another and another. This spring’s project is turning out to be a big tangled mess of things that overlap. We’re in for a fun ride!

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Oliver and Thunder and Lightning

Christine

Incidentally, before the storm Friday night I tried to take Oli for a walk and it didn’t go so well. I knew he was bored and I knew it might rain in a little while, so I saddled him up with the Easy Walk Harness– which works great, but he doesn’t really like it. Turns him into stiff doggie. I think it is because he knows that he can’t pull when he’s wearing it. He also knows that harness = walks.
Anyway, he usually loves going for walks, but that night he kept stopping, like something was bothering him. He stopped first in front of our next door neighbor’s house and refused to move. I thought maybe something was hurting him. I checked the harness, making sure it wasn’t twisted, the clips hadn’t caught his hair, then I checked all four paws. Nothing amiss. Patted him down and gave him a little rub of encouragement then tried to get him to walk again.

We passed two more houses and he stopped again. He hadn’t been walking with his normal gusto and wasn’t even interested in the other dog a block away, walking toward us. Something was up. I got down to his level, petting, soothing, trying to figure out what was up with my guy. The the heat lightning flashed a bit stronger than it had been and he stiffened up even more. Hmm. Storms don’t generally bother him, but it seemed he didn’t like being outside during the thunder and lightning. I didn’t think much of it because the heat lightning and rumbles of thunder had been going on for several hours by then.

I asked him if he just wanted to go back home, and he was more than ready. We trotted back to the house at a clipping pace. I made him sit on the porch steps with me for a few minutes before we went in. I wanted him to get comfortable being outside, with mommy’s protection, while the sky flashed and rumbled. I did my best to make him feel safe and not make a huge deal over it. We did this with him for the first couple of storms when he was a puppy, and we thought they didn’t bother him. I guess that only did part of the job.

So now we know. Oliver is fine with storms from the safety of the house, but he doesn’t want to be outside when there is thunder and lightning.

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Why the Painted Plywood?

Christine

See the shiny spots at the top of the roller? Yeah, that’d be rainwater! It seems to be coming in from the top of the window and running down between the frame and the header trim. Seems we may be missing some flashing or caulking or both.

At least we finally know where the water is coming from. When I bought the house we soon discovered that there was a sheet of plywood under this set of windows (as well as under the set in the front bedroom) indicating that some sort of damage had occurred and someone was too lazy to do anything about it. Aside from the natty painted plywood quick fix. You can see in this picture that was taken before we did any work to the house that their paint-over-plywood trick wasn’t holding up too well either.

We discovered that there wasn’t the appropriate flashing, etc. around the bottom of this set of windows and remedied that. Then we re-plastered. Imagine our dismay when the new plaster in this area began to effloresce. We were at a complete loss. No idea where the problem lie. Then it seemed to stop, so we forgot about it. Until the rocking rainstorm Friday night.

I really figured we would lose power, so I cleared the kitchen table and set lit a candle in the center. Then I headed upstairs for the small flashlights we keep in the night stand. I usually have one under the kitchen sink, too, but couldn’t find that one. Must remember to track that down.

As I was going up the stairs it occurred to me that I should shut the air conditioner off, as it was cooling outside, and if the power did go off, I didn’t want any problems if we had a surge when it came back on. I was about halfway into the room when my bare feet encountered a huge puddle. Rain was coming in through the air conditioner! The wind was blowing the rain horizontal and so hard that it was coming in through the vents.

I was momentarily stunned. I just stood there, taking it all in. All this water. And you know how these floors are- water runs straight through and next thing you know you have wet plaster on the dining room ceiling. So don’t need that. I grabbed some towels and started mopping things up. It soon dawned on me that not all the water was coming in through the air conditioner. The curtains were soaked, I pulled them off. That’s when I saw what you see in the pictures above. I couldn’t understand it. I thought maybe the top sash had come down a bit, allowing water in, but that seemed unlikely since most of them are still painted shut (one of these years we’ll get around to that).

I mopped up all the water the best I could, having to move furniture out of the way. Of course most of the clothes piled on the desk in front of the windows had gotten wet. Then I discovered that the quilt on the bed was wet. I started peeling back layers when I stepped in more water. Under the bed! Of course the puddle under the bed had golden retriever dust bunnies to add to the fun.

Eventually I got it all mopped up, moved all the wet clothes and bed linens out of the room and set up a fan to dry the wall. The storm had died off by then and thankfully the electricity never did go out. I put fresh linens on the bed and called it a night.

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Slight Hail Storm Damage

Christine

We just had a brief hail storm here. Thankfully it did minimal damage. One small porch plant got knocked over. Strange, because it was in the middle of a cluster of potted plants. And my largest tree, the one I always worry about during storms, only suffered a few small broken branches and one sizable branch.

20 June 2008
This is nothing like the violent hail storm we had last summer. One year ago yesterday, in fact. I was almost home when it started, and I could hardly see the road. Most people were pulling over, but I only had about six blocks to go, and wanted to get home to make sure Oliver was safe. It was absolutely the worst storm I can ever remember, and it downed trees all over the neighborhood. My neighbor across the street, Mike, came out out on his front porch too, and we kept a close eye on the sky. I would not have been surprised to see a funnel cloud that day. We lost power for a couple of hours, although I don’t know if it was the whole town, or just our street because of the giant tree branch hanging on the lines. No one was hurt, thank goodness.
Anyway, I lost about the top third of my biggest tree that day. It is the only one that provides major shade to the house, so I was really upset. And we were afraid it might need to come down altogether, but we’ve just let it go, and it seems to be doing okay.
19 June 2007
Another huge branch of it fell over the fence, onto the factory’s yard. It did no damage to their building or the fence, and they were really good about it. They had many trees down elsewhere and had some of their guys to clean it up, and offered to take care of that branch for me. That was really great, because I would have had to hire someone.