The Giant Rubber Roof and Other Boring Stories of Life

A home with a flat roof in the Pacific Northwest is a peculiar thing. The entire seven years of inhabiting this house, the roof has leaked during the winter at least once, if not many times, and those were just the leaks we could detect. I imagined that up above my head lie a moldy mass of soggy twenty-year-old insulation trapped under a layer or two of decrepit torch-down roofing. Each year I would investigate the roof structure on my hands and knees, searching for the source of the leaks. I would apply patching compounds and completely re-coat the roof in various products designed for the do-it-yourselfer to no ultimate avail. It still leaked. Maybe a little less, but BOY was I tired of this cycle. So this summer, the home was re-roofed with the latest, state-of-the-art PVC sheeting and the old insulation removed and replaced with new POLYISO -- all at CONSIDERABLE expense. This is the Rubber Roof Story. I have an even less interesting story about The Missing Downspouts, should you wish to indulge...