The rain has been falling fairly steadily for a few hours in Miami, which made for a good day to check the interior of tin box for leaks. So far, it looks reassuringly dry inside. In fact, there's no sign of water inside the house, which means the roof, walls, windows, doors and vents are all working as intended. The strategies we've taken to ensure weather-tightness should help us avoid the considerable costs of repairs related to leaky roofs. These include:
Earlier this week, our photovoltaic (solar-electric) installer connected the wires for the p/v panels through the holes we'd carefully drilled through the steel trim at the top of the upper roof. These wires will be concealed beneath, and protected by, the final piece of trim that gets installed as a cap over the top edges of the roof's standing seams. Once the cap trim is in place, the roof will be finished.
Like any house, tin box has a number of holes in the roof to allow plumbing and mechanical vents to draw noxious, humid or lint-filled air out of the building. Each of these penetrations provides an opportunity for rainwater and critters to come inside, and so we need to use flashing to provide water-tight seals around the vents. All but one of the vents (the plumbing vent shown here) are protected by the overhang of the upper roof, which provides a comforting redundancy. The vent pipes are flashed with Dektite pipe boots, which adjust to fit a wide range of pipes, and which have a flexible base to accommodate different roof types. The pipe boots are held in place by mechanical fasteners and made watertight with a bead of sealant.
