Blue View - Blanche’s Leaking Roof

We’ve had Blanche for about four months now, and never noticed that she has a roof leak. That might have something to do with the fact we live in Las Vegas where there hasn’t been more than a trace of rain in about two years now. Even on our last road trip through New Mexico and Texas we saw very little rain. Well, welcome to the Pacific Northwest.

I forgot just how much it rains here. The last few days have varied between light rain to heavy rain and everything in between, but always some form of rain. On the one hand, this is great for the flowers… everything is in bloom and the colors are magnificent. All the many orchards are green and this year’s crop of apples and cherries looks to be a good one. And the snails, moss and fungi seem to be thriving. On the other hand, I think I’m starting to grow a little mold between my toes - and we’ve discovered that Blanche’s roof leaks.

We used two pans to catch the drips

It’s not a big leak. It only produces a drop every few seconds, but unfortunately, it’s right above the bed. We noticed it before the bed got too wet, and we put pans under it, which work well at catching the drips when we’re parked, but not when we’re driving or lying in it. We discovered that if we stuffed paper towels into the gap around the fan bezel, we could stop the leak for awhile, somewhere between a half hour and a couple of hours, depending on how hard it was raining. When the paper towels became sopped, we pulled the wet ones out and replaced them with dry. Fortunately, we only had to suffer through a couple of nights before the skies cleared up, giving me a chance to fix the leak

We found a local Lowes and parked way out in the hinterland. I bought a couple tubes of roof sealant, a caulking gun, and borrowed a ladder. The source of the leak was the roof fan. I removed all the old caulk, cleaned the area with alcohol, then re-caulked around the fan. The entire job took about two hours.

This seems to have stopped the rain for a few days. I’m optimistic that the new caulking will also fix the leak, but we’ll have to wait until the rain returns to find out. I have no doubt we won’t have to wait too long.

See you next week…