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Heat (and maintaining the all-important fire) are the primary concerns of everyone at the Barn all winter long. During the rest of the year, a less pressing but still sometimes urgent concern is water. Any rain greater than a light drizzle eventually reveals the ever-shifting pattern of leaks in the roof that threaten things left in certain parts of the house.
Leaks are most prevalent on the back side of the upstairs, where the roof has seemingly gone the longest without repairs. In the upstairs bathroom, downpours outside have sometimes resulted in a leak so bad that it can generate a gallon of water in less than an hour. Most leaks are much smaller, but they can be very numerous when the rain picks up. When in the Barn during a rainstorm (a properly handled one, anyway), one is treated to a symphony of water music from dozens of leaks dripping into large and small containers at various rates. Thanks to a lack of response to our complaints, some of us decided to take care of the leaky roof problem ourselves.
In addition to leaks, there's a chance when the rain gets is very heavy and prolonged that the basement of the house will flood, extinguishing the gas-powered water heater. During the worst of the several floods, water filled the basement to such a depth that it was almost reachable from the trap-door entrance without climbing down.
Water at the Barn causes some interior problems too. For one thing, the washing machine and sink share a drainage pipe that for a long time was somewhat poor in its draining ability. This resulted in two symptoms when doing laundry: water would back up in the pipe and flood the sink, sometimes even to overflowing, and water would back up some kind of extra drain pipe that was installed behind the refrigerator. The latter seemed like it might have been designed to handle the problem, but unfortunately it itself consisted of a very slow-draining, fixed pipe with a flexible pipe shoved loosely into it. Those standing in the kitchen when laundry was done would often hear the characteristic sound of the big pipe rapidly filling up, and then the sound of water cascading onto the floor behind the refrigerator. When things got bad, or several loads of laundry were done, you could even see a spreading pool of water creeping from under the fridge.
In the winter, pipes along the outer walls are prone to freezing, which has the effect of making the washing machine unusable on a number of very cold winter days. On the coldest nights, the main water pipes have frozen and deprived the entire house of running water. Even when all is working well, the water heater is only able to supply a limited amount of hot water within a given two hours or so... you learn to plan your showers in advance if you don't want to be frozen to death in the middle of your shower.
A plumber eventually came, a few months before we left the Barn in June 1999, and fixed the problems with the drainage of the sink and washer. It took him many tries, though, and after the second or third of them we discovered that the "fix" for the problem actually resulted in the sound of water in the basement a minute after the sink was used -- it turned out two pipes that weren't sealed well had broken apart, and the "drainage" from the kitchen was doing nothing more than draining onto the basement floor.
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Jamie scrawled out a blueprint of both floors of the Barn, with leaky spots circled (the brownish lines). It was to serve as a guide for our landlords so they could take care of the problem. Nothing ever came of it. |