Rain...Glorious Rain

Yes, that is what I have been saying to myself for the last couple of days. We haven't had any discernible rain for months. My trees are all but dead and I won't bore you with the state of my lawn.

But that is all changed now. Last week we got inches of rain over a two day period and last night again...more inches. Just fabulous! I think I see life springing back in my trees.
But wait a minute, I think I see something else as well.

What are those spots in my bedroom ceiling? And wait a minute, what is this REALLY big wet spot on the wall in my bathroom? Oh boy, two pretty serious leaks and it is really pouring. I just had the roof replaced this past January because of a pretty serious hail storm that we had last year. As luck would have it, I managed to find the same folks who put the original roof on the house to re-roof it. At that time I shared a pretty sordid story of a hurricane related complete wash out in New Jersey and begged him to be sure when he did this job, not to remove any shingles if there was rain in the forecast. He did a fine job and I was very pleased.

But what's with the leak now? I fished out his telephone number and called at 8:30 this morning. He sounded quite surprised when I told him what was happening and said he would be here in 30 minutes. It actually turned out to be a few minutes longer, but I knew he would be here. I could tell by the way he handles his business. He cares about his work and his reputation.
I showed him the leaks and he had to admit it was a head-scratcher. Well, sure, a leak in the middle of the wall in the bathroom and another along the inside edge of the bedroom ceiling, I was curious too.

I was relieved to find out the leaks were not related directly to the shingling job that they did. It was actually caused by the rubber collars on two plumbing vents; they had dried out and pulled away from the vertical pipes thus allowing rainwater to trickle in and down the vent pipe. He told me these collars generally last five or more years and that they were all replaced in January. So he is attributing their failure to a combination of manufacturing defects and the extremely hot summer we had this year. Just fried the rubber and made it crack and pull away from the pipe. He said he replaced the two damaged collars and resealed all the other vent pipes.

OK, so I am setting up a long range "to-do" list.
Item number one: in 2015 replace all the collars on the vent pipes.

Probably the best news from this whole fiasco is that when he sends a painter to repair the water stained spots, I may actually get a match for the paint in my house. I've been trying for years without success.