alright, so where were we? oh thats right, waiting for monday to see if everyone does what theyre supposed to.
[monday]
so monday morning arrives and at 8am central [9am eastern] i give the new roofer a call to see where we are. much to my surprise he answers the first time i call, and to my slight disappointment they are on their way to the house [instead of having been there the last 2 hours, lol]. but this is great news! its going to get done!
around 11am i get a call from greg who confirms that the tarp is on, the roof is sealed, and that his team is setting up and getting started with the tear out phase. sounds great, we're finally making progress! but wait... whats the tear out phase?
so heres my understanding of how water extraction works... first of all they have a list of items that over time and with whatever testing they do, have decided cannot be dried/arent worth the time it takes to fully dry/some other reason they dont dry them. so the very first thing they do when they go into a house is clean up any debris that has accumulated [such as ceilings falling down? yes...] then they begin to remove any type of material that is both wet and on their list. now to determine the level of wetness they have gauges and testing requirements and such to determine the relative level of water penetration and saturation of whatever the material is. in our case, the house has for all intents and purposes not had a roof to prevent water coming in for the last oh... week? week and a half? and through a series of large heavy rain storms no less. so... its kind of pointless to test a lot of this stuff at all when youre wading through water ankle deep...
items on the list for immediate removal? well. carpet, carpet padding, linoleum, vinal composite tile [or vct for you architecture types], anything with visible surface mold, ceramic tile [if the grout is visibly cracked and has allowed water penetration] mastic, caulk, underlayment boards, plaster, drywall, insulation.... hmm.... im not sure if there's more than that, but that just about covers our house.
so really, after the first couple of days, the only floor surfaces remaining in our house was the subfloor decking through out the entire house with the exception of the kitchen [where the ceramic tile held up pretty well and they decided to try and dry it from underneath in the basement] and the second floor bathroom - which magically managed to avoid almost all water getting in altogether. as far as walls go, they were going to wait and see how much they could dry out after the first week before tearing into them [with the obvious exception of any places that the plaster or drywall had already come off the walls - although there was little of this at this point to my understanding]. ceilings - all gone. drywall, plaster, insulation, i think the only ceilings that remained unscathed were again the 2nd floor bathroom, and then the first floor front room [parlor] and entry way - these two they were going to try to salvage if possible and attempt to dry them out.
so... end of week one, my house has officially been gutted. [see pictures here] the dry out process has begun and is going well by all accounts from greg, the roof has stayed sealed up with no leaking, and ive gotten a bill from the first contractors roof tarping attempts [about 500 bucks at this point]. but things are looking up!
at some point during the week i had spoken with ryan again who was glad to hear everything was going well and that we were back on schedule. however we discussed the interior remodeling once the dryout process was completed and he confirmed that there would be absolutely no money upfront to cover any material costs. if i was going to continue working with my original contractor he was going to have to eat that cost and he would be fully reimbursed when the job was complete.
heh, i'll give you 3 guesses how that went over when i gave the contractor a ring... if you guessed not well received, then you were right. so after a conversation with him about the situation we agreed that he wouldnt be doing the interior work either and that other than the bill for the tarping [attempts] still needing to be paid our business together was dissolved.
to be honest with you, i was a little relieved... dont get me wrong, i like the guy [still] hes a hell of a nice guy. but this whole fiasco and his refusal to work with the insurance company was just more than i could handle in added stress on top of the destruction of my house and being 2000 miles away.
however, now i was stuck, right? who the hell am i going to get to do the interior once the dry-out is finished [which i was told they were optimistically thinking would be no more than a week - however at weeks end that was no longer the case] well.... if youve done any snooping online since the last post then you probably have a good idea of what i did next. given that my relationship with rainbow international had been so positive from the first minute i happily called them up and informed them that id be giving the interior remodel work to them. thats right, if youve checked out their website you know, they are a full service disaster services company. not only do they do the abatement [and that includes mold and asbestos as well if i remember correctly] but they also do the work to come back and make it as good as new.
well at this point i was about as happy as i could be given the circumstances. rainbow was doing a hell of a great job, and greg was a hell of a nice guy, and i was sitting quite comfortably in the assurances that this was going to get done and get done right.
[meanwhile...]
i recieved the estimate from the roofer and faxed it over to the insurance company hoping for the best and was soon entangled in a new nightmare... for those of you that are as ignorant about insurance claims as i was, and specifically those that involve the destruction and repair of your home, get ready for a little morsel of information to chew on that i have been fighting with for weeks now. i cant speak to everyone out theres coverage, but if you have the standard coverage that i do, then yours probably looks near identical to mine.
in the event that you have to go through this hell that i am currently stuck in, it will be valuable for you to know up-front that when the insurance company does estimates and decides what they will and wont cover as far as replacement goes theres a little preface that they dont always mention up-front: no matter what damage occurs or what condition your home was in before the damage, the insurance company will only give you enough money to go back with exactly what was there before. thats it, no more, no less, exactly to the state it was in before the accident.
okay, now while you mull that over, ill clarify things for you with respect to my situation.
the roof.
the roof i originally had, if youll remember, was 100yr old roof joists, with 100yr old wide plank spaced decking, followed by a layer of tin/metal roof, followed by 6 layers of torch-down modified roofing membrane, [keeping in mind that because of the weight of that roofing system the structure of my roof had begin to sag in the middle causing a bowl effect and was holding water - which by the way had worsened significantly since this whole thing began and was now visibly sagging something like 3 inches from the reports i was getting] along with a large skylight cut into the middle of the roof [that was a great feature, but was never installed and structurally reinforced properly which added to the structural issues and was an on-going source of minor water infiltration].
so based on all that, just guess what that meant as far as what the insurance was going to cover... the tearing off of all existing roofing membrane and tin roof, and then coming back with one layer of torch-down modified roofing and the recommendation that we remove and cover up the skylight if we know whats good for us. the end. and they werent really allowing enough for the proper removal and disposal and cleanup of the entire flat roof at that.
so um... heres why this is worse than it sounds.
1. they determined that the structural situation was essentially a "pre-existing condition" that was unrelated to the storm damage and they would cover no structural reinforcing or repair. this means that if we put a new roof on top of the existing structure it would more than likely support the much lighter roofing system with no problem, however water would continue to pool and i guarantee that within a year it will have found its way through the new roof membrane and into the newly-remodeled interior of the house.
2. they determined that the skylight was not effected by the storm damage at all and wouldnt have anything to do with it, period. so.... whos paying to have it removed? me. and what about the fact that its a feature of the house that the potential buyer is expecting to remain? dont know, dont care. thanks guys....
3. the method of installing a torch-down modified roof system requires that the underlaying surface be completely smooth and solid so that the membrane has a surface to adhere to when it is torched-down. um... this doesnt work with a "spaced plank" system! that means there are litterally spaces between every plank in the decking that range anywhere from 1-3 inches... in the case of a tin roof [the very first layer] this isnt a big deal, you nail it werever you want and it covers everything. with a membrane system, there will essentially be sags in all the cracks and every one of those would hold more water and create a point of potential penetration.
4. no one [out of the dozen or so roofers i contacted, not a single one] will put a torch-down modified roofing system on a 100 year old house. in fact 90% of the roofers i talked to wouldnt install a torched-down modified system if the roof was in a condition they could! the risk of fire is too great and the system is decades out of date. the current standard in flat roofs is a fully adhered rubberized roof membrane, that is glued to a sublayer of insulating deck board, that is fastened to a smooth solid roof decking system, typically 3/4inch plywood.
so where does this leave me?
um... effed.
i finally convinced them that at the very least they had to pay for new decking for a membrane to go on top of if i ever found someone to install the system they wanted, and they agreed to 1/2inch [not what you want, will result in a more bouncy roof decking] plywood deck to cover the entire roof.
well at least theres that. now heres the worst part yet... all this is going to result in their estimate being right around $6000. the estimate that the new roofer gave me was upwards of $13,000. so um.... wheres that other 7 grand coming from? yeah, my pockets...
and so begins the next exciting phase of hunting for roofers that would be close to their numbers and provide the roof system they would actually pay for [thus the dozen or so we tried, to no avail] and that would install a roof on my 3 story house to begin with. [which only about a quarter of them would do. the majority only did shingle roofs and only 1 or 2 stories max height.]
joy oh joy...
stay tuned for more exciting catastrophe to come....
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