I had a terrible end to the weekend. After watching the cricket from Brisbane until it was obvious England were safe and well in front, I went to bed only to be woken about an hour later by a dripping noise. I hate dripping noises!
On investigation, it turned out to be water dripping through Shaun’s ceiling. Not good, as Shaun’s room isn’t even at the top of the house. I put a couple of buckets on the floor to catch the drips, then went upstairs to see where the water was coming from.
It turned out that snow and ice had accumulated in the roof gutter at the back of the house. This gutter is actually part of the roof, so with more snow falling and the snow on the roof beginning to melt a little, water was draining into the gutter but was not able to get into the down pipe which was blocked with ice, and so was finding it’s way into the eves and then down into Shaun’s room.
So, for the entire night, every half hour, I had to lean out of the dormer window and scoop water and ice out of the gutter and throw it into the back garden. I tried the longest implement I could find to clear the ice from the gutter, but couldn’t reach the down pipe. I tried some kettles of water, which didn’t work either. It was only at first light that I could really see the entire problem, and then got four buckets of hot water and a floor mop and poured the water whilst encouraging a wave with the mop to wash down the gutter and eventually clear the two inches of hard ice from the six feet of gutter closest to the down pipe. All the time throughout the night, more snow was landing on me as I hung out the window 50ft up.
The offending gutter
I didn’t realise that some of the snow and ice I was throwing into the back garden was landing on the roof of my study which projects a little out the back, and this eventually help to cause a similar problem in the ceiling of the study, which I didn’t discover until later. Then, I had to get a ladder and clean out the gutter above the study.
So, we’ll need some gutter repairs once the snow clears.
