When Leaky Roofs Remain Unattended

A month ago, a tenant raised a concern about water trickling down the wall from the ceiling when it rains hard. One of my frustrations at the apartment is that some portions of the roof leak and I've no idea why. I've had a couple of workers do the roof (Bert and Gerry) at different times and apparently the problem persisted. I knew the vacancy at Unit D was the most affected.

Anyway, after the concern was aired, I asked Dods to put roof sealant (Shelby GutterSeal as he requested) on all the affected units. I asked the tenants to observe and monitor when it rains. Typhoon Feria came with heavy rains and after leaving, the tenants reported no problems. And so I asked Dods to come back, this time to fix the ceiling at Unit D that has long been unattended.


See how some parts of the ceiling plywood had rotted. It became brittle due to the constant rain-drenching and sun-drying.


Notice the watermarks left on the wooden spacers. A couple of these spacer have been waterlogged for some time. That orange thing is the plastic flexible pipe for the electrical wiring.


Dods added a thin piece of wood to splice the two waterlogged spacers before covering with a new panel of 1/4" thick marine plywood. And the new panel was repainted after that.

Fortunately, it was just one panel of the ceiling.