Contractors slammed as storms test Bay Area home roofs, foundations
PLEASANT HILL – The past couple of weeks have been a serious test for just about every roof, wall, and foundation in Northern California. Problems are surfacing everywhere and, predictably, restoration contractors are slammed.
So what are they finding, and what are homeowners facing when there is a leak?
"You can't really tell this is wet," said Andrew McCullough of AMAC Construction, looking a home's interior wall. "But she saw this little bubbling right here. Right there, that's water in there."
It's the kind of leak that's springing up all over.
"So it's a small leak," Andrew explained. "It's just leaking in and spreading slowly."
And in this case, Andrew and his father Ed McCullough, identified the culprit right away. It can actually be seen from the back yard.
"See that vent," Ed said. "The elements just come right through it."
"Flashing has failed around this fan," Andrew said inside the attic crawlspace, where it's easy to see the damage, and what needs to happen next.
"So this is 9%," Andrew said, testing the moisture level in the roof's floorboards. "That's about what plywood should be. Now we're at 100%. So what we've got to do is get this wood back to here. This is a cellulose, blown-in insulation. So it's wet and we have to remove it."
From there, it's tracing the rainwater through the house, seeing how far it might have reached. But if groundwater gets into the home, that's a different problem.
"I mean, there are chemicals in the soil," Andrew explained. "Here is urine from animals and what not. That goes into your home, it has to be treated properly. Disinfected properly."
The tools needed to do that work are in such demand that there simply aren't enough available. The phone never stops ringing.
"These are very valuable right now," Andrew said of the dehumidifiers outside. "They're out. Everyone's out of equipment. We're bringing them off jobs. We started last week, and they're going back out on new ones today. In and out, we're putting them all over the Bay Area."
While the storms have been intense, it's not just the relentless atmospheric rivers causing the problems. Many of the leaking roof vents around the Bay Area are actually the victims of the other end of California's weather spectrum. Think back to the summer heat dome.
"We get a lot of sun in the summer, and it's just pounding on these presidential roofs," Andrew said of the failing roof materials. "Now you get this powerful, wind-driven rain. It breaks apart silicones and flashings. They say 30 years, but in California we might be lucky to get 15 or 20 out of it."
It's the extremes of California weather, and the longer the rain continue, the more problems will emerge. If a home or business does have a weakness, water is going to find it.
