Part of the spring ritual involves cleaning the maple seeds out of the gutters, which also gives me an opportunity to inspect things up there. This year brought a revolting discovery:
It seems the rubber (?) seals around all three vent stack pipes have disintegrated. Now, the contractor installed these as part of the re-roofing project late in the last millennium, so it’s not like they came with the house. They’re an exact match for what’s currently available at Home Depot and I have no reason to believe new ones will last any longer. Sheesh.
The correct fix involves removing the shingles around the existing aluminum plates, installing new plates, and then replacing the shingles. That seems unwarranted, seeing as how the aluminum remains nicely bonded to everything, so I slipped some solid polyethylene shields around the vent stacks, tucked them under the uphill shingles, and hope that’ll suffice.
The discoloration on the roof is getting worse, except downhill from the chimney’s copper flashing. You can see one of the ugly new black plastic vent seals over on the right:
I suspect the copper ions kill off the fungus, so, invoking Science, I tucked a foot of copper wire under the ridge vent uphill from a patch of fungus:
We’ll see if that makes any difference. I suppose the next time I’m up there I should tuck a strip of copper flashing under the shingle on the other side of the chimney to see if a bit more surface area will have more effect.
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 