The Skylight
Great moments in building history: Everyone should learn Emergency Enclosure 101
I live near ski country in western New York State with my wife and five children. Our home is a 100-year-old post and beam that had seen its share of remodeling projects. My wife instantly fell in love with it when we first saw it more than six years ago.
I, on the other hand, had some reservations. She saw a home in the country with a pond and 10 acres that needed some cleaning and a little sprucing up, the perfect place for raising a family. I saw a bigger lawn to mow and more than a few needed improvements. But the house had potential, and it was a great place to raise our family.
This house had its share of secrets. One that I couldn’t figure out was why there were gutters on only half the house. It wasn’t until our first winter there that I discovered the answer: ice dams. We’re not talking a little ice; we’re talking icebergs. The combination of poor pitch to the roof and the absence of soffit and ridge vents was the perfect recipe for ice dams. The biggest ice-dam problem area was off the kitchen, which at one time had been a porch. The previous owners had enclosed the porch and incorporated it into the kitchen. There had been a woodstove in this area, but when it was removed, the former homeowners had installed a skylight where the stovepipe had gone through the ceiling.
Suspecting that the skylight was a major source of heat loss, I suggested that we get rid of it. My wife, however, liked the skylight because she could view the night sky through it and said, “It stays.” I’ve learned the importance of picking my battles, so I gritted my teeth and left the skylight alone.
A couple of years ago, we had a really hard winter. One morning, we woke up to find nearly 2 ft. of fresh snow atop the 21⁄2 ft. we already had. While we were going through our morning routines, my wife said that she’d noticed a leak in the kitchen ceiling. Just what I needed before I headed off to work, and it was probably that skylight.
I said to Luke, my oldest son, “If you help me get the snow off the roof, I’ll drive you to school this morning.” He agreed, and we planned our assault on the snow-capped roof. When we got on the roof, we noticed a huge ice dam and saw lots of snow, some of which had drifted over the eaves.
As we shoveled, we reminded each other about the skylight several feet away, still buried under piles of snow. Luke laughed about the quality time we were spending together.
Just then, I decided to move to a different part of the roof, and that’s when it happened. Because we were tired and joking around, I’d lost track of where I was standing. One minute I was on the roof, and the next, I’d fallen through the skylight, my feet dangling into the kitchen. My arms caught on the frame of the skylight, which prevented me from falling all the way into the house.
When you’re a homeowner, you need a sense of humor when you least expect it, and my wife hit the bull’s-eye. With snow and Plexiglas all over the kitchen floor and my legs dangling through the ceiling, she calmly walked over, coffee cup in hand, and said, “I guess this means you’ll be taking out that skylight, huh?”
After I was done being embarrassed, we all had a good laugh. I called in to work, and Luke didn’t go to school that day because he was home with me, studying Emergency Enclosure 101.
Drawing by: Jackie Rogers
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