jarrin - The Hole in the Garage's Roof

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jarrin > My House

The Hole in the Garage's Roof
6/8/2008 7:30 PM

Initial excavation of the rotten wood.

Some previous owner of my garage had what I think was a basketball hoop mounted to the roof. When I took possession of the property the only thing that remained was two 1/2" holes through the roof where I assume the mounting bolts held the hoop assembly in place. Naturally, when it rained, water would drop into the garage. This wouldn't do!

As a stop-gap measure I slapped a spare shingle on top of the holes to try to minimize the leakage, but I did it sloppily and it worked about as well. But it was enough to stop me thinking about fixing it properly.

This spring, as the weather warmed up, I started to notice big ants crawling on the inside of the garage. At first I couldn't figure out where they were coming from (or going to). It wasn't until I started noticing little piles of rotten wood shavings under the holes in the roof that I figured out what was going on.

I climbed up a ladder and found a nest of Carpenter Ants in the eave of the garage near where the holes were. I manually inspected the wood around the holes and found it to be quite rotten. I then climbed onto the roof of the garage and started tearing away the shingles to get an idea of the extent of the damage. In the end I cut a square hole 43" x 26" to get rid of all the rot.

Check out the photo gallery for a play-by-play of the action.

Image Gallery: Reparations
The process of fixing the rotten wood in the roof.

See all 9 images.