Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label faith. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Faith in Science

All through the night and this morning...and even now as I write it has been raining pretty hard. Flood warnings are in effect...my little rain swale and road side ditch are flowing like mad and at about 6:30 am water starting dripping though the celling near the wood stove pipe.

"Oh Fuck!" Were the only two words I got out before I leaped into action. Knocking over chairs to get to the stove, grab a bucket and get it catching I realized that I would be spending some QT this morning with my attic.

I pull the car out of the garage, get the ladder out of the shed and get my self into the attic space to check out the situation. Unexpectedly, the rain was not coming from the stove pipe hole. I traced the water over to a roof truss. It was seeping in, probably through a nail hole or crack in the asphalt shingles. After moving the insulation I could see it was running down the truss onto and across the sheet rock celling to the stove pipe.

How the fuck am I going to stop this? Its not like an actual hole that could be plugged. Then in a BRILLIANT flash of ingenuity some help from physics, hydrology and an old episode of Mr. Wizards World I did this:

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Wet string is tied around the wood and runs down into a bucket. The surface water tension will now divert the water from the wood to the string and capture it in the bucket. I tied two for redundancy. I watched it for a little while and it seems to be working. It only needs to be temporary because the rain should be stopping later tonight. I can probably fix the shingles this weekend.

Faith in science comes in, in that I had to still get to work and leave the apparatus unattended. If the laws of physics don't change between now and 6pm I should be all set.

Isn't Science Great?