Oh No, The Ceiling Has Collapsed!

Growing up in New Mexico, our adobe house had a flat roof. No matter how much tar paper we put on the roof, or how much tar, we risked leaks whenever heavy rains fell.

These days, in Sacramento, I worry when heavy rains fall, because it means water will enter the basement and cause trouble.

So, in the vacation home in Wanaka, when heavy rains started falling on Friday evening, I went to bed taking solace that New Zealanders didn't have to face these same worries, because they design for rain, as witnessed by the pitched roof of the vacation home, since it rains a lot more here than in the American Southwest.

Ha! Little did I know!

Saturday afternoon, we were dallying around, when we heard a big thud. "Did someone come in the downstairs door?" Andrew asked. So I went downstairs and saw a fearsome sight. In the downstairs bedroom, the ceiling had caved in, spilling water all over a bed, and waterlogging the carpet. "There's trouble down here!" I shouted.

Turned out, the downstairs bedroom had been converted from a garage space just a month previous, so it was brand new. Behind the kitchen, and unbeknownst to us, a gutter had broken, spilling large amounts of water on a small flat roof segment just above the bedroom. A weakness in the new roof channeled water right into the house.

We hurriedly tried to do what we could with bailing buckets, and a call to the owner, who was shopping in Dunedin. The builder came over in an hour and rigged a protective tarp.

On Sunday evening, the embarrassed owner came over and said something surprising: "Oh, it hardly ever rains in Wanaka!" Well, it certainly rains more in Wanaka than in New Mexico, but it's true, Wanaka sits in the rain shadow of the Southern Alps, and for New Zealand, Wanaka is relatively dry.

Beware the destructive power of water!