Wasn't that supposed to keep water from coming in the house?

The roof is done, and yet we had water coming in the house last night.

No, no. The roof isn't the problem. It's our cheap-o piece of junk swamp cooler that we can blame now. Part of the process of reroofing was to have a professional come out to move the thing and then put it back. I watched the dude move the cooler, and he wasn't exactly manhandling the thing. Yet last night after I had turned on the faucet to fill it back up, there was a river of water coming down both sides of the roof. I later discovered that there was also a pretty steady drip inside the house from the cooler's vent. This combined with the total lack of electrical power to the cooler called for having the guy come out again today.

I had to take a two hour lunch and miss a scheduled work appointment to be here while the guy did his stuff. Seems like a lot of time for replacing a 10-foot section of wiring. I was a bit steamed because I shouldn't have had to come out again today. Yesterday, I asked Swamp Cooler Guy if I needed to stick around while he wrapped up. "Oh no, go ahead and leave. That's fine." Of course, he pulled out the "nobody was here so I could go inside and test it" routine when called on it last night. That didn't sit well with me.

You see, the tubing that was covering the electrical lines going to the swamp cooler was badly rusted. When I say "badly rusted", I mean about the top 60% of the tubing had rusted away. Swamp Cooler Guy rightly said "dude, replace this now" and I sensibly said "yeah, that's a really good idea." He then proceded to tear off that old chunk and try and get a good section of wire to use to re-wire the thing. The problem with that sheathing having been so rusted away is that water had been free to come in the pipe. All the way into the attic. The wire was litterally rusted to the pipe containing it. He had to pull something fierce to get the pipe off of the cable. Both the roofer and I shot each other some looks as if to say "whoa, that wire looks REALLY bad." Swamp Cooler Guy, however, said it looked fine and that we could reuse it. Well… he's allegedly the professional, so I'll go with what he says, right?

Wrong. Seems that doing it the right way instead of the cheap way would have been a good call at the time. Swamp Cooler Guy saying that it was okay to leave was the only thing saving us from another $60 trip charge to take care of it. 

Now, I don't blame the swamp cooler guy for the leak in the pan. With the way he was carefully handling the unit, there is no way he could make a weld split open that cleanly, especially with no rust anywhere on it. No, this was just a crappy swamp cooler that happened to break at the wrong time. I picked up about $12 worth of "fix it" stuff that I'm going to use tomorrow to try and fix it up and make it hobble through a few more seasons without incident. As of right now, though, it's too hot to sleep, even with the fan functional and pulling in cool air (unlike last night). Maybe Shauna is on to something with burning down the house and starting over.