Roof Tiles, Trees and Buried Treasure: St Matthews Maintenance Update

On a rainy Saturday March 9th, Sandra McPhee reported that, while attending the memorial service for Brian Finnegan, she felt droplets of water falling from the roof. She was sitting in the 4th pew from the back on the south side of the church. It turned out there was also a leak in the sanctuary area, above one of the stained glass window dormers.

Water was dripping in the two pew areas where the blue and the black containers are.

There was a small leak where the blue container is sitting.

In January, Hanson Roofing had replaced 20 broken tiles on the roof, so it was disappointing that we continued to have small leaks. On March 18th and 19th the Hanson Roofing crew returned. Based on the location of the leaks, they opened up the roof in two areas that were on the south/alley side of the church roof: below and to the east of the steeple and above the stained glass window dormer.

They found the areas where the water was dripping in and covered that area with roofing paper and adhesive ice shielding.

Here is picture of two cracked tiles from the south side of church roof.

Another cracked tile.

We have not had a heavy rain since this work was done. If there are any more experiences of water dripping in the church, please be sure to contact me immediately! But hopefully we are done with that for a while.

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That Big Old Elm, It Ain't What It Used To Be

On Wednesday, March 27th, Nels Johnson Tree Service, contracted by the City of Evanston, cut down the large elm tree that stood at the southeast corner of Hartrey and Lincoln. Two large branches of this tree fell off late last year, so it was deemed time for it to go. It's still sad to see.

At least the workers had a nice, clear, blue-skied day to do the work in.

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Major Architectural Discovery

Ok, this is an exaggeration. In January a search for the end location of the chapel piscina resulted in the discovery of a crawlspace under the chapel. It is accessed by removing the grate by the water hoses on the west side of the chapel and removing the insulation covering the opening.

Here are some pictures:

East side of crawlspace looking north. All of structure is formed concrete

On north wall there is rusted conduit imbedded into the concrete.

Water lines for baseboard heaters running under chapel

The piscina in the chapel sacristy runs into the crawlspace below, as does electric conduit and drain lines. In the picture on the left below, the piscina drain is in the middle.

There is also some debris down there.

There is a pipe chase in the east wall that carries the pipe from the Parish Hall closet/sump room that is under the stairs (we store tables and chairs in there) to the Chapel.

All in all the concrete and pipe seemed to be in decent shape. The rusted electrical conduit on the north side may been a contributing factor to our need, just before Christmas, to re-route an electric line for the outside lights.

Parishioners at the Annual meeting had fun trying to guess the function of an item that was found in the crawlspace. Here it is along with a picture of some of the other items near it:

The "mystery object" is laying on the ground, propped up by the wall and under the wood.

These items were laying next to the "mystery object".