Unpredictable Discolouration is Not a "Tip"

Yeah, so, our cottage roof started leaking earlier this week. The province has seen record rains as late, subsequently leading to (another round of) record flooding, so I suppose it was inevitable that some sort of rain-related mishap would eventually befall my lakeside hideaway destination.

There only are the four English channels up here, so I was settling in just after midnight on Tuesday to watch the Daily Show on CTV -- because, honestly, what else am I going to get that time of night on four channels -- when my very peaceful atmosphere was interrupted by a very loud DROOSH and then a whole bunch of water hitting the floor, subsequently slowing to a trickle and then to the kind of obnoxious dripping that doesn't make it particularly easy to fall asleep that night.

Inevitably -- and I have come to expect this from previous experience -- it was going to fall to me to try and fix this, me being the only person both agile and stupid enough to go up the fifty-five-degree-angle roof here. So today, in anticipation of tomorrow's vicious thunderstorm (an aside, if I may: STOP RAINING ON ME WEATHER GOD DAMN IT STOP IT STOP IT ARGH), I went up to the tiny rectangular enclave at the highest point of the hideout and did my best to waterproof anything that looks like water might be coming through it.

(Here I'd been all prepared to find and replace any compromised shingles, and the suspicious areas all ended up being in the roll roofing! There's nothing quite as satisfying as hauling a bag of several weighty tools you won't need up a steep roof! Ha ha! I'm an idiot!)

So my big excitement tomorrow will be waiting for it to rain (which will be a 'when' and not an 'if', because it is summer in Manitoba) and then finding out whether or not the ceiling attempts to drown me. If it doesn't, great! I am a handyman. And if it does, well, at least I have a much better idea of where the problem is.

With all of that said, then, let me tell you about the packaging of Black Knight Clear Waterproof Roof Patch. I get a kick out of the term "roof patch", just because it doesn't leave a whole lot of room for misinterpretation. ("What's that?" "Roof patch." "What does it do?" "It... seriously?") So if you've seen or used it before you have a pretty good idea of how it works, but because I'm the type to read everything anyway I must note that I took a bit of exception to their list of -- as the header proclaims them -- "WISE TIPS".



Three of these are perfectly acceptable tips of wisdom in that they are things that you can actually do, actions you can control that will actively increase your likelihood of success with the product. But then that third one is really just a warning they didn't bother to move two inches upward into the Caution section, just an "oh by the way sometimes this product screws with everything". That's not really advice, per se; that would more accurately be described as a 'warning'. And also as an admission that the product doesn't quite work as advertised, since the front of the packaging promises to "Maintain original beauty of your roof" and not to "Randomly turn shit grey".

But let's also get a load of the rest of that warranty there, the one just below the tip box:



Is it just me, or is that "applicator's skill" clause a solid guarantee that they'll never actually have to honour a warranty claim in their lives? I get the part at the end about using it within one year, because it's unreasonable to expect a goopy glop of multiple undisclosed chemicals to retain its full efficacy indefinitely, but applicator's skill? How would they even measure that? "Well, we would replace the canister or refund you the purchase price of the product, but you look like the kind of guy who was probably doing it wrong. I bet you breathe through your mouth and drop stuff a lot."

Anyway, it's going to rain tomorrow (I would add a qualifier like "likely" or "potentially", but no, it's going to rain tomorrow), and it's obvious there's no going back with this product, so I guess I just hope for the best. Here's hoping!