Pick an excuse:
Football season.
Apathy.
My ear infection.
My ceiling falling in.
Oh, you don’t know about my ceiling falling in?
It all happened two saturdays ago (9/23/2006)…
Fairlyn got me up way earlier than I wanted to, so we went to the living room and I put on some baby einstien for her, and I found a nice spot on the couch for myself.
I was about 3 seconds into my early morning nap when I heard what sounded like a tree branch falling outside. I poked my head out the door, looked around, and saw nothing. However, when I turned around I saw this:
Directly above my daughter’s head.
I scooped her up, called DrWife into the room, and then started moving furniture out as fast as I could. I enlisted the help of my neighbor for the large stuff (thanks Jeremy!) and in under 30 mins, the room was empty.
While Jeremy and I were moving all of the furniture around, DrWife went to the Home Depot and returned with some painters tape and two rolls of plastic sheeting. I sealed off the room (to prevent the dust and insulation from spreading all over the house) and taped over the air registers so that I could minimize my cooling losses after the ceiling fell.
About 2 hours later (while I was finally getting that early morning nap) the first section of the ceiling fell (DrWife was at the grocery getting food for the Blazer-Tailgate later on that day, and Fairlyn was sleeping). I didn’t even get up to inspect the damage until DrWife returned (in my mind, there was no use… I was snoozing comfortably and there wasn’t much else I could do at that time).
I took a few pictures and moved a few pieces of sheetrock away from the front door so we could open it again, thought about how much this all sucked, and then started getting ready for some UAB football…
Right as we were walking out the door, we heard another section of the ceiling fall, again ignoring it until we got home.
Here’s a few more pictures of the final damage:
Sunday, my dad and I spent a few hours cleaning up the mess and putting up plastic sheeting over the gaping hole in my ceiling, and Monday I started the claim process with my insurance company.
They called me back that afternoon and said:
DENIED
Why you may ask? Because there was no “cause”. The Ceiling just fell for no reason, and not because of water damage or something else forcing it to fall down!
The nails were still in the rafters, there was no sign of water damage or anything else other than insulation in my attic.
What did I learn from this experience?
Lie to your insurance company. Tell them that you are an irresponsible homeowner and that you store crap ON the sheetrock in your attic. Throw a bucket of water in your attic if your ceiling falls for no reason, that’ll get ‘em to cover it!
I finally found a contractor that I can trust (I used to work with his wife and DrWife’s brother played baseball with his stepson) and he came over this afternoon to poke around my house, and hopefully he’ll be back with me tomorrow and I’ll know what the damage is going to be…
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:23 am
Was the contractor able to determine a cause? This is a pretty freak occurence, apparently requiring the simultaneous failure of dozens of nail connections.
Regarding the insurance claim, it might be worthwhile to consult with a lawyer. Logically there IS a cause regardless of whether their agent can identify it.
My first stab at a probable cause would be a poorly ventilated attic and the textured celing finish, which is probably acting as a vapor barrier. The attic stays hot and humid while you’re conditioning the living space and allows the gypsum in the sheetrock to suck up enough moisture to expand and soften. The force of the expansion causes the ceiling membrane to balloon out, overcoming the strength of the gypsum around the nail heads. A powered attic ventilator, in addition to a well-secured new ceiling, might be in order.
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:27 am
That’s a great theory.
And I am having a lawyer look over my policy.
The contractor didn’t really have any ideas, unfortunately.
The insurance company said that this is happening more and more with homes built from the late 40’s to the early 60’s.
I’d take that bit of info w/ a grain of salt though :-/
October 3rd, 2006 at 3:45 pm
Well, let’s see… sheetrock first appeared in the late 1910’s, but was only used as a substitute for wooden lath until probably the postwar period. So if you postulate that the product has a service life of around 60 years, now would be the first you heard about it.
I don’t think that’s really the case, though. It’s a pretty inert product and more likely to degrade based on its environment – not its constitution. The failure seems consistend with a general weakening of the material (likely caused by a moist environment, if not specific water damage) and a pressure that exceeded the remaining strength in the nail connections (either gravity, physical expansion, or air pressure) I doubt your attic is so tight that it could actually be pressurized (though if the morning sun hits it hard, who knows…). But I could imagine an overall swelling combining with gravity to cause this sort of thing.
If you’re interested in changing insurers, I’ve heard that Chubb is pretty darn good.
October 6th, 2006 at 9:25 am
I thought about this some more Dystopos….
1) if there had been any appreciable moisture in my attic, mold, mildew or some other nasty growth would have set up quickly and there would be evidence of such.
2) My attic is well ventilated. I’ve got two of those metal spinny things, and large vented openings on both ends of the roof. My bathroom vent is ducted directly to one of the metal spinny things as well…
I did notice that the sheetrock was no more than 3/8 (if not 1/4) of an inch thick. 5/8″ sheetrock is now used on ceilings.
Let me know if you’d like to come take a look at the damage, I’ll be around Saturday morning until about 3pm.
April 16th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
The same exact thing just happened at my Dad’s house. The crack came down the center of his living room and next thing you know the whole darn ceiling came down.
Broke 57″ Plasma TV as well as falling on new leather couches, etc., etc.
Insurance just DENIED US! What the hell!
Does anyone have any further comments or suggestions? Did the lawyer come up with any suggestions or ideas on what could be done to avoid the out of pocket expenses!
Any help would be appreciated!!!!!