What to check before the first rain
Fifteen minutes in September saves a wall in July. The five things worth checking on an Islamabad house before the monsoon arrives properly.
Islamabad rain does not arrive gently. It arrives all at once, usually at night, and it finds every weakness in a house in about an hour.
None of the checks below need a technician. They need fifteen minutes and a torch.
1. The roof drain outlets
Go up and look at where the water is supposed to leave the roof. In most houses there are two or three outlets, and in most houses at least one of them is blocked with leaves, dust or a bird’s nest.
A blocked outlet turns your roof into a shallow pool. Water then finds the smallest crack it can, and you will meet it again as a damp patch on a ceiling in a bedroom.
Clear them with your hand and a stick. It is the single highest-value thing on this list.
2. The parapet and the joints
While you are up there, look at where the roof meets the parapet wall. Hairline cracks along that joint are normal and easy to seal. Cracks you can put a fingernail into are worth having looked at before the rain, not after.
3. The outdoor AC unit
Make sure it is not sitting where a stream of roof water will pour directly onto it, and that its stand is solid. A unit that has been vibrating on a loose stand for two summers is the one that falls in a storm.
4. Outside sockets and wiring
Any socket, switch, junction box or extension lead that lives outside — on a terrace, near a motor, by a gate light — should have a cover that actually closes. Open ones need dealing with before water gets into them, not after.
If the wiring to your water motor is taped rather than sealed, sort it out. A motor sitting in a puddle with taped joints is genuinely dangerous.
5. The underground tank lid
Lift it and look. If the lid does not seal, rainwater running across the driveway goes into the tank you drink from. A cracked or ill-fitting lid is cheap to replace and worth doing.
Things that are not worth doing
Painting over damp. Paint covers damp, it does not stop it. If a patch keeps coming back, the water is arriving from somewhere — a pipe, the roof, or next door’s wall — and painting it before the rain is money into a wall.
Waiting to see whether it leaks again this year. It will.
If a check turns something up, the price list has what the common fixes cost. And if water is already coming in, there is a guide for what to do right now.