The Most Holy Trinity
Dear Parishioner,
I am trying to keep you posted on the ongoing work on our Campus. You will notice that the lifts are gone and we have finished the tuck pointing on our Bell Tower. Because of this repair the structure is sealed against water seeping in through the walls of the tower. We have run into other problems, however.
As you might imagine it is hard to get up to the roof of the tower to examine it. Because we have had lifts here, we could get up high enough to examine the roof. When we did, we found that the original drainage system was changed some time in the last one hundred years. There are four drains on the very top of the roof. Three of them were deliberately plugged in an earlier attempt at a repair. We think it was because it was thought it would be cheaper to repair one drain than four. No one remembers this work being done and we have no record. This has led to water standing on the top of the Bell Tower which seeped into the walls of the tower and has caused leaking in the choir loft of our church. Also, it has caused wood at the base of the steeple to rot.
The result is that we will have to do more work to unplug the drains so that the water will flow away as originally designed. We also will attempt to shore up the Bell Tower with new braces and repair several louvers that have fallen off in the last couple of years and have allowed pigeons to nest. We will have to bring in a taller lift to get all this done.
These repairs should be made in June. I will report further on the cost to do this work. The first step is to put in a safer way to climb to the top of the tower so that workman can ascend safely. Right now, there are just wooden planks that workman must climb that are nailed into masonry.
The good news is that because of people’s generosity in giving to the Heart to Heart Fund we have extra monies to pay for the work. Once we complete the work I just described we hope that our Bell Tower will be water tight and we can move to other work.
Blessings,
Fr. Mark