Protect Your Home From Water Damage With Perma-Boot

They say a picture is worth a thousand words so when I got these great photos from Dale Van Aken of New Hope, Pennsylvania I had to hear the whole story. Dale discovered he had a leaking vent pipe when he found water stains on the ceiling of an upstairs room. "I had a little leak situation, but I thought I took care of it years ago." It turns out that when the roofing contractor had come out and replaced several pipe boots a few years ago they hadn't replaced all the boots on his home. Now one of the two older vent boots had failed causing another leak in his roof.

Dale was happy to have another option instead of going with a design which "hasn't changed in the 30 years I have been a homeowner, it's one of those little nuisances." Now it's a problem he won't ever have to deal with again. Special thanks to Dale for taking the time to speak with me about the Perma-Boot 312 and sending us these awesome pictures from his installation!

I quickly found out from speaking with Stephen Carlson that a more precise term for his work would be, "expert in quite-a-lot-of Trades". Stephen started his own company, Carlson Home Improvement, in Virginia Beach 15 years ago and has been performing professional home repair and remodeling jobs ever since.

Stephen is always on the lookout for better technology and new ways to resolve old problems and that is what brought him to the Perma-Boot 312. During his 15 years of home repair Stephen has replaced many failed pipe boots, "it's kind of like the dirty secret in housing, you pay $5,000 on a new roof and the boots will go bad in 5 years. It's always there and potentially a problem the next time there's a heavy rain." The worst part about pipe boot failure is you won't know about it unless you get up on your roof to inspect the seal. One of the things that got Stephen interested in the Perma-Boot 312 is that it's a repair you only have to make once. Once the Perma-Boot 312 is installed it will protect your vent pipe from weather damage and prevent water from leaking into your home and causing major damage.

If that wasn't enough there are aesthetic benefits as well. A traditional pipe boot repair isn't easy Stephen explains, "I've done it myself, it's a pain, and you can't match the [color] shingles. Even if you have some of the exact same color under the house, they won't match" because the ones on your roof have weathered and aged. Roof repairs are the kind of DIY job that many homeowners would prefer to avoid, because climbing up on your roof can be dangerous. Stephen tells me he offers customers a "free roof inspection", then helps the homeowner decide if they would rather "be safe and put Perma-Boot on all the vent pipes, or just on the ones that need the repair".

Like many homeowners Gerry recently found out he had an all too common problem that caused his roof to leak. He noticed water stains on the ceiling in one of the bedrooms of his colonial home in Elyria, Ohio and went up into the attic to investigate. "My roof was leaking, I was in the attic walking across beams and the insulation was wet." The water was coming in around a stack pipe and when he got on the roof he was quickly able to see why. The rubber seal on the pipe boot "was dry, baked, you could flick it right off." It was obvious that the broken seal was the source of his leaking roof.

Unlike traditional pipe boot replacements, the Perma-Boot 312 is quick and easy to install. "It's a revolutionary item, I love it! I don't need any tools." He chose the Perma-Boot 312 because it's designed to provide long lasting protection from weather damage and will prevent leaks for many years to come. "This [product] is wonderful," Gerry tells me, "I worked in plastics and I know it will last for 100 years".

Keith Barns is just your average retired homeowner and admits he is "not much of a handyman", but that didn't stop him from installing the Perma-Boot 312. After a heavy rain he noticed water stains in one of the bedrooms and assumed it was the result of a leak so he climbed up on the roof to investigate. What he found was that the pipe boot was so far deteriorated that it was "just an open hole around the pipe". He checked the other 3 pipe boots and found they had also broken down and were in need of repair.

The day the Perma-Boot 312 was set to arrive the weather forecast was calling for rain and Keith explains to me that he was "sitting out on the porch waiting for the package to come hoping it wouldn't rain". When his order arrived he decided "I got to get this thing installed" and re-watched the installation videos before taking the first Perma-Boot 312 onto his roof to install it. Within a few minutes he had the first boot installed, "it was so easy, I got the materials to do the other 3". All told he believes that the installation of the 4 Perma-Boots took about 20 minutes or less.

After 50 years of home ownership Keith was "tickled to death to get an answer to the problem...that will probably outlast me." The fact that the Perma-Boot 312 was so easy to install "says a lot for the product, but I chose this one because I believed it would work". A very special thanks to Keith Barns for taking the time to share his story with me.