Of leaks and valleys

Yesterday, I went to see the roofer who swept our chimney last year and cleaned out a valley between two parts of the roof where dead leaves and other debris had formed a dam. Water had backed up, seeped in, and left a stain on our kitchen ceiling. We've been having trouble with that particular section of roof since 2007, when a hard rainstorm caused a spectacular leak.

Earlier, I had tried to call the roofer about sweeping the chimney this summer and seeing to another minor leak that remains after installation of our skylight windows upstairs last spring. An annual chimney-sweeping is required for insurance purposes. But when I finally talked to the roofer the other day, it turned into a surreal conversation, and that's never a good feeling when you're speaking a language that's not your mother tongue.

The roofer is Monsieur Coûtant, which you could translate at Mr. Costly. Well, to be fair, the word coûtant is used most commonly in the expression à prix coûtant, which means "at cost" — in other words, with no markup. Anyway, the man's name is just a coincidence. Last year, he did work for us (I thought) and he certainly didn't overcharge us. When I called his office a couple of weeks ago I got his answering machine and I left a message.

A few hours later, he called me back. That was a good sign. "I got your message but I couldn't understand your name, and I don't know who you are," he told me. I spelled my name for him — it is quite the foreign-sounding name here in France, B-R-O-A-D-H-U-R-S-T is. It contains far too many consonants and very few vowels compared to French names (and you pronounce all of them).

I told him he might remember coming and cleaning out the valley — "a depression or hollow resembling or suggesting a valley, as the point at which the two slopes of a roof meet," says the dictionary — that was dammed up, and sweeping the chimney. Of course I couldn't remember the technical term for such a valley in French, and that lack of terminology didn't speed the conversation along. Chimney-sweeping is called « ramonage ».

The man who did the roof work last year was very talkative, friendly, easy to understand, and seemed curious about us two Americans living here. He said he lived just down the road, in the same village as us. The man on the telephone, however, said he had no memory of me or the work I said he had done.

Okay, had I dreamed it all? Had I called the wrong roofer? No, I thought. Coûtant is a name you don't forget. Besides, there are only two roofing contractors in Saint-Aignan, and I know them both. And there are so few Americans around here that I was sure he must remember us.

« Vous habitez à Mareuil, n'est-ce pas ? » That's what I asked, and when I did it all came together. No, he said, that's my son-in-law. Oh, I thought, for a year we assumed the man who came here last year was Monsieur Coûtant, but it wasn't him at all. He told me the son-in-law's name, but now I've forgotten it again.

Monsieur Coûtant said he was going on vacation in August and the office would be closed, but he'd put us on the schedule for September. I really didn't trust that he would remember to do so, and the rain we had a couple of weeks ago caused an even larger stain on the kitchen ceiling. Something needs to be done about it, and the chimney definitely needs sweeping.

So yesterday, I decided to put in an appearance at the Coûtant roofing company office in old Saint-Aignan. I figured it couldn't hurt to show my face there, and to show Monsieur Coûtant or whoever I found in the office — if anybody — the chimney sweeping certificate issued by his company last September. When I found the office, there was a young woman sitting behind the desk.

I explained who I was and gave her my address and phone number as well as a description of the work I needed done. She said she didn't know exactly where my house was located, and that surprised her because she lives in the same village. That's when I realized she must be Coûtant's daughter, and her husband (his son-in-law) must have been the one who came to our house before. She confirmed that to be the case.

She also told me that the term for "valley" that I was looking for was probably « noue », saying she wasn't absolutely sure about it but... And yes, that was the term. Her saying jogged my memory. She promised that her husband would come to sweep the chimney, clean out la noue, and see to the Velux window seepage as early as possible in September.

The French dictionary gives two definitions for noue as it applies to roofing: « Angle rentrant formé par l'intersection de deux combles » and « Tuile creuse ou bande de plomb, de zinc, incurvée, servant à l'écoulement des eaux de pluie ». Both seem to me to confirm that we've got the terminology down pat now — they have to do with places where two sloping roof sections meet, and with flashing of some kind.

Learning all this technical jargon is one of the joys of being a homeowner in France.