This is topic Roof leaks in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
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Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 01-07-2000, 09:33 PM:
How many of you have had roof leaks? I have yet to see a theater where the roof HASN'T leaked.
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-07-2000, 09:44 PM:
Speak of the devil....It's NEVER been watertight since the day they put the roof on. Legal battles all over the place...
The construction co. blames the architect... The Architect blames the mfg. ...
The Mfg. blames the construction guys.
etc,etc,etc....
We are so used to it leaking in that we don't even notice the trash cans in the middle of the halls to catch the drips anymore!
We have water dripping through the light fixtures. We have water dripping on the rewind bench. There are a few spots where you can see the water drips on the drop-ceiling above a projector. I just hope it doesn't get bad enough to cause a cave in.
One time there was 2-3 inches of water surrounding a projector and dripping directly onto the sound rack. Actually, "drippig" isn't the proper word. It looked like somebody was PISSING on it from above the ceiling!
We've had theatre ceinings collapse mid-show. Once on a Friday night. We had to unbolt rows of seats to get the Genie Lift in there to replace it. Behind some of the screens there's water dripping down the sound insulation and right onto the speakers. There's one screen where there's a brown water stain in the corner. Thankfully it's not bad enough that 90% of the people don't notice. It's only about a foot across... but I'm sure it'll grow!
Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 01-07-2000, 09:52 PM:
The single screen CAPITOL theater in Olympia, Wash. typically has water dripping into the main power service entrance panel (it's scary) and the plaster gets soaked in the auditorium and falls on the balcony seats.
Posted by Stephen Jones (Member # 16) on 01-07-2000, 11:45 PM:
I haven't come accross a theatre yet that did'nt bloody leak,one instance during heavy rain in a 600 seat cinema a sheet of plaster came off the ceiling crashing down and hit the floor and seats with a huge crash followed by a giant water fall.It was lucky that no one was sitting there as a session was running at the time as they would have been killed for sure.I could see a bulge forming when I was checking the projector as all good projectionist should, but by the time I got to the phone to give a warning it was to late.------------------
Posted by Anthony Matarazzo (Member # 63) on 01-08-2000, 04:29 AM:
At one of our loaction the air con room in abover the cinema. The cooling tower is also located there. It had over flowed a few times and the water has came through the cinema ceiling while there where people it it. Free wash
Posted by Chris Erwin (Member # 176) on 01-08-2000, 06:16 PM:
NOW PLAYING AT A THEATER NEAR YOU>>>
**AQUAVISON**See such hits as "Waterworld","Halloween H20" or the classic "The River" in glorious Aquavision. Roofs were specially defected, er,I mean designed,to rain glorious amounts of precipitation on happy patrons who came to see the water and feel the water all around them.
--Chris
P.S. Slickers and Ponchos on sale at the snack bar!
Posted by Christopher A Kerr (Member # 151) on 01-08-2000, 07:27 PM:
The satalite dish cable for our non-sync feed comes down throught a pipe in the roof and into the booth. When it rains you get a steady drip-drip-drip of water falling on your head if you have to use the phone in the booth as it is located right uder this pipe.
Posted by Jason Burroughs (Member # 68) on 01-11-2000, 12:26 PM:
At the Loews Keystone in Dallas, sortly after a rainstorm a 200lb section of cast iron drainage pipe (about 1ft in diameter) came crashing through the ceiling in one of the auditoriums, demolishing 1 surround speaker and the hand rail along the wall, during the middle of a movie. Luckly no one was there when it happened. As I remember there was only a couple of people in there at the time one guy casually strolled out of the auditorium over to the managers desk and politly notified him that the ceiling had collapsed in the auditorium and went back to watch the remainder of the show, now with a 1ft diamater skylight. The location of where the pipe landed was about where the lightswitch for the worklight in the auditorium is. After that happened they had the construction company come out and check all the remaining drainage pipe to make sure they were secured properly, as it turned out they forgot to put a support bracket under the pipe.
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 01-11-2000, 12:39 PM:
"...one guy casually strolled out of the auditorium over to the managers desk and
politly notified him that the ceiling had collapsed in the auditorium and went back to watch the remainder of the show, now with a 1ft diamater skylight..."Ever notice how nothing fazes people in Texas? I mean, the worst shit can be happening, and a guy from Texas will say; "'scuse me, but if this here earthquake don't destroy the tap, kin I have another beer, please..."
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-11-2000, 01:43 PM:
Well it is raining here in Santa Rosa California. I am rushing around our new cinema to find the leaks. I found one small drip in the managers office. The bucket is in place and hopefully it will be ok.
Posted by Jon Bartow (Member # 241) on 01-11-2000, 09:57 PM:
About two years in one of the theaters that I service they had a roof drain leak. It was about 4 months after they had opened. When they were building the place in Nov/Dec the roof drains were plugged by ice. Well... one of the idiot construction guys managed to cut a 12" roof drain pipe right through. After the ice melted during the next rain storm 8,000 square feet of roof drained into one auditorium. When the manager showed up to open the next morning, 5 feet of water in the theater!
Also, ALL of the theaters that I service have many roof leaks.
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-12-2000, 09:42 AM:
The roof leak total for our new cinema is three. One in our office comming from the ice machine chiller on the roof. One in auditrium 4 from the HVAC onto a seat. and the last one, and its a good one, down the inside of the lamp exhaust of theatre #1 there was a quarter inch of water in the lamphouse! Looks like the exhaust needs a new hat.
Posted by Reeve Byrne (Member # 295) on 01-12-2000, 06:34 PM:
Well at my theater the roof leaks but it just leaves marks on our drop cellings. Nothing, to my knowledge has ever acually made it into a theater or projector or anything eles. It would be kind of cool to see a theater submerged in five feet of water. How did they drain it?
Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 01-12-2000, 09:36 PM:
It's not exactly a "roof leak," but we had a couple of other interesting experiences--an old air conditioner (Carrier Model #1...yes, really) that went crazy and sprayed water everywhere...also, a rather tempermental ice machine that would work fine for a few weeks and suddenly decide that it was time to flood the floor in the office.
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-12-2000, 09:39 PM:
I'm happy to say that our landlord his happy with us now and is trying to fix every problem. He sent roofers over to the theatre and they spread tar everwhere. I hope it solved the leak problem. We will find out tomorrow when it will rain again.
Posted by Joshua Waaland (Member # 287) on 01-16-2000, 02:25 AM:
I can beat you all on this one. One time when I was working at a Cinemark Movies 10 I was downstairs doing house checks and the manager called me on the radio to tell me that a patron complained about the projector shutting off. So I run up to the booth to see what the damage was. Yep you guessed it the roof tile directly and I mean directly above the projector head filled with water and came down all over the projector. I had to totally take the head apart and clean every crevis of it not to mention cut out about ten feet of film. That was some weird stuff. I wouldn't believe it unless I saw it.
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 01-16-2000, 02:12 PM:
The roof leaks I wrote about before were fixed. It rained last night and a patron complained about another leak. We took a work light and went into every auditorium. we found a slight leak form some heater vents in Auditorium #4, Then in Auditorium #3 we found a big leak behind the screen. Monday we will call the landlord again.I think I liked Denver more because it didn't seem to leak as much with snow as with rain.
Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 01-16-2000, 10:36 PM:
I just got back from the 6 plex in Post Falls, Idaho and we had a leak directly over the Strong platter for auditorium # 3. Fortunately, no film was on the top deck, but I had to clean out the wet insulation that fell down with the water and gunked up the centerfeed unit and conectors.
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 02-13-2000, 08:50 PM:
Sorry to have resurrected this post from four pages back, but I am soaked to the bone and feeling ornery.It has rained for four days here in Santa Rosa and it is leaking in to four out of five of my auditoriums. There is one where it is leaking from a ventilation duct onto a patrons seat. I was on the roof trying to get a tarp to stay over that ductwork. I will be calling our landlord in the morning.
I WANT A NEW ROOF, DAMN IT ALL!
(Yelled, while holding my breath and stamping my feet on the ground,
in my wet swishy socks.)
Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 02-13-2000, 09:20 PM:
>>I found one small drip in the managers office.<<Only ONE on duty that day? 
Posted by Chad Souder (Member # 343) on 02-14-2000, 12:12 AM:
I only have one leak in my theatre (that I know of). Unfortunately it is right over the only location our four deck SPECO platter will fit in the booth, and of course I found out about the leak the hard way. Technicolor has a knack of being nice when explaining that "after thorough testing, we've determined that reels 4 and 5 had severe water damage due to equipment/building/operator error". Reel 6 we managed to salvage after using almost a whole gallon of renovex on it. What a contact high that was.------------------
"All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer." - Homer Simpson
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 02-14-2000, 10:01 AM:
A theater our chain had (it's a supermarket now) in Danbury, CT got flooded. There's a river out back that overflowed one year, and came in through the doors on each side of the stage. It got about 4 ft. deep, just below the stage level. The manager had called some of the kids in to help clean it up, not realizing it was so deep. She when in to check on them, and they were doing shallow dives into the water off of the stage. I wasn't there, but I saw some pictures (which I'm trying to get)- it looks like a movie screen in front of a pool.The place I'm working in now leaked alot about 6 months ago. They called in the roofer, but you know, if it doesn't leak, it's not a movie theater. So there are still newly-discolored ceiling tiles around reminding me....
Posted by Colin Wiseley (Member # 247) on 02-14-2000, 12:44 PM:
The theater I work in now had 6 drains on the roof above the auditorium with elbow joints and all 6 of them leaked through the ceiling into buckets we had on the floor below. The heating system leaked too and we had buckets under the radiators as well. Luckily the theater was completely renovated a year ago and there have been no leaks since (knock on wood).
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 02-14-2000, 03:00 PM:
I think Joshua gets the prize here on roof leaks, but there's nothing like having a water leak down the exhaust hose into the lamphouse onto the xenon. Yes, no kidding. Thank GOD it wasn't on.!(Chad, FilmGuard will cure your water damaged prints so long as you apply it before you unroll it. I've resurrected several in the last few years for theaters around town and 3 for studios.)