This last Friday morning (8 April) I met again with the architect to discuss the proposal, which we asked him to put together before the rainy season comes again to Miami. About a month ago, he had warned us that it would be structurally detrimental for us to allow another rainy season to pass without stopping the water intrusion into the temple. So, we asked him to put together a proposal with only that it view-- stopping the water, and shoring up the damaged structure. The first phase of this work will be to remove the church's copper domes, so that the roof can be repaired, rebuilt and sealed under them. The large central dome will be salvaged. The two smaller domes will be stored for the day when we can build a little дзвіниця (bell tower) in the garden area behind the church. Although all three domes leak like sieves, as the ceiling above the choir loft bears witness, it will be sad to see them go. God grant that we will live to see the day that the new domes take their places.
The architect had to visit this last Friday, together with a roofing crew, in order to ascertain how the domes (especially the central one) is anchored to the church. He discovered a very hearty system of interior and exterior anchors, which have ably kept the domes in place through even hurricane-force winds. Access to the underside of the central dome is through a trap door that opens upward above the choir area. A ladder is needed to get up through this opening, then the ladder must be pulled up into the area next to the air handler, to allow the crew to ascend another twelve feet to the base of the dome. (Looking at it from the outside, it doesn't look that high.) The crew discovered that the frame of the trap door was badly damaged from the former termite infestation, and that it had begun to fail. This is important, because the frame is actually the only thing that keeps the very heavy door from falling. Therefore, the roofing crew spent forty-five minutes repairing what was left of the frame, so that it would bear the weight of the door.
After the roofing crew was finished reconnoitering the interior of the dome, I had the opportunity to speak to the architect further about the salvage of the dome, and about the scope of work. As it turns out, the proposal he has been working on to this point would not stop the water intrusion completely, since it does not address the windows on the East wall. I instructed him to put the windows on that wall into the scope of work, for I myself have seen the water pool on the surface of the window sills of those windows, especially during a driving rain.
