thanks for the advice. I've had the fans going and the flooring seems to be drying out, still looks s little swollen in that area, but we're hoping not to have to replace it - only several more dry days and time will tell at this point. Red, you sound serious about that business of trying to avoid a claim. We've never had to do this before, so perhaps you could enlighten me on the reasons we need to avoid??? Because your insurance company will almost certainly raise your rates. REALLY raise your rates. Insurance is for when you can't afford to fix it yourself. Icemakers are the devil...we had a leak with ours. Didn't mess up the floor...but trashed the ceiling in the finished basement. When we finally re-do our kitchen I plan on researching (and installing) one of those water alarm/stop things that will shut the water off if there is a leak. (I'd really rather just use old-fashioned ice-cube trays, but DH won't hear of it...)

We bought our house a year ago with an enclosed garage. Where the garage door used to be, is a wall with a window. Our house is concrete block, but this wall is made of something else- wood? I don’t know. Important info: I live in Florida where we get torrential downpours almost every afternoon in the summer, but don’t usually last long. The problem is it dumps so much rain, in such a short time span that water pools quickly. It doesn’t last long and absorbs quickly enough most of the time. Also important: my yard is on a slant- the front left being high ground and diagonally slopes downward toward the back right corner of the property. So the house acts as a barrier for a lot of this water as it flows past the house and then off into the woods. A couple months ago, we discovered that the wall where the garage door used to be was leaking water and dirt underneath the wall. We found that the sealant that was in place between the wall and the concrete driveway below was disintegrating, so it was replaced with a black tar-like substance. I can’t remember what it was called. This seemed to fix the problem. But we’ve realized it’s happening again. Is more likely to be the wall, or perhaps it’s going under the sealant? And how do I keep water from pooling here? I thought about doing a curtain/French drain, which I think would work well considering how slopes the yard is... but with the driveway being in front of this wall, I couldn’t put the drain there, so I’m not sure it would even help this particular problem. Any ideas or suggestions? The first photo is the inside of the enclosed garage where the dirt and water is coming inside. The second photo is of the outside (from before we added the sealant).

where are you any chance at a pic ... most otherwise healthy trees.. can releaf .. at lest once per season ... just water it properly.. and try to ignore it until it does so ... if its that waster dependent.. it mgiht be in too small a pot.. as most trees.. in good media.. should be able to go a month without watering .. in usual circumstances.. unlees it was newly potted or some such ... ken ps: many of us deal with frost or freeze this time of year.. and deleafing can occur due to such.. its not all that rare ... damage my depend on whether there was any root damage ...

Throw out that moisture meter because moisture meters can be very inaccurate. To see if it needs water, use your finger or, better yet, push a stick into the soil, pull it out and if soil sticks to it, hold off on watering. Browning on leaf tips is often due to salt build up because of not pouring enough water into the pot. Rinse out the salts by adding water until it drains out. Repeat at least twice. Hold off fertilizing until you see new growth and only use 1/4 the concentration you would normally use, assuming the tree is indoors for the winter.