DISGRUNTLED HOMEOWNER Fred Heber can only look up in despair as he waits for repairs to be completed on the roof and ceiling of his Orangeville home. When Fred Heber was sweating in the heat of combat on Normandy's shores 63 years ago, he could not have imagined he would be shivering in the snugness of his home in Orangeville as a widower when he reached the age of 85.

But he was left shivering over the past weekend, after a "25-year" roof in June 2005 at a cost of $6,000 leaked "buckets of water" into his kitchen area following the recent thaw.

When the water started pouring in, Mr. Heber said Monday, the kitchen ceiling began collapsing, and had to be ripped out. This left a wide-open gap over the ceiling area into that attic, and the ceiling could not be replaced until everything dried out.

On Monday, he had a blanket covering the entrance to the kitchen, and a tarpaulin partially covering the opening into the attic - the kind of improvisation that the aging combat veteran might have been accustomed to in 1944-45.

Mr. Heber's insurance company had no hesitation in approving a claim for repairs to the interior of the house. But, he said Monday, roof installers from Direct Energy denied any liability for the roof itself.

In fact, he said, Direct Energy wanted to charge $2,300 to repair the roof it had installed for $6,000 less than two years ago, saying the work had been done properly.

Jean Paul Nadeau, whose C.A.P. Renovations is repairing the interior damage as sub-contractor to Woodhouse Contracting Ltd., isn't certain.

Mr. Nadeau is an 18-year Royal Canadian Navy veteran, senior NCO and marine engineer, and widely experienced in construction and roofing since his regularforce retirement in 1996 - but he prefers to show photos of the roof's interior, rather than to express his judgment for publication.

He does say, however, that the roof has to be replaced - not only the shingles, but several of the plywood panels beneath. According to the photos, there's what appears to be mould along with a form of rotting of some of those panels. There are finger-width gaps where either the shingles or tarpaper are visible where the panels are supposed to abut each other, and there appear to be three-inch spikes rather than roofing nails protruding through.

As for the $2,300 Direct Energy quote to "repair" the roof, Mr. Nadeau estimates that the cost of materials, including the plywood panels and a disposal bin, would be in the order of $800. He says the person-hours required for the work would not exceed 24 - i.e., three persons for a maximum of eight hours each, depending on whether or not plywood panels would need to be replaced, among other things.

Mr. Heber says the two roofers from Direct Energy spent about five hours.

(The contract with Direct Energy does not give a breakdown of materials and labour, nor does it show the amount of taxes applied. It shows only the one item, the total of $6,000.)

In fact, Mr. Heber recalls that the roofing in 2005 involved two men for less than eight hours.

"I paid (the firm's representative) $6,000, and he was gone. The roofers came for five or six hours, and then they were gone," he said Monday.

Mr. Nadeau said that if no one else does, several of Mr. Heber's comrades at Orangeville's Royal Canadian Legion, including himself, will raise money for the materials and volunteer their time to replace Mr. Heber's roof.

"We owe it to them [the WW2 veterans]," said Mr. Nadeau.

Direct Energy's Corporate Communications Director, Josh Orzech, said Tuesday he would have a team of investigators look into the situation. However, he could not promise that the investigation could be completed in less than 48 hours.

Meantime, Mr. Heber is blaming himself for having had the roof replaced in the first place. He said it had never leaked in his 20 years at 35 Madison Ave., but he decided to replace the shingles when a neighbour told him some were beginning to curl.

"I did what I thought was right," he said. "If Mavis (his longtime wife and a fellow veteran of WWII) were with us, she'd be furious with me." (Mavis died about four years ago.)

Mr. Heber said he called Direct Energy because he has his natural gas account through them, and failed to get second opinions or quotations on the roof.

"I had paid them $3,500 for a new furnace and $2,500 for air conditioning," he said, apparently having felt that by then he had become something of a preferred customer.