Saturday, September 7, 2013

Plumb Wrong

You never want to walk into your laundry room and step in water.  Ever.  You immediately begin thinking, “when did I last run the washer? did the toilet overflow?  did the sink overflow?  WHAT HAPPENED?”  You stand there and wonder and suddenly… drip.  You feel a drop on your arm and it doesn’t immediately register that your ceiling may be leaking… maybe you splashed too hard on the floor… until you feel… drip, drip, drip.

Sunday, August 4, we started a week of many house fails, and the first being a busted copper pipe.  After feeling those drips and realizing that they were coming from above, I looked UP and saw a bulge – a BULGE – in the ceiling.  My first thought after that was to run to the upstairs bathroom and figure out WHAT was running/leaking/otherwise.  Checking faucets, pulling things out of cabinets, checking the tub and the toilet… nothing.  Everything was fine.

So, when Adam came home, he literally burst the bubble and a flood if disgusting water came rushing into the laundry room.  After a bit of investigating, he determined that the drain pipe from the upstairs sinks had disintegrated and had been leaking into the ceiling for an undetermined amount of time.  Thankfully it is not also the drain pipe for the toilet or tub.

After making the hole much bigger…

2013-08-04 busted pipe

…. to assess and address the problem…

2013-08-04 busted pipe (1)

… my budding plumber was able to fix the pipe himself.  (YAY, Adam!)

However, then we were left with a hole in the ceiling.  THANKFULLY my darling Aunt Chris and Cousin Dru were coming to visit that weekend, and they took on the ceiling without issue – by the time they went home the following Monday, we had a patched ceiling that only required paint – and I finally finished that this last weekend.  YAY!

So thankful that we didn’t have to call a plumber and that we didn’t have a bigger leak than we did… so thankful that we have a drain in our laundry room floor… and, well, while I’m not very happy that it turned out to be the first of a couple of different problems that week, I am very thankful that I have a handy husband.

erin

1 comment:

Unknown said...

What caused the copper to rot away? I have never seen that before....I have heard of that happening when copper touches galvanized steel, but never on its own.