After
purchasing our humble duplex and spending significant $$ on new
kitchens and new bathrooms, we finally moved into our new home.
Everything went well enough for the first few months. As first time
home-owners, we certainly had our share of annoying minor fixes. I
particularly remember wasting a frustratingly silly amount of time on
constructing a small piece of fence on part of our porch. None of the
issues were, however, particularly threatening until…
We
noticed after returning from Christmas vacation (one week with my
family, one week with my wife’s family in Minnesota and western
Kentucky, respectively) that the shower in the upstairs unit had ceased
working. I could turn the handle, but not so much as a trickle of
water. It was disconcerting that the new shower would break so soon.
We called the plumber who worked on our bathroom and asked him to take a
look at it. A few days passed and we were still waiting impatiently,
as our first tenants were set to move into the upstairs unit the next
week. Then came the weather warning. A wind chill of -20 degrees F was
expected. We were also worried that the pipes had frozen. However, the
piping was in an interior wall, making that scenario seem unlikely. My
wife, Courtney, suggested that we leave the faucets running at night,
which can help prevent frozen pipes… Idiot that I am, I persuaded her
that we should just turn up the heat in the unit.
The
next day Courtney was upstairs checking on the unit and waiting for the
plumber. I received a worried phone call at work informing me that now
none of the faucets upstairs were working and the plumber was later
than expected and hadn’t called. Thirty minutes later Courtney heard
the pipes burst.
A hot water line burst in the upstairs unit, meaning that it was cascading down into our unit through the light fixtures in the bathroom and also flooding the laundry room basement. Fortunately, after a little scrambling she located and shut off the main water supply to the house. By the time I arrived home, expecting two ruined kitchens and a ruined bathroom, the only water that remained was draining in the basement.
A hot water line burst in the upstairs unit, meaning that it was cascading down into our unit through the light fixtures in the bathroom and also flooding the laundry room basement. Fortunately, after a little scrambling she located and shut off the main water supply to the house. By the time I arrived home, expecting two ruined kitchens and a ruined bathroom, the only water that remained was draining in the basement.
We
were very, very, very lucky that there was no lasting damage. If this
had happened anytime during the prior two weeks while we were traveling
for Christmas and the duplex was empty, the water would have run until
the water company shut it off for excessive usage. It would definitely
have ruined the kitchen and bathroom in our lower unit. It might have
also destroyed one wall of the upstairs kitchen.
For a first time homeowner, having a pipe burst is a terrifying experience. During the next month my wife would have nightmares about waterfalls coming down through our bathroom ceiling. Courtney would wake up around midnight and ask me to check the faucets. Since we didn’t have a tenant yet, I would occasionally go upstairs and test the faucets and feel the temperature of the wall where the incident occurred.
Up next, the cause and how we fixed it.
