Drip… Drip…

ok, second attempt to write this, hooray! IE crashes! hooray! Corporate IT policy that keeps me from using Firefox, hip hip hooray!

Yesterday, I got a call from meg while I was on my way home. She took a bath after work to relax some. When she got out of the tub and went down stairs to find a wet ceiling. Not good.

So Meg called my dad for some handy man advice while I made my way home. He had her turn off the water main and put a bucket under the drip. When I got home my dad suggested that I poke a hole in now very soft ceiling to see if how much water came out. It went kinda like this:

me: *poke*
ceiling: SPLOOSH!

Ater the half second of shock that came from my ceiling basically peeing on me, I rushed around trying to get the bucket under the stream. We caught about a half gallon of water, and from the way the ceiling was bulging, it looked like the drywall had absorbed a few more gallons.

With running some water around the bathroom, we were unable to get an increase in the water coming out the new hole in my downstairs ceiling. I stopped using water and watched the usage gauge, and after an hour didn’t see any water used, so that was a good sign that the leak wasn’t in a pressurized pipe. My dad thinks the “S” trap on the tub wore out and when Meg emptied a tub full of water, it came loose. I accepted that explanation for the night, put a fire in wood stove down stairs to help dry things out and promptly tripped over the bucket of water, spilling it on the carpet we were trying to keep dry.

I soaked up what I could with a towel and called it a night.

What do we now know?

1. Meg needs a new after work relaxation technique.
2. One night with the fire burning does a remarkably good job of drying up carpets and hiding watermarks on the ceiling.
3. I need to cut a 2.5 feet hole in my ceiling at some point in the future.
4. I’ve never hung drywall on a ceiling before… it sounds…fun interesting
5. The upstairs bathroom is off limits to all activity involving running water.
6. I hope the dishwasher is still useable, or it’s going to be Eat Out/Paper Plate City for a while

Posted in Home Ownership