Wherein I Flood the House

I know I will look back on this catastrophe years from now and laugh--having learned a valuable lesson the hard way--but twenty days later it's certainly not funny yet.

After [yet another frustrating] day of job hunting, I'd had a great workout at the gym and was excited about the evening ahead and the prospect of having a free day with Jeremy mid-week in recognition of the Fourth. Before changing out of my workout attire I decided I would scrub out the cleaning products I'd left sitting in the tub that afternoon, and finish off cleaning our downstairs bathroom.

I was almost done with the whole elbow-grease part when in an instant there was water shooting violently out of the wall behind the toilet. In retrospect I must have knocked the pipe as I maneuvered around the tub, but it couldn't have been that hard--it's too tight a space for anything but careful motions--and it shouldn't have broken simply by my nudging alone.

But it did break. The PVC pipe broke at the wall, the toilet water shut-off valve now dangling uselessly from the commode. I think it took me a minute to process what was going on, after which I worthlessly attempted to shove the broken pipe back together, figuring, I suppose, that maybe the connection had just come loose and that the thing was still salvageable.

After a few strong shots of water to the face as a result of my fumbling, I determined there was no fixing this and that I needed to shut off the water. This is probably about the time when I frantically called Jeremy at work, proclaiming that I was having an emergency and needed to know how to shut the water off. He didn't know. Our roommate, the homeowner and Jeremy's co-worker, didn't know. I alternated between placing a trashcan against the bathroom wall to catch some of the torrent and dumping the filled bin in to the bathtub, and racing outside to look for any knob, valve, or lever that could have possibly saved me.

Water continued to rush out of the bathroom as I pulled as many items off the floor as possible. Luckily, the bathroom and foyer are tiled, but unfortunately our bedroom--bordering the bath--is fully carpeted. I threw towels down in the bedroom doorway and raced upstairs to call the home builder's plumbing company. The dispatcher was surprisingly unhelpful considering that I was practically crying, and suggested that since we were no longer covered by warranty, I call the home builder directly. No answer there, on account, I presume, of its being 4 p.m. the day before a national holiday, so my next best bet was 911 I figured.

I immediately asked to be transferred to non-emergency, but at this point I was back downstairs and the sound of the rushing water was so loud that I couldn't hear the recorded message or menu options and had to hang up. In between calls back and forth with Jeremy and our roommate , I must have contacted five plumbing companies, none of whom had any idea where my water shut-off might be nor an available plumber.

(Jeremy, of course, was successfully assuming the role of My Better Half in all this, I must add. I wouldn't describe myself as 'calm' at any point during the disaster, but even I was surprised at how much his soothing helped. In addition to making his own calls to friends, plumbers, and the city, he also assured me that he was leaving work immediately and would be home as soon as possible. I assumed this meant forty minutes minimum given his commute and tendency to drive at Exactly The Speed Limit, but he was home before I knew it.)

Twenty to twenty-five minutes had elapsed by this point and I was beside myself. There was close to three inches of water in the foyer and it was pouring out of both the front door and the back door in to the garage. I'd seen a neighbor arrive home in the midst of this and attempted to knock on her door, but the gate was locked.

I eventually reached a plumber with a man in the area. He told me his guy would call me back ASAP to get a location, and just as I was hanging up I saw another neighbor arrive home. He had no idea where the water shut off was either but, after a brief, wet trek in to the bathroom to assess the damage, he quickly announced he'd be back shortly and went home to change.

"Shortly" meant something quite different to me than it apparently did to him at this point, but two or three minutes later he returned, water shoes and all, and promptly walked through the foliage in front of our house and yanked a lever (which, notably, was half-concealed under mulch). Immediately the water slowed util it was barely trickling from the pipe, and then finally stopped.

"How'd you know where that was?"

"I just guessed."

It was simultaneously a huge relief and a great disappointment that I hadn't managed to find the shut off in almost half an hour. But mainly a huge relief.

The house was a mess and I could already tell that the bedroom carpet was sopping. Looking in to the garage I noticed that my toothbrush, along with some socks and a flip-flop were now fifteen feet from the door, having been caught in the rush of water. I began sweeping the standing water out of the house when my neighbor, whose name I still hadn't caught, appeared with a shop vac and started the much more efficient clean-up effort.

Right around the time we got most of the obvious water up, Jeremy and our roommate arrived home. While it wasn't a pretty sight, I think my phone conversations with them up to this point had prepared them for much worse. I'm glad they didn't see the much worse point.

I thanked our still-vacuuming neighbor profusely and asked if we might borrow his shop vac for a few hours. He graciously agreed and we set about sucking at the carpet, hoping against hope that it might be salvageable. Jeremy went to Home Depot to buy some extra fans while our roommate called various insurers and plumbers, and generally let his home's situation sink in.

The carpet was lost. As it turns out, we wound up prying off all the trim too so we could fully dry the place out and guarantee no mold would grow. The dry wall that the water was directly shooting at--about six or so feet from the pipe itself-- was ruined, the paint stripped off by the force of the pressure. It was a pretty shitty way to spend an otherwise-free third of July evening, and an even crappier way to lose hundreds of dollars for no good reason.

As I write this, almost three weeks later, the new carpet is being installed downstairs. This evening Jeremy and I will finally be able to move our belongings back inside from the garage, and cease sleeping on either the futon in the living room or our mattress on the floor.

It's been an enormous pain in the ass and only added fuel to the recent "I feel shitty about myself" fire, but to be honest, every time something like this goes wrong for me I emerge with a renewed appreciation for everything I do have (and wind up thinking more reflective crap like that). I know I'm lucky that this is one of my bigger worries, and that I [will eventually] have the money to afford it. I'm also grateful that I have the support [financial and otherwise] of an awesome boyfriend, and that some people are still willing to help a nieghbor in need. Of course it hasn't change me that much--I still never bothered to get his name.