Didn’t someone recently do a post on the fun of plumbing in old houses? Mine’s not even that old (barely 20yrs), and we’ve now had fun with the plumbing twice (in the year and a half we’ve lived here).
Last year about this time the hot water line from the water heater sprung a pinhole leak. Turned out whoever plumbed it in hadn’t used “pipe”, instead they’d used grey electrical conduit from the heater itself to just before where the pipe goes into the floor. Don’t ask me why, I have no idea. Lots and lots of warm water spraying UP at a high velocity.
This afternoon after I got home from work I set a bag of chicken breasts into the sink to thaw. Ran the sink full of cool water and left the cold tap just barely running on it.
Came back, about an hour ago, and discovered water on the floor leaking out between the cabinets and the stove. WTF? There’s no water line there……at least not IN the house, god I hope something UNDER the house isn’t spraying water everywhere…..Grab a couple towels to sop up the mess and start trying to figure out where the water was coming from. First thought was that the sink overflowed. It shouldn’t, its a double sink, overflow from one just goes into the other to drain, and sure enough there’s no water trail on the counter. Sigh. Start opening cabinet doors, the one closest to the water: no wet inside, the next one: no wet, the two directly under the sink: soaked. F*ck.
I know, doesn’t look all that bad in the picture right? Well, that “wood” is cheap pressboard, the water soaked in, it bowed, and promptly funneled it down the hole the pipes come up, where the natural slope of the floor carried it under the cabinets over to the stove, where it promptly seeped out to the middle of the room.
Turns out where the cold water line meets the sink its leaking. Its not the HUGEST leak ever, I had a hard time finding it actually, which makes me think its been doing that for a few days at least. F*ck. Mold. Ewwww.
Cold water line is shut off with one of those handy little shutoffs you see there (which were MISSING on the water heater I might add). My father-in-law will be over in the morning to take a look and see what needs replacing. Not sure how he’s going to fit under there, we might have to figure out if those shelves come out (they don’t look like it), but I think we were going to have to figure that out anyway considering how soaked they are.
Oh, and all of this was done while defending my towels from a giant gold fluffy puppy who thought they made THE BEST toys to take and barrel around the house with EVER, and a little brown puppy who thought they were the BEST tug toys ever…..oh, and that nasty colored water seeping from under the cabinet is YUMMY!!!!!
