Fun with Plumbing

Back in April, Ted noticed that he could hear water running, and the sound seemed to come from the wall. Once he pointed it out to me, I could hear it as well. We did some internet research, and found some possible causes. A leak, of course, or perhaps sedimentation build up in our water heater. Quite a few years ago, we had to replace our water heater due to sediment. We have very hard water here, with a lot of minerals. Further research informed us that we should flush our water heater once a year. What? We’ve had the thing for at least 10 years, and have never done this. So we scheduled a house call from the plumber. Flushing out your water heater isn’t a difficult task, but Ted wasn’t eager to play with the pilot light. Better to pay someone. A few days later, before the plumber came, our water bill arrived. It was high. Usually our water bill for 2 months is about $80, and this time it was about $150. OK, so now we know there is a leak, though we see zero evidence other than the bill and the sound of water running.

We live in a townhouse/condo, and in our case, the HOA is responsible for plumbing. So we called the management company, and they sent a plumber. The plumber came, and said, “Yes, there’s a leak. I don’t know where it is.” Next is another plumber type person, a leak-finder, who has a device that helps him detect the leak. He turned off the water, forced air into our system, then listened with his device for the location of the leak. Turns out, it is in the kitchen, right in front of our sink.

Back comes the first plumbing company, and they cut into our floor, then jackhammered through the cement foundation, to get to the pipes. They repaired the leak, poured concrete, and went home. The house was a huge mess from the dust of the jackhammering, though they did a lot to clean up after themselves, and they had put up a wall of plastic to keep it in the kitchen. So I spent several hours cleaning the kitchen. All seemed well, but then later that night, I heard the tell-tale sign of water running again. Crap.

This is the hole in our kitchen floor. The company that makes the laminate no longer does so, and we cannot find a match. So now we need new floors. AND, our stupid insurance will not pay for it, because there was no damage created by the leak. The damage was from what the insurance company considered ‘maintenance’. Don’t try to figure out the logic there, because there isn’t any. Suffice to say that they will not pay for our new floor. We decided to save our money and get all new floors next year, since our carpet is about 15 years old and has definitely seen better days. In the short term, we put a rug over the hole in our kitchen floor and pretended it wasn’t there.

Back to the leak. The leak finder guy came back, and said that the leak is now about a foot from the original leak. Likely caused by the jackhammering. The decision was made to repipe the downstairs of our unit, as they worried that further repairs to the leak would just cause another down the line. Which, I might say, is what the leak finder guy said originally, and is what we recommended to the HOA management company, but they did not want to pay for. So instead, they get to pay for both the original repair, and the repipe. Scheduling the repipe took far too long. People were out of town, there were deaths and births in the family of schedule makers or workers, etc. Frustrating. So at this point it is mid May. I refused to have them come and wreak havoc on our home the week before Maya’s graduation. I was already so busy getting ready for her party, then the following week I had to go to Vegas for work, then the week after that, we left for France. So the repair was delayed several weeks. We turned off our water while we were gone, and our neighbor just turned it on to water our plants.

Speaking of which, look at my fuchsia! It has survived life with me thus far, based mainly on advice that I received from my cousin, who is a master gardner. She said to water it every 3 days, unless it is hot, and then more. I would never have thought to water that often. She also said it would want a lot of fertilizer, which is also something I rarely do. So I’ve been caring for it, and keeping it in a mostly shaded area, and it is doing OK. I feel reformed. Like the old J, the murderous J, has left the building, and a new, kinder, more knowledgable J has taken her place.

Back to the plumbing saga. Last week, the plumbers were scheduled to come and repipe, so we moved a bunch of clutter from the living room, the bathroom, and the kitchen, making room for them to cut into walls and do what is basically a bypass surgery for the plumbing of our house. The plumber showed up and said, hold on, my partner doesn’t want to cut into your popcorn ceiling, he’s worried about asbestos. Ugh. Why couldn’t they have told us that sooner, so we didn’t have to move all of our crap back again while we wait for the test to be done? Frustrating. Later that week, a test was done, and yay, no asbestos in our popcorn or our walls. We have at this point (actually, back when the decision was made to repipe) decided that too much damage is going to happen, and that we are going to need to take out a loan to pay for repairs. If we’re going to paint the walls where the damage is done, we may as well paint the entire house. We last painted 10 years ago, when we were trying to sell our condo. If they are cutting sections of our ceiling, rather than trying to replace the ugly popcorn ceiling, we might as well get rid of all of it. If we’re doing that, why wait for the floors. If they took the stupid mirror off of the bathroom wall to get behind it, a mirror we hate and would like to replace, we might as well throw it out and get a new one.

So, here we are. Piping that looks like modern art in three rooms. Big gaping holes that need to be patched. Once that is fixed (thankfully also by the HOA, at least the drywall portion of it), we will hire someone to scrape the ceilings. Then someone to put in new floors. Then someone to paint. Then a few other things, like a new mirror for the bathroom, and new blinds, as our current ones are about 20 years old and look it in places. It’s going to be spendy, but we are trying to be zen about it and just look forward to the fact that it is going to look much better when we are done.

A happy coincidence is that one of our neighbors is re-doing her appliances, from white to stainless. She is going to give us her gas stove and her freezer on the bottom fridge. There is nothing wrong with our flat top stove other than we hate it. There is nothing wrong with our fridge, other than that we hate it. So we will have a gas line run, so we can have a gas stove. We last had a gas stove in San Francsico, I think. I loved it. We left SF in 1994, so it has definitely been awhile. I’m not looking forward to the disruption of any of this, but I am looking forward to it being complete.