So I ran downstairs, trying to remember where the shutoff valve was (based on my dim recollections of the pre-settlement house inspection a couple of months ago). I suspected it might be in the small unfinished storage closet in the basement, near the radon detector (somehow we have one of those) and I did in fact find a wheel on a pipe in there, so I dutifully righty-tightied it. And sure enough, the geyser on our front porch ceased to be. An unfortunate side effect of this was that the entire house was now without water, as that valve was on the main supply line coming in from the town pipes. Still: one problem at a time.
The absolutely unforgivable thing about this is that I’ve been through almost this exact same malarkey once before. When I bought the old townhouse, my closing was in May, and the home inspector at that time told me about shutting off the pipes that led to the outside spigots, and draining those pipes, and how important it was, and showed me where the valves and drains were, and all of that. And I still had all that information floating around in my head was my first winter in the townhouse rolled around, and sometimes the notion even made it to the front of my mind, but never for long enough for me to act on it. (I am not blaming blames on anyone but myself here, but part of my indolence can be explained by the fact that I was working a lot and spending most of my free weekend time engaged in the upkeep of a long-distance relationship with the woman now known to readers of this blog as My Wife. So.) Inevitably, one of the pipes (the one by the front porch, of course) froze and burst. Unfortunately this happened while I was at work on a Monday so by the time someone in the neighborhood noticed the torrent gushing from my front spigot, and got in touch with the condo association manager, and the manager tracked down my contact info and clued me in, and I got home, the deluge had been going for hours. I was ridiculously lucky to escape with minimal damage to my possessions, but the cleanup and repairs of the house itself ran pretty extensively. Once the pipe was repaired I pretty much never turned on the water pressure in it ever again, since I never had the need to run a hose out front, and I kept the rear patio spigot pipe shut off and drained year-round too, turning it on only when I needed to use the hose out back and winterizing as soon as I was done with that use. Twice shy and all that.
So how in the world could this happen to me again I mean COME ON. My wife and I conferred on the subject and agreed that we had both been under the impression that the pipes had already been winterized. We closed on the house on December 19. Surely the previous owners would already have shut off and drained the outside pipes by then, yes? Right? Guys?
Yes, well, not so much. I had though the extent of the previous owners’ twittery only extended so far as their horrible taste in wall painting colors and techniques, but apparently basic maintenance can be added to the charges as well. And cursing the ignorance and/or indifference of the people we bought this house from was not much comfort when we had just shut off all our water in order to stop an out-of-control deluge and my wife was still in need of a pre-work shower.
Really all I had to do was find the correct shut-off valve. Our house was built in the late 70’s along a fairly standard template, so there’s no way it doesn’t have a separate valve for each external spigot (he told himself). I also remembered some odd panels in the wall of my mancave room, and sure enough found a valve wheel in one of those (the other one? Just a pipe – for reasons unknown as of this writing). I tightened that wheel but suspected given its location that it was for the backyard spigot, and a quick experiment with opening up the main house feed again confirmed that as our personal Front Stoop Niagara resumed. Off with the house water again. (But hey, at least the backyard pipe was finally turned off before it burst too, so … yay?)
While I was staring at the house water supply valve, I started tracing pipes away from it along the front face of the house. They seemed to move across the length of the house just above the basement’s drop ceiling, so I started lifting tiles looking for the front spigot pipe specifically. About halfway down the basement hallway, I found a T-joint that had to be the valve. But, it was oddly wheelless. I got up close with a flashlight and convinced myself that yes, it was the right valve, and no, my eyes did not deceive me: I couldn’t close it off by turning the wheel because there was no wheel to turn, just a stubby metal stem.
I had some pliers close to hand and tried to use them to clamp down on the stub and tighten it closed, but that got me nowhere. I was on the verge of suggesting that I turn the main water valve open, my wife take a turbo-shower to minimize the flooding out front, and then we’d turn it all off again and call a plumber. But I insisted upon my right to give it one more try, this time using a wrench on the stem. Son of a bitch if that didn’t actually work. The right tool really does make a difference.
So, current state of the house: we have water, we have a busted exterior feed pipe, we have drop ceiling panels akimbo throughout the basement, and we have need of a plumber. But since I wasn’t planning on using the garden hose any time soon, I might hold off on making an appointment with the plumber until after the two feet of snow in our front yard has melted.
Did I mention it snowed again today? Just a dusting, but man, screw winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment