It's Raining, It's Pouring, The Pipes are Bursting

Torrential rains pound the Southland.

I bet the weather people are loving this storm. We so rarely have weather . . .now there's something for them to do.

Yes, water is falling out of the sky, and has been for four days now. At times it was very, very heavy. However, everyday it clears up right after school, then starts up again when school starts the next morning.

Today it was no different. It poured and poured.

I noticed water dripping in the middle of the garage today around noon when I was leaving to brave the storm and run errands. I found out that the problem was coming from the balcony above the garage: the gutters were clogged, thus flooding the balcony. I found a trusty handy-dandy Sesame Street allen wrench (I needed something long and straight and the kids' room was closest) cleared the debris from the drains and the water then freely emptied from the balcony. Problem solved! I'm feeling good. I can solve problems when John is out of the country!

Then when I got home from the pick-up and drop-off routine of the afternoon, I noticed water spots on my family room ceiling.

NOT GOOD!!

Now from where is this coming?

The ceiling is saturated, my couch is saturated, my mood is becoming saturated.

I check upstairs - my bathroom is directly overhead. Nothing. Ceilings are fine.

This has happened before when rain comes in sideways and goes up under the eaves of the house and finds its way to one of my ceilings or walls - but this doesn't appear to be the case this time.

We Skype John, who is in Lisbon, and it is after midnight for him. Using video conferencing and the laptop, I show him what's going on and he suggests to look under the sink (my new sink in my new bathroom).

** B I N G O! **

There is a large puddle under my sink and inside my new cupboards are becoming warped. I quickly mop it up and try to discover the source. Looks like the trap.

Then I look under the other sink.

That TOO has a puddle, only the drips are coming from the wall, which is now soft and gooey. It appears to be the connector from the copper water line to the sink line. That's better than the leak being somewhere behind the wall.

Then, with barely touching the connector, the hose breaks free and water is spewing full force like a fire hydrant right at me into my new bathroom!!!!

Meanwhile, John is still on video conferencing - set up so he can see under the sink and now all he sees is water coming at him and me screaming at the top of my lungs to get towels.

I run downstairs, out to the front yard to turn off the water main. When I came back, Madison had a huge beach towel held over the water, trying to stop it, while in a shear-panic cry.

Brooke comes up with armloads of beach towels and had emptied out the linen cupboard full of towels. The bathroom is flooded with an inch of water covering the entire floor and the cupboard is overflowing. I am frantically trying to mop up the water and can only imagine the damage that is occurring as more water is going down the interior walls and how will we ever recover from this.

Will I have to contact my insurance company?

Will this be thousands of dollars worth of repairs?

What's the extent of the damage?

Is my second floor going to fall down onto the first floor?

John is still on video.

I go to him. His face is ashen. All he can say is that he is so sorry he's not there.

At this point, the adrenaline and anxiety have apexed. I am completely soaked from head to toe and to the bone and I start to cry.

He consoles me over the computer.

He lets me know that it's going to be OK. The water was shooting straight out, not completely down the wall (he should know, he was watching it!). It will dry. We won't have to get new walls.

We need fans. I need to have upstairs and downstairs to get dry. I only have one fan.

I also need this pipe fixed!

I run out front to see if my neighbor is home. Just as luck would have it, my next-door neighbor, Don, is just pulling in from work. I approach him before he's even out of his car and ask him if I could borrow a fan. I think he could tell by my appearance and my about-to-cry expression that something was dreadfully wrong. He goes to get me a fan and says he'll be right over to see if he can help.

Then my across-the-street neighbor, John, comes outside and I ask him if he has a fan I can borrow. He also rushes to help and says he used to be a plumber. Tender Mercies!!!!!!

Next thing you know, I have 3 fans, a heater, and two very nice neighbors in my bathroom helping to fix the problems.

Don asks me if it would be a problem if I didn't use my sink for a while. Problem? No - no problem. I've only had it for 5 days. I'm used to not using it!

I am thankful for awesome neighbors and my children who were trying so hard to help.

When I came back downstairs, Madison was holding a towel up to the ceiling to stop the drips and she looked like a statue. She said her arm was getting really tired. They had gotten more towels and mopped up the mess downstairs. There was more water dripping down the walls and even coming out of the recessed light. Brooke told me that Ashlyn was so scared that she ran into the garage to hide.

That was quite enough for one afternoon.

However, there are things for which to be thankful.

Just before the explosion, I put the laptop on a little portable wire shelf so it wasn't on the tile floor. Because of that, it wasn't sitting in an inch of water and thus is spared. The funny thing (looking back) is that while we were running around screaming, John was saying "pick me up! Somebody move the computer!" All he sees is water shooting towards him. When I came back upstairs, Brooke had the computer in my bedroom and I can hear him asking her if it's wet. She says yes and he's telling her to turn it off immediately! I'm so glad I had put it on that little shelf! It only got splashed.

Another tender mercy is that I had my cupboards lined with a thick waterproof material so the bottoms are mostly spared and just the walls are warped.

I'm also glad that I removed the pictures from the family room wall when I first noticed the leak because after the eruption, they too might have been damaged.

So I'm thinking that this bathroom remodel might not ever get done - since now the time is going to be spent repairing the damage. Oh well. At least there's no more carpet in there!

And I'm grateful that my washer and dryer are functioning right now as I have three extra-large-capacity-sized full loads of towels. Nice.

It's funny that when the pipe burst, Madison was downstairs doing homework and she heard the screaming. She thought it must have been because of a spider. Then she thought, wow! Thats a lot of screaming - it must be a tarantula!