Leak

I was having a wonderful time at the Philly Blogger Meetup, but I got a call from Lady reporting a leak in our bedroom ceiling. I rushed home to find a nasty scene. The above image is a shot the initial damage.

The two shots above are details of the initial damage. Nice, eh?

And this shot is of a quarter of the ceiling of the bedroom.

I called the landlord over at around 6.30p. He came over right away and we headed upstairs to see what was going on. I had already knocked on our upstair neighbor's door to see if she was home and the tub was overflowing or something, no dice. He knocked when he got there and no dice. We went in. We both immediately heard the water heater running very loudly. Into the close we went and he shut off the gas and the water coming into the heater. He then relieved the pressure inside the heater into a drip pan. He said that he'd come by tomorrow late morning to replace the now busted water heater. He said that it should stop the leaking for now.

After he left, we had a quick dinner and were watching some TV in the living room. And then we hear a big splash. The seam closest to the ceiling burst and let out the water that had been building up. And the leak had spread to almost the middle of the ceiling and blistered a couple inches and started to leak as in the above picture. I called the landlord again.

He said that it was the water heater draining all the water out of it. Right into our bedroom, wonderful. He said that he'd be over again with a hose to drain it out all right then. He did. As I went outside to go over to a friend's house to watch Mr. Smith Goest to Washington which is another post to come - it was great, he was outside on the upstairs neighbor's balcony. He asked if it had stopped dripping. I said that it had actually gotten worse and had spread across the ceiling and had bilstered in the middle of the ceiling. Wonderful.

I reaturn to find this at about 11.30p. The leak had only gotten worse. Lady told me that the center bubbled paint had burst [pictured above] and let in a few inches worth of yucky brown water into the basket I had strategically placed right there under the blistering paint just in case.

This shot is from the center to the back of the bedroom where the leak started off.

And here's another shot of the quarter of our ceiling.

It's still dripping now as I type this. Eight hours after we discovered it. Who knows how long it was leaking before Lady got home at 6p or so.

So the landlord is gonna call me in the late morning so that I can help bring in a new water heater into the neighbor's apartment.

Hope everyone else's weekend is going better than ours.

Comments

[Matt]

Man, that sucks. I hope you're able to get through this without too much further inconvenience (though it looks like quite a bit of drywall needs to be replaced). Was your stuff damaged at all?

[Frank]

That's rotten. I hope it's dried up by now, but as Matt says, that looks like a lot of work to correct the problem. I'm sorry to hear that kind of thing was going on. Even though the landlord sounded like he tried to do the right thing it isn't enough. Dang bad.

[phedrang]

Wow. You sure are lucky to have a landlord that comes right over to fix it. I had a whole basement filled with backed up sewer water for two weeks and they did nothing. I had to get my own plumbers to fix it. I have a bathroom faucet that's been broken for a year already. You're really lucky.
They're definately going to have to redrywall the celing in there. Hope the rest of your weekend gets better!

[Lindsay]

Yes to the discount on rent, day spent worrying about the leak, and muscle getting in the new heater. For sure.

[Liz]

Wow, that's nasty. I've been thinking about Mr. Smith. The crime there was legislation passed with a view to enriching an individual (and his organization), or graft. But that is just commonplace legislation in DC now. Whether it's Rick Santorum trying to enrich his Accuweather buddies by cutting us off from weather reports from the National Weather Service -- reports we pay for and that Accuweather uses -- or no-bid contracts for Halliburton and Bechtel, or Representative Jerry Lewis (R-CA) receiving $133,000 for his campaign PAC from Cerberus Capitol Management, and then pushing through a contract they wanted. And all the talk about transparency? F*** transparency! How about not taking money from corporations and government contractors in the first place?

[Becky]

Sorry to hear about the leak--arriving home to find something like that is a terrible feeling. I hope that this fiasco doesn't lead to something worse, like mold.