long time

It's been a long time since the last post. I was reminded of this last weekend (thanks, C). So, I'll begin again with a quick snipet.

So, Tony and I learned last weekend that an exploding hot water pipe in your crawl space sounds quite a bit like a muffled gunshot. We heard this soon after the Packer's game on Sunday, and Tony went to investigate whether the 3rd bay of our garage was still intact. When M & E left after the game, they knocked on our door again to inform us that the noise must have come from next door. Our next door neighbor has both an inflatable snowman and a santa, and both were flattened long and sad on their lawn; so we thought the explosion might have come from them.

But no, alas, I went up to read/take a nap, and when I came back downstairs about an hour and a half (or two hours) later, Tony looked at me surprised and asked if I had taken a shower and left the water running. I hadn't, but then took more notice of the running water sound we both heard.

What's funny is I had noticed, when we got back from church, that morning that the pantry closet smelled weirdly of hot, wet wood; but it was only later (after the explosion and after hearing the water run) that we thought what might actually be happening.

We scampered to the garage and searched for flashlights, which was its own ordeal. You know how it goes: whenever you need a flashlight, you either can't find them or all the ones you can find don't work. I looked into the crawlspace and saw no water, but when Tony stood in the crawlspace a tributary of water informed us of our problem.

We called the plumber to turn the water off, which was its bit of plot twist. Everything functions like fiction. When we got the house, the inspector told us, "Well, your turn water off valve is in a really weird spot; it's right below your pantry closet, but not accessible except through the crawlspace. But that shouldn't matter; you'll probably never need to use it." Duh, duh, dah, right...see what I mean. Foreshadowing.

Anywho...plumber turned off the water but told us he couldn't/wouldn't fix the pipe until the water was cleaned out of the crawlspace.

Initial quotes from the disaster cleanup where pretty amazing: 3600-6000, and that was just to get the water out. Luckily, when the disaster cleanup dudes went down there the water was gone; it'd already soaked into the ground. The plumbers who came out fixed the pipe in less than half an hour. Get this, the install had been faulty; that's why it was so easy to fix...they just did what the initial builder (had he been doing his job) had to do but didn't. Lame.

So it's sweet we don't have to fork out thousands of dollars and get a ding on our insurance, but it's lame it happened at all. Sweet it's all fixed though. Lame we've had something "major" come up after only living in this new house for less than four months. Oh well...I still love my house.

;-)