Turning off the water can cause problems too if you have a hot water heater
in the attic.

A neighbor turned his off and apparently left the valves to the washer open.
The selenoids on his washer apparently need pressure to work properly so
they started leaking and the caused siphoning out of his water
heater.........


"Steve Barker DLT" wrote in message
...
There are two type of homeowners. Those that have had a washer hose or
water heater fail, and those who will. Those of us who have already
experienced the action, turn the water off when we leave.

s


"Nate Nagel" wrote in message
...
I actually do this if I'm leaving for more than a day. Too much "vintage"
plumbing in the house that hasn't been completely checked out by Yours
Truly yet.

nate

Steve Barker DLT wrote:
Here's some better advice. Turn off the water when you leave the
house. Even if it just to go to the store. To leave it on in an
unoccupied house was just asking for a disaster.

s


"Steve" wrote in message
...

In February the master bath toilet supply line in my unoccupied house
failed. By the time the next-door neighbor noticed water coming out of
the house, all rooms but the front two bedrooms were flooded, and the
drywall was damp as high as 8" in some places.

This line was installed by the builder in 1998, and has a plastic
coupler at the toilet end. This coupler is what failed - it split open.
The result was approximately $25K in damage - most of the carpeting,
vinyl floors in both bathrooms and laundry, all of the MDF baseboards,
and repainting of rooms except the previously-mentioned front bedrooms.

State Farm took great care of us, and between the work done by a local
company to remove ruined stuff, dry everything out and do some of the
repairs, plus the work I did myself, we were able to move back into the
house starting in May.

But here's the thing: I inspected the coupling on the hall bathroom
toilet, and it was starting to crack too. So when I replaced them, I
tried to find supply lines that had metal couplings, but no joy. They're
ALL plastic now. But I noticed the new ones are made with more solid
thicker plastic than the ones that failed.

So my advice is this: Check those toilet supply lines, and replace them
if they look like they're starting to crack - it'll save you a lot of
grief!

--Steve





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