On Mon, 04 Feb 2019 13:24:52 -0500, micky
wrote:

In alt.home.repair, on Mon, 04 Feb 2019 13:01:14 -0500, Clare Snyder
wrote:

On Mon, 4 Feb 2019 12:06:10 -0500, wrote:

On 2/4/19 10:46 AM, micky wrote:
In alt.home.repair, on Mon, 4 Feb 2019 10:08:53 -0500, Ed Pawlowski
wrote:

No idea where this was or what happened but sure looks good

https://imgur.com/gallery/gscva38

Never go away from home for more than a couple days.


ISTM the house was unoccupied (too clean, nothing on counters)

A friend who goes to Texas every winter drains his pipes and shuts
off the water before leaving. Last year he did as usual. Shut off the
main shutoff, open the upstairs bathroom tap,and open the "drain"
valve at the bottom of the system. He put a bucket under the drain and
left for Texas right after christmas.

I've dont that for the last 2 trips. I open the laundry sink to drain
the water, and I put RV antifreeze in the traps of the toilets, sinks,
shower, and tub.

And I turn off the furnace.

Do that here and you'll come home to cracked plaster and likely
foundation too. His furnace gets set to just below 50F

This year I'm leaving 10 days earlier, Feb 21, so much greater chance of
freezeing weather in Baltmore.

He checked his jan water bill on line and found he had a $2000+ water
bill - OH ****!!!!

Wow.

I know my valve works.

His did the yrar before too - and every year for the last 10

So I'm okay on that, but once when the house was
14 years old or so, the non-flexible metal line to the powder room
toilet broke. I hadn't done anything to it, or rocked the toilet or
anything.

Fortunately, so to speak, I was only out for 3 hours. Water sprayed
around the powder room, poured through the floor into the basement, but
only damaged the boxes on the basement floor.

Happened in my younger brother's 2 story house with finished
basement. Upstairs bathroom. Less than 3 hours. Over $60,000 damage.

The sump pump sump is in
the same corner of the house, but it has a vinyl lip around it, at least
3/8" high. I've put a few holes in it but I suspect water won't
actually make it through the holes. Maybe I should try harder and cut
part of it off altogether.

Made the vinyl? (not ceramic) tiles in the bathroom and hall come very
loose, but I avoided pushing them sideways and they seemed to harden up
again after a few days!

He called me and had me check in the basement. Thankfully the floor
drain worked. He had just "finished" the laundry room with Dri-Cor and
carpet tiles The tiles were saturated but very little damage. Running
the wet vac for a few hours and the de-humidifier for a weekgot it all
dried out - I worked the main shutoff until it finally sealed and he
had a new valve installed when he got back home. There was enough
water went through his celar drain to fill his pool numerous times - -

It's good that he has a friend. I once had to call a friend to come
overm, turn on my computer, start Team Viewer, and tell me its code, so
I could email myself my email outbox (which contained my list of things
to do and where to do them etc. and my most recent phone list). (I'd
brought the .mbx file but the wrong .toc file.) But this only took him
15 minutes, he didn't have to do all that work that you did.



The day before he went in for hip surgery this spring he had a water
leak through the kitchen ceiling. Plaster. He had me come over and
open the ceiling to locate the leak. It was above an island cupboard
so I had to remove it too. Found out the copper sewer stack had
corroded through and had been leaking for quite some time. The damage
was extensive. The restoration company the insurance company uses was
not anxious for the job and gave him a 4 month target. The plumber
fixed the stack (after I also opened the bedroom wall upstairs to gain
access to the piping)

I ended up spending about 3 weeks tearing out the saturated plaster
ceiling, replacing it with 2 layers of drywall to match the thickness,
and building some new cupboards - then sanding and refinishing all the
rest of the cabinets. The insurance company gave him a cash settlement
that covered the entire renovation including buying him a nice new
table saw.
The original kitchen (like the rest of the house) appeared to have
been built by a relatively competent barn bulder - - - -