Monday, June 11, 2007

Water, Water Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink

Ok, so after having emptied the closet, turned on the dehumidifier to "VERY DRY", and training a fan on the carpet, I came home Friday to an almost-dry carpet.

This should not be.

Please refer to the really BAD drawing below of my house floorplan, sorta.

Ok. Over on the right side there, those colored boxes are as follows - The light blue one is the "powder room" or "1/2 bath" - as there only a sink and a toilet and 2 towel bars and a picture of rabbits in there. The green area is the lovely "Fibber McGee" closet that houses my cleaning machines, games, extraneous stuff with no other place to live, and my winter coats. The bright MAGENTA area is where the water heater lurks, and the yellow bit is where the furnace lives. Those bits that look like Madonna's Tits, or really sad mountains are bi-fold doors, and the other triangular bits are other doors. The livingroom/diningroom area is to the south and west of the colored spot, the laundry is north and the kitchen is northwest. For some reason, "Paint" is not letting me alpha-label anything, so you will have to use imagination.

Now, the really wet area was right in front of and behind the bifold doors in the "Green" zone, thus suggesting the culprit was, in fact, the water heater. However, that area is now quite dry - perhaps just a TINY bit dampish yet due to the massive amount of soak-down it had previously.

The interesting bit to all this is that I am unable to turn off the water supply to the water heater, because the valve is frozen in the "ON" position - doubtless rusted that way after over 15 years or more "ON".

The area beneath the heater appears damp also, but not soaked, nor is there a "puddle", and brave soul that I am, I took an extra-long really hot shower this morning to test this out. Hmmmm you may say. I must say, I have been saying "Hmmm" as well.

Now, we look to the north, to the toilet tank that has issues. I manually turned off the inflow to that on the day I discovered the cats were not possibly to blame for the flooding carpet (they're fairly small cats - they'd have to have peed non-stop for over 24 hours to get the carpet that soaked...) At that time I also started up the dehumidifier and fan combo. As of this morning, I've emptied that dehumidifier about 4 times now. The carpet is almost completely dry.

I am beginning to suspect it is that bad water tank in the downstairs commode - which will be a HELL of a lot cheaper to fix than replacing a water heater. A very GOOD water heater, btw - a 40 gal. Rheem "Fury" that does an excellent job for not a lot of cash. I really would hate to have to replace it with something lesser.

So. As of this morning, I have (mostly)dry carpet, a non-functioning commode, 2 pampered pussycats, a seemingly innocent water-heater, and a livingroom full of crap that I really do need to sort through and decide whether I want to keep it, freecycle it, or give it to the BFI man.

I'd have pictures of my veggie/flower garden for you, but I can't find my spare USB cable. Perhaps later.

588 days


588 days

5 comments:

BBC said...

If you are not source of the water leak I suggest that you get everything as dry as you can, put little spots of cat litter around and watch them to see which ones get damp, that may help.

If you think it might be the toilet put some food coloring in the tank, that would confirm if it was coming from it.

Or maybe the bath is carpeted in which case that may not be helpful.

Take your time searching and you will find it sooner or later.

BBC said...

"If you are not source of the water leak"

If you are not sure of the source of the water leak

billie said...

huh. yeah- leaky toilets suck. i have had more issues with leaky toilets this year. good luck.

The Future Was Yesterday said...

BBC - ROTFLMAO!!!

because the valve is frozen in the "ON" position - doubtless rusted that way after over 15 years or more "ON".
Spray the valve stem (the part that disappears into the water line) liberally with WD40 and let it sit for a couple hours. Then GENTLY take a pipe wrench or any wrench that will give you a grip on the valve handle, and GENTLY work it back and forth. I can not emphasize gently enough. Too much muscle provides results we don't want to talk about.

Anonymous said...

If it had been the cats, you would have had more then just a wet carpet. Nothing smells worse then a puddle of cat pee :)