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Aw, Poop...
6 years ago
Adventures in Homeownership, chapterrrrrr...idk
So, about 12:30 last night, I've fallen asleep in my gamer chair for the umpteenth time after work, and I am awakened by the sound of rapidly dripping water.
It's raining outside, but this sound is much sharper. It's inside.
As the fog of sleep dissipates, I head to the bathroom wondering if I left the faucet running somehow, but no...no it can't be that--I have no reason to fill the sink late at night. I flip on the light and see water spilling out of the ceiling onto the toilet. Blaargh--the upstairs toilet clogged and dumped it's load into the floor and behind the walls. I lift the toilet seat to catch the majority of the water, and sit a basin on the edge of the bowl to catch the rest, after which I go upstairs to find my brother and father trying to contain the mess, which has managed to escape the bathroom.
This isn't the first time this has happened. You see, I have an slightly out-of-the-ordinary living arrangement. My parents, brother and I are co-owners of a two-family rowhouse, My folks occupy the upstairs apartment, and I occupy the "first floor" apartment (which is actually one floor above street level since the basement is at ground level). The floor plans are identical in the rear third of the structure, so the bathrooms are directly over one another. The last time the upstairs toilet clogged and overflowed, we were able to unclog it, so I simply drained the leaking ceiling into my toilet and left it to dry.
The second time around, we made no headway in uncorking the blockage, so we had to call up Roto-Rooter in the morning. Their rep checked out the damage with an infrared camera, and much to my dismay, it showed the drywall was waterlogged above the bathroom ceiling (it was also cracked and sagging), as well as having flowed down an interior wall into the basement (there is a partition wall directly below that encloses the pipework feeding the sinks and drains, as well as forming the wall between the basement toilet and washing machine/slop sink. You all know where this is headed.
To wrap this one up, I had to, for the first time call up my insurer to put in a claim for the water damage. A second Roto-Rooter plumber unclogged the toilet and a separate crew is removing the affected drywall and setting up drying fans and dehumidifiers to dry out the between-wall spaces, not to mention applying a disinfectant to curb bacterial and potential mold growth. After a couple of days of this, the insurance company adjuster is to come out, sign off on the work and arrange a contractor to replace the removed drywall. Coming out of my pocket is the bill for unclogging the toilet (trap blockage) and a $1000 deductible.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, I needed to move an inconveniently large stack of magazines out of my bathroom. It took a luggage cart and four trips to clear them out to make way for the repair crew. While doing so I separated the train magazines from the PC Gamer and Maximum PC issues, which created a stack about eight inches high each. The train magazines amounted to a 2-foot stack that I tried to split up and stash under the kitchen sink, but glossy magazines being slippery, they refused to stack to any meaningful degree, sliding sideways and knocking the plug out of the kitchen-sink trap, rendering that out-of-service till I can get another trap plug (it was one of those rubber stoppers that you spread out in the hole by tightening a thumbscrew, except that the other end of the contraption rusted out and washed away.
Ironically, I was considering doing a stream or two during the upcoming long weekend, having no other commitments for a change. Before the toilet debacle, this journal would have been primarily about that. The idea of taking digital sketch commissions did cross my mind, but I'm not yet committed to it. Thankfully, I'm not in a position where I'd need to do so to cover my repair bill, but it would have make for a nice diversion. I dunno...convince me :)
In the meantime, here's a pic that gave the Roto-Rooter guy such a chuckle, he had to take a photo for his friend.
So, about 12:30 last night, I've fallen asleep in my gamer chair for the umpteenth time after work, and I am awakened by the sound of rapidly dripping water.
It's raining outside, but this sound is much sharper. It's inside.
As the fog of sleep dissipates, I head to the bathroom wondering if I left the faucet running somehow, but no...no it can't be that--I have no reason to fill the sink late at night. I flip on the light and see water spilling out of the ceiling onto the toilet. Blaargh--the upstairs toilet clogged and dumped it's load into the floor and behind the walls. I lift the toilet seat to catch the majority of the water, and sit a basin on the edge of the bowl to catch the rest, after which I go upstairs to find my brother and father trying to contain the mess, which has managed to escape the bathroom.
This isn't the first time this has happened. You see, I have an slightly out-of-the-ordinary living arrangement. My parents, brother and I are co-owners of a two-family rowhouse, My folks occupy the upstairs apartment, and I occupy the "first floor" apartment (which is actually one floor above street level since the basement is at ground level). The floor plans are identical in the rear third of the structure, so the bathrooms are directly over one another. The last time the upstairs toilet clogged and overflowed, we were able to unclog it, so I simply drained the leaking ceiling into my toilet and left it to dry.
The second time around, we made no headway in uncorking the blockage, so we had to call up Roto-Rooter in the morning. Their rep checked out the damage with an infrared camera, and much to my dismay, it showed the drywall was waterlogged above the bathroom ceiling (it was also cracked and sagging), as well as having flowed down an interior wall into the basement (there is a partition wall directly below that encloses the pipework feeding the sinks and drains, as well as forming the wall between the basement toilet and washing machine/slop sink. You all know where this is headed.
To wrap this one up, I had to, for the first time call up my insurer to put in a claim for the water damage. A second Roto-Rooter plumber unclogged the toilet and a separate crew is removing the affected drywall and setting up drying fans and dehumidifiers to dry out the between-wall spaces, not to mention applying a disinfectant to curb bacterial and potential mold growth. After a couple of days of this, the insurance company adjuster is to come out, sign off on the work and arrange a contractor to replace the removed drywall. Coming out of my pocket is the bill for unclogging the toilet (trap blockage) and a $1000 deductible.
Oh, and to add insult to injury, I needed to move an inconveniently large stack of magazines out of my bathroom. It took a luggage cart and four trips to clear them out to make way for the repair crew. While doing so I separated the train magazines from the PC Gamer and Maximum PC issues, which created a stack about eight inches high each. The train magazines amounted to a 2-foot stack that I tried to split up and stash under the kitchen sink, but glossy magazines being slippery, they refused to stack to any meaningful degree, sliding sideways and knocking the plug out of the kitchen-sink trap, rendering that out-of-service till I can get another trap plug (it was one of those rubber stoppers that you spread out in the hole by tightening a thumbscrew, except that the other end of the contraption rusted out and washed away.
Ironically, I was considering doing a stream or two during the upcoming long weekend, having no other commitments for a change. Before the toilet debacle, this journal would have been primarily about that. The idea of taking digital sketch commissions did cross my mind, but I'm not yet committed to it. Thankfully, I'm not in a position where I'd need to do so to cover my repair bill, but it would have make for a nice diversion. I dunno...convince me :)
In the meantime, here's a pic that gave the Roto-Rooter guy such a chuckle, he had to take a photo for his friend.
Sorry this happened. =(
Again, I consider myself very fortunate that it's just an inconvenience and not a fiscal disaster. I'm now on the subway headed home from work fully expecting my bathroom to look completely alien, with a missing ceiling and the drying fans+dehumidifiers blaring. At at least I'll have a good look at what the floor joists look like
All my repairs are done by the company that owns the apartment I share with my Brother but nothing as serious as that has ever happened to me.
Wish you the best, sounds like a hell of an inconvenience :C