When a Bad Day Gets Worse

Before I get to the subject matter I have to get this in or CK will preempt me. It's the word of the day, 9/21/07:

preja vu: knowing you are going to experience deja vu before it happens (thanks to NK for that one).

Now you can use it CK and on the the subject of the day.

As I described yesterday, we did not get our new kitchen floor installed. Little did I realize though that after I moved the refrigerator and disconnected the ice maker by removing the tubing from the faucet (I hate copper tubing for those things), the damned tiny little ice maker faucet would leak and leak it did. It started out as a little dampness on the floor around the faucet so I turned the handle a little tighter to stop the drip.

When I checked a little later, it was still dripping so I turned the handle a little more and put a towel down to absorb any other moisture that may present its bad self. Then I forgot about it (bad thing to do). When I remembered a few hours later (this was after my conversation with Mike Installer) which by the way is not his real name, I found that it was a little more than a drip, the towel was soaked and there was puddle (water thank god) on the floor.

After I cleaned it up (you should know at this point there is not much laughter in the household), I again tried a twist of the knob but this time I connected the previously mentioned despicable copper tubing back to the faucet and stretched it out so that any drips would go into a well placed bowl since it was late and replacement would have to wait until morning. That's when it happened.

What's that you say?

It was a most disturbing discovery. The kind that makes you want to drink (as if we need an excuse).

It involved water, lots of water.

IN THE BASEMENT OF ALL PLACES!

Now you ask, how did a little drip turn into water all over the floor in the basement? That is what I wanted to know so I put on my private eye shoes and started the investigation. I started at the most logical point of impact, the place where the copper pipe (there's that damned copper again, I'm just glad I don't have a copper clapper) goes up through the floor.

Nothing, dry as the sand in the Gobi desert.

Did I mention that I had placed towels all over the floor and was moving the ladder around on them? No, well, there they were and every time I came down from the ladder and tried to move it the towels got caught in the legs so I had to spread them out again (I know, so what).

Since it's too late to make a long story short, I will continue by saying that I asked NK where she thought the leak might be? We looked behind the door and it wasn't there and we looked at the joists in the ceiling and all along the pipe. It had to come from somewhere and that is what we finally found. It was coming from somewhere but I'll be damned if I could find it.

There was water on the floor and we finally found that the drips were coming down from the side of an air duct (at least it wasn't copper). Evidently it seeped from somewhere above, onto the air duct, down the end and straight down to the floor. Whatever portion of the sub floor that got wet and drippy is just going to have to dry by itself (shhh, don't tell the realtor on us next year when we list the house again).

Oh, and that copper tubing, it's gone. When I purchased the new faucet I also picked up some of that flex tubing. Next I'm going to replace every section of copper tubing running from floor valve to toilet with that stuff.