Tough ending to Christmas Eve

[jhart]

On Christmas Eve, all the relatives on my wife's side go over to one of her sisters. After leaving, another sister and her husband went back to their 4 plex where they live, were going to check on the dog and then go over to some other friends place.

Walking up to the door, a note was on the storm door, telling them that there was a pipe leaking in the basement apartment. About an inch of water all around and pipe leaking in the ceiling. Guess they spent about 4 hours getting it repaired and cleaned up.

Not the way to end Christmas Eve!!!

[cabinetman]

Joe

I never thought there was a good time to have a disaster. Just when I've got nothing to do (hardly ever). I wait for a catastrophy, all prepared, and then it doesn't happen. You just have to figure it's a test, which after the fact could develop our ability to cope with the situation.



A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOREVER - John Keats

[TheRic]

Like Cabinetman said, there is never a good time to have a disaster, but they always seem to come at the wrong time.
After shortly moving into our new (to us) house we had the sewage backup in the basement bathroom. This was the day before Thanksgiving. We were able to contain it to the bathroom, and had a plumber out ASAP to snake out the sewage line. I guess it could have been worse, and happened on Thanksgiving with the house full of people.

[dkhoward]

That is a tough way to spend Christmas Eve, but, without making light of the frustration and expense, it could have been worse. Too many Christmas Eves I spent working house fires that left entire families without a single useable article. Whenever I have one of those "minor" disasters, I try to think about what some people endure and say a prayer for the blessings that have been bestowed on me.

[dlminehart]

The pump in my daughter's 125 gallon fish tank leaked overnight. We woke up this morning to a living room floor half soaked with water. Had to pick up the rug (luckily not wall-to-wall carpet), remove floor from tank's cabinet in order to get to dampened hardwood underneath, set up fans. We've no idea why the pump started leaking, after working fine for 8 months. But I'm looking into placing it in a tray with a water alarm . . . especially since the cabinet sits directly on the hardwood floor, and I'm concerned that the water held under it by capillary action is going to discolor the wood (sealed with 5 coats of varathane, but still . . .).

[Brian G]

Must be something in the water

On Christmas Day, I was finishing some last-minute vacuuming (we were hosting LOML's family gathering), when LOML announced, "The basement floor drain is backing up".

My immediate thought was that the main line was plugged (again!) with tree roots, because that's (backed up basement floor drain) exactly what happened last time. So, not wanting to deal with it ourselves, we called Roto-Rooter. The good news (for us) was that there was a short enough period that our "rooting" was still under the previous service warranty.

Jackson (that was his name) ran the snake down the service main, but nothing cleared. When he snaked the line from the basement drain to the "bowels of the house" he extracted a sodden lump of fibrous material (my CSI-like skills deduced paper towel ) and the drain was plug-free.

A few questions later, Boy #1 realized that he was the culprit. It was difficult to be upset, because it happened while he was cleaning one of the bathrooms. He just had never been told that paper towel should not be flushed.

The three hours only cost us $60 plus a "Jackson" as a tip for Jackson because he wrote the service ticket under the previous warranty.