Has anyone ever had their home flooded out? Here’s my story:
It all began Wednesday night (11/20) at about 11:00 PM. After being upstairs for the past few hours I came downstairs and discovered a puddle of water by my front door. I had no idea where the water came from since the ground was dry outside and nothing was dripping from the ceiling. Next, I noticed there was a lot more water in the kitchen. At this point I thought the sink’s drain may have sprung a leak, but this wasn’t the case, either as everything was dry around it. I then noticed that the carpet throughout my living room was wet. I looked up the ceiling again but could not locate the source of the water (the bathroom is upstairs). As I walked towards the back end of my place the water was more concentrated, especially in the corner. I heard water running from the other side of the wall where my water heater is and thus determined the source. I went out back where I opened the door to get to the water heater and found water pouring out the base of the water heater and spilling out onto the floor. I got a pipe wrench and shut off the water flowing to the heater immediately. It was hard to sleep that night thinking about all this. At least my bedroom is upstairs away from where the water had spilled.
On Thursday I had to call off of work to deal with this whole mess. I got a new water heater to the tune of $250, plus another $100 to pay a friend who installed it for me (most of the plumbers I called would have charged $500 for this job). On top of this I also had to deal with my insurance company and arrange service to have a cleanup crew come out and take care of the mess. As always, these things take a long time and there are always a lot of hoops you have to jump through to take care of everything. Usually there’s a miscommunication somewhere with all the channels that information has to pass through from one person to another while filing an insurance claim, and yesterday was no exception. As the cleanup crew would need to pull out the carpet and take out the old pad I had to move all my furniture out of the living room and into my carport. The cleanup crew came and did their work, leaving me with a bare concrete floor (thank God it’s not a wood floor base). I then had to move all my furniture back in until they come back out again to put the new pad and carpeting in.
As if this weren’t enough, the water spread over into each of my adjoining neighbors’ units (I live in a townhouse). Fortunately they were nice and understanding about the situation and were appreciative of my efforts to get them taken care of as well. The water damage wasn’t as bad on either side.
Things could have been worse, though. I was gone for five days last month, so I hate to think about the mess I would have come home to if the water heater decided to leak on me while I was gone. None of my furniture or anything of significant value was damaged, though a few items that I had stored out by the water heater, such as some art projects from high school, were ruined.
So, has anyone else had trouble with a water heater or other appliance flooding their house?