Help! My Fountain of Experience is Overflowing!
Remember how I mentioned that I was going to tackle a repair on my washing machine?
Ha! Apparently I forgot to knock on wood, like I said.
I honestly didn't think I was going to be out of my depth. I really didn't. I have a front loading washer that for a while now (oh, at least six months) has been filling up with an inch or two of water after I finish a load. We thought the problem was the drain trap (or whatever it's really called) getting clogged with gunk and socks and stuff again-- it's happened in the past. But when I took that apart and cleared it out there was barely anything in there. (It did have a sock of S's. I always thought it was the dryer that ate socks, but no, our washer does a pretty good job of it.) Terence took a look and thought there must be some debris clogging up in an area we couldn't get to. This didn't make sense to me though because the extra water only showed up sometimes, not all the time. If there was a blockage, wouldn't the washer always have trouble draining?
Since it wasn't really a major problem, we didn't worry about it. I didn't want to spend several hundred dollars to call out an appliance guy just for that. But then our washer apparently went psycho, or got possessed by a poltergeist or something. On a day when all of us were gone and I hadn't run any laundry loads for at least 48 hours, the washer decided to fill up with water all on its own and flood the laundry room. It wasn't a pipe break. We used the shop vac and got rid of all the extra water in the washer, dried up the floors, and everything stayed completely dry.
What the heck????
So I did what anyone faced with a mystery in the 21st century does-- I searched Google. It didn't take long to find out that other people have had this problem, and it was most likely due to a water intake valve that had gone bad. (Did you know they are electronic? And they are the only thing keeping water in your pipes and out of your washer?) Apparently since they are electronic and can go on the fritz, you can get the spotty water leakage/flooding stuff that we did. Again, not wanting to call an appliance repair place, I researched how much the defective part would cost and how to change it out. The part wasn't cheap, but the repair looked doable for even me by myself. So I decided to go for it.
Thursday afternoon, as soon as I got my piano lessons finished, I grabbed my new water intake valve and the tools and waded in. (I just didn't realize that it was going to be literally.) Terence had turned the water off at the wall valves a few days before (the day of the poltergeist flood) so I set right about unscrewing the top panel on the washer. The next part was to unhook the water hoses from the back of the washer. Here's where everything went drastically wrong.
My YouTube instruction video warned that there might be a little water spillage when I removed the hoses, even with the water shut off, so I had a bucket ready just in case. But with each turn of the wrench loosening the hose, there was more and more water leaking. The leaking water made it tricky to keep a grip with the wrench but I pressed on. Disaster struck as soon as I had the hose completely off. Water sprayed everywhere at high pressure. It was like trying to hold a miniature fire hose. I thought the demo guy had an interesting idea of what a "little" water spillage looked like-- I was now drenched, my shirt was literally sopping wet-- but I pointed the hose at the bucket and thanked my lucky stars I had thought to bring one.
That relief lasted only about 10 seconds.
Anybody who has ever tried to spray out the remaining water of a hose once the spigot has been turned off can tell you that the water trickles off to nothing right away. But that was not happening here. At all. At first I thought Terence must have made a mistake when shutting off the water valves, so I reached over to the wall (still trying to aim the hose at my rapidly filling mop bucket) and twisted the valve handle the opposite direction. Nothing. I tried it again the other way. Nada.
PANIC.
I was trapped in the laundry room (my disconnected dryer was blocking the doorway) holding a hose that was spewing forth Niagara Falls and I had no way to shut the water off. At this point I started screaming like a lunatic for the kids. Thankfully, Terence had just pulled up and one of the girls ran outside and told him that Mommy needed him ASAP. The other kids starting collecting every trash can in the house and bringing them to me, since my bucket was now overflowing.
Terence panicked just as badly as me. He shouted at me (at me!!) for breaking the wall valves. Then he climbed in and took my spot only to realize there was literally nothing to be done about it in the laundry room. So he took over filling the buckets with the hose and shouted at me to shut off the water main to the house. As if I had any idea how to do that.
At this point I called my friend Kristi in a panic, hoping she would know what to do. Luckily, her husband Alex has done a gazillion different projects restoring their first house so he was able to walk me through shutting off the water to the house. Further investigation led to the discovery that our wall valves had corroded. As long as the hoses were connected to the washer (and the water intake valve was doing its job) the water would stay where it belonged. But I had unwittingly unstopped the dam.
Yep.
At first it looked like it would be a simple repair, but after further messing around, Terence realized that in removing the valve spigots (so we could take them to a hardware store and get replacements) he had broken off the thread to the pipe (not surprising when it was also corroded). More googling, and soon we realized that it was going to be a cut out the drywall, cut the pipe, and solder a new wall box in place kind of job. Beyond our abilities.
We spent the next two hours trying to get hold of a plumber who could come out and fix it that evening, seeing as how we had the water to the whole house shut off. I don't know how many calls Terence made, but apparently in June in Phoenix everyone has plumbing crises. The soonest we could get an appointment was for the next morning. That meant an entire evening/night with no water. The drinking part wasn't a problem-- we drink water from a cooler that uses five gallon bottles and we had several full containers on hand. But no toilets? No showers? No washing dishes? Not to mention the laundry situation was getting desperate, seeing as how I had not been able to use my washer for four days (which might well be like four months in other households, judging by the piles of laundry we had built up-- especially since we'd used every last towel in the house to mop up the flood of water).
It was time to break out the 55 gallon water barrels we have stored in the backyard. This is truly our emergency supply, and we'd never used it before. But Terence broke out the hand pump and got it hooked up. I spent most of the evening in the backyard, sweltering in the heat and pumping more water into a bucket to use in a toilet again. Seven people in a house, and even if you try to limit toilet flushing you still need a lot of water. That's what I learned. In a long term emergency, we would absolutely have to dig a latrine, yucky as that sounds. Otherwise all our water would be gone in days.
It was interesting, but not too bad, on the whole. The plumbers showed up at 7:00 am the next morning, and they were quick and efficient and had everything finished within an hour. By the time the kids woke up we had running water again and I already had a load of towels in the newly repaired washer. (Terence and I installed that new intake valve in 5 minutes flat. It is an easy repair-- assuming you don't have corroded valves on the other end!)
Some things I learned from this adventure in home ownership:
Ha! Apparently I forgot to knock on wood, like I said.
I honestly didn't think I was going to be out of my depth. I really didn't. I have a front loading washer that for a while now (oh, at least six months) has been filling up with an inch or two of water after I finish a load. We thought the problem was the drain trap (or whatever it's really called) getting clogged with gunk and socks and stuff again-- it's happened in the past. But when I took that apart and cleared it out there was barely anything in there. (It did have a sock of S's. I always thought it was the dryer that ate socks, but no, our washer does a pretty good job of it.) Terence took a look and thought there must be some debris clogging up in an area we couldn't get to. This didn't make sense to me though because the extra water only showed up sometimes, not all the time. If there was a blockage, wouldn't the washer always have trouble draining?
Since it wasn't really a major problem, we didn't worry about it. I didn't want to spend several hundred dollars to call out an appliance guy just for that. But then our washer apparently went psycho, or got possessed by a poltergeist or something. On a day when all of us were gone and I hadn't run any laundry loads for at least 48 hours, the washer decided to fill up with water all on its own and flood the laundry room. It wasn't a pipe break. We used the shop vac and got rid of all the extra water in the washer, dried up the floors, and everything stayed completely dry.
What the heck????
So I did what anyone faced with a mystery in the 21st century does-- I searched Google. It didn't take long to find out that other people have had this problem, and it was most likely due to a water intake valve that had gone bad. (Did you know they are electronic? And they are the only thing keeping water in your pipes and out of your washer?) Apparently since they are electronic and can go on the fritz, you can get the spotty water leakage/flooding stuff that we did. Again, not wanting to call an appliance repair place, I researched how much the defective part would cost and how to change it out. The part wasn't cheap, but the repair looked doable for even me by myself. So I decided to go for it.
Thursday afternoon, as soon as I got my piano lessons finished, I grabbed my new water intake valve and the tools and waded in. (I just didn't realize that it was going to be literally.) Terence had turned the water off at the wall valves a few days before (the day of the poltergeist flood) so I set right about unscrewing the top panel on the washer. The next part was to unhook the water hoses from the back of the washer. Here's where everything went drastically wrong.
My YouTube instruction video warned that there might be a little water spillage when I removed the hoses, even with the water shut off, so I had a bucket ready just in case. But with each turn of the wrench loosening the hose, there was more and more water leaking. The leaking water made it tricky to keep a grip with the wrench but I pressed on. Disaster struck as soon as I had the hose completely off. Water sprayed everywhere at high pressure. It was like trying to hold a miniature fire hose. I thought the demo guy had an interesting idea of what a "little" water spillage looked like-- I was now drenched, my shirt was literally sopping wet-- but I pointed the hose at the bucket and thanked my lucky stars I had thought to bring one.
That relief lasted only about 10 seconds.
Anybody who has ever tried to spray out the remaining water of a hose once the spigot has been turned off can tell you that the water trickles off to nothing right away. But that was not happening here. At all. At first I thought Terence must have made a mistake when shutting off the water valves, so I reached over to the wall (still trying to aim the hose at my rapidly filling mop bucket) and twisted the valve handle the opposite direction. Nothing. I tried it again the other way. Nada.
PANIC.
I was trapped in the laundry room (my disconnected dryer was blocking the doorway) holding a hose that was spewing forth Niagara Falls and I had no way to shut the water off. At this point I started screaming like a lunatic for the kids. Thankfully, Terence had just pulled up and one of the girls ran outside and told him that Mommy needed him ASAP. The other kids starting collecting every trash can in the house and bringing them to me, since my bucket was now overflowing.
Terence panicked just as badly as me. He shouted at me (at me!!) for breaking the wall valves. Then he climbed in and took my spot only to realize there was literally nothing to be done about it in the laundry room. So he took over filling the buckets with the hose and shouted at me to shut off the water main to the house. As if I had any idea how to do that.
At this point I called my friend Kristi in a panic, hoping she would know what to do. Luckily, her husband Alex has done a gazillion different projects restoring their first house so he was able to walk me through shutting off the water to the house. Further investigation led to the discovery that our wall valves had corroded. As long as the hoses were connected to the washer (and the water intake valve was doing its job) the water would stay where it belonged. But I had unwittingly unstopped the dam.
Yep.
At first it looked like it would be a simple repair, but after further messing around, Terence realized that in removing the valve spigots (so we could take them to a hardware store and get replacements) he had broken off the thread to the pipe (not surprising when it was also corroded). More googling, and soon we realized that it was going to be a cut out the drywall, cut the pipe, and solder a new wall box in place kind of job. Beyond our abilities.
We spent the next two hours trying to get hold of a plumber who could come out and fix it that evening, seeing as how we had the water to the whole house shut off. I don't know how many calls Terence made, but apparently in June in Phoenix everyone has plumbing crises. The soonest we could get an appointment was for the next morning. That meant an entire evening/night with no water. The drinking part wasn't a problem-- we drink water from a cooler that uses five gallon bottles and we had several full containers on hand. But no toilets? No showers? No washing dishes? Not to mention the laundry situation was getting desperate, seeing as how I had not been able to use my washer for four days (which might well be like four months in other households, judging by the piles of laundry we had built up-- especially since we'd used every last towel in the house to mop up the flood of water).
It was time to break out the 55 gallon water barrels we have stored in the backyard. This is truly our emergency supply, and we'd never used it before. But Terence broke out the hand pump and got it hooked up. I spent most of the evening in the backyard, sweltering in the heat and pumping more water into a bucket to use in a toilet again. Seven people in a house, and even if you try to limit toilet flushing you still need a lot of water. That's what I learned. In a long term emergency, we would absolutely have to dig a latrine, yucky as that sounds. Otherwise all our water would be gone in days.
It was interesting, but not too bad, on the whole. The plumbers showed up at 7:00 am the next morning, and they were quick and efficient and had everything finished within an hour. By the time the kids woke up we had running water again and I already had a load of towels in the newly repaired washer. (Terence and I installed that new intake valve in 5 minutes flat. It is an easy repair-- assuming you don't have corroded valves on the other end!)
Some things I learned from this adventure in home ownership:
- If you don't know how to shut off the water to your house, go figure it out ASAP. You never know when you are going to need that knowledge . . . .
- Holding onto to those old towels is an emergency prep measure, not just a sign that you're a hoarder.
- Plumbers are apparently so swamped with work that they won't even bother to return your phone calls. Be prepared to call like 50 of them in an emergency. (Proof that our insane world doesn't value skilled trades, perhaps. We have a plethora of humanities degree holders who end up working at fast food joints, but not enough plumbers. Why do we push every kid to go to college again?)
- An emergency fund is a lifesaver. OK, I knew this already, but it was hammered home again. The plumber gave us a significant cash discount, and I was able to run to the ATM and pull out the cash because we had an emergency fund.
- S really, really, really doesn't like water threatening to flood the house. She screamed for an hour and only calmed down when she fell asleep. It was worse than B used to be during monsoon storms, or J when the smoke alarms went off.
On this end, I can see the humor and the blessings in the whole fiasco. I'm so glad that if the valves were corroded and could have let loose at any time that it happened while I was standing there with a bucket. It was a blessing that it happened on a day when Terence happened to be home so there were two of us to cope with it. And I'm grateful for neighbors and friends who were there to help.
Never a dull moment, right?
Comments