I live in an old house.
Today, I came home to my kitchen flooded because there was a small leak under the sink that had started while we were gone. I fixed it. Yeah, I'm the man. I totes fixed the sink, yo.
Except there was hardly any water pressure from the hot water side, which is also the side I fixed. Hmmm...
So I checked the hot water everywhere else. There was no hot water in the bathroom. But there was water somewhere, because I could hear it. Then I realized it was just the waterfall. Only we're not supposed to have a waterfall.
It was the line between the water heater and the bathroom, making a pool under the house, clearly not something that is supposed to happen.
Lucky me, my landlords live next door. Unlucky landlord's son, he got to swim under the house in twenty degree weather.
A few hours later, when it was very dark and very cold outside, he had it all fixed up. I was messing with the wood stove (making fire, yo!) and I heard the water come back on. Except I shouldn't have heard it, because nothing was running. So I went to see what was going on, and my kitchen was flooded again. The little leak I had fixed had turned into a giant, spewing, hot water geyser. Awesome.
I yelled out the door to tell him to turn the water back off, but he was already gone. I handed the phone to Huston and told him to call them back over, grabbed a towel and tried to stop the leak. It didn't stop, but I did get it to quit spraying all over the kitchen and just run downward like a normal leak.
Huston came in and said they weren't answering, and asked if I needed help. I was laughing because I couldn't let go and my clothes and hair and face were soaked, and I just didn't know what to do. Warrick decided to walk next door and find someone to turn off the water (there is no shut-off under the sink, by the way...I'm not that bad at plumbing.)
Just then, the water turned back off and I heard a knock at the door. I sloshed my way over to answer it, and there stood the landlord's son. He said "If you ever hear your name from under the house, and maybe a little banging on the floor, please come get me because it means I'm stuck under the house. I thought I was going to die." (He said it very nicely for someone who was stuck in one foot of crawlspace with probably six inches of standing water.)
OMG. I almost killed him, and I didn't hear him because I was too busy holding a towel around a pipe trying to save my kitchen floor from becoming a giant Slip 'n Slide for the kids! Can a renter get any more sucky than that?
So he got a wrench and did something with my repair job, turned the water back on and proved that he is a better plumber than I. And we made a deal that the kids and I would sit quietly and listen for distress signals next time he was under the house.
