Water, water everywhere

After 30+ years living in an old - really old - building, I am no stranger to water raining down on my (inside) head.

Some of the leaks were more memorable than others. 

Early on, a woman was living in the flat above ours. She had
weekend custody of her 9-year-old son. The woman was a very heavy (pass-out drunk) drinker, and one afternoon she was passed out drunk and her son (understandably, a little brat) deliberately overflowed the tub. Which came streaming down through the light fixture in our foyer. Swell.

Then there was the Great Flood of Ought-Five, when the folks who owned the top floor unit ill-advisedly (we warned them!) left their heat on at 55 degrees in some pretty brrrrrr February weather when they weren't home. An uninsulated pipe that was flat-up against an exterior wall sprung a leak. The top floor unit suffered about one-hundred bucks worth of damage. As for the rest of us, well...Thanks to the cascade, our damage came to about $50K and we were living at a hotel or squatting for a bit with my sister Trish for a about six weeks in total. 

Our unit is an upside-down duplex. Living/dining room, kitchen and one bath on the first floor; bedroom, den, office and the other bath down below, connected by a narrow, winding "servants' staircase."

I've lost track of how many times that staircase has been flooded. 

It always started at night. At 2 a.m., my ears prick up to the drip-drip-drip. So it's out with the towels and the buckets and an a.m. call to the plumber to repair the ancient pipe that had sprung a leak somewhere above us. After multiple patches to the ceiling, we finally had a trap door put in so that it's easier for the plumbers to get up in there and see what up.

The leaks on that side of the unit generally stay on the staircase. And, let me tell you, it ain't easy getting up and down a narrow, windy staircase when you have giant plastic buckets every few stairs, and towels, towels, everywhere. But one time the leak made it down into the only good sized closet in our unit. Unloading that closet and figuring out what we could salvage was a pure, unadulterated treat.

This is a five story building, and the pipe leaks can happen anywhere along the line in the water, sewage, and roof drain pipes. They can impact any of the units on their way down, but, if there's a leak, it will always show up in mine. 

Sometimes the leaks are in common pipes; sometimes they're in a unit-specific place: sink, drain, toilet. 

We've seen 'em all.

I don't know how old the old pipes are in here.

The main part of the building went up in 1861, before there was indoor plumbing. So I'm guessing that some of the plumbing was plumbed in here in the late 19th century, when running water and toilets became a thang. 

I live in the back forty: a section added to the main building in 1919. So the pipes that got piped in then are over 100 years old.

Over the years, many sections of the pipe infrastructure have been replaced. I think we should be more proactive about making sure the pipes are alright. We have had a crew in here that snaked cameras down them looking for cracks, etc. So we fixed those spots. It's probably time to set that up again.

As for the latest flood sitch, this is not the first time that the lower level bathroom and my office have had water gushing out the light fixtures. (That combination of electricity and water is one of my very favorite things.)

Maybe ten years ago, they were testing some roof fix by flooding the repaired zone. The test failed, as we figured out when the waterfall fell on my office. 

We've also had ground-up water seeping into our unit's lower floor during hurricane level downpours. There's a pump around here somewhere, that my husband used to man, but we haven't needed it for years, since an outside sump pump was put in. Which is a good thing, given that Jim's no longer with us to man that pump and I don't like using it. (Understatement.) Thankfully, the backyard sump pump has so far stood up to whatever Mother Nature's pouring on. If we had a Vermont style flood, however...

Then there's the occasional sewer backup, that comes up and out of the downstairs toilet and shower. Ugh, ugh, a thousand times ugh. Bring on the bleach. We experienced a few of these over the years and, in each case, when the roto guys came in to root out the connection to the city sewer lines it was determined that the problem was flushed baby wipes clogging up the works. 

We knew the culprits. The OCD woman with the little French bulldog whose butt she wiped. And the home health care aides who took care of an elderly fellow who spent the last couple years of his long (99 years) life in pretty infirm state.

There hasn't been a baby wipe problem since OCD moved out, and the elderly fellow died.

Which gets us to the latest affront on the water front.

On Friday night we had a violent rainstorm. 

I was watching the second to last episode of the wondrous series The Last of Us. (I was late to the party, but am glad my sisters convinced me to watch it. I was under the impression that it was all going to be about oogie zombies and violence - and there's plenty of both - but it is actually a brilliantly told story of an imagined dystopia. IMHO, the series would work just as well absent the oogie zombies. The male lead, Pedro Pascal, is a god. And Bella Ramsey, who plays his young companion, is a revelation.)

At a key point in the episode, I heard it. Drip. Drip. Drip. DRIP. DRIP. DRIP.

Site of drip, drip, drip: downstairs bathroom, through the overhead light. 

Thirty seconds later, site of second DRIP, DRIP, DRIP: my office, through the overhead light.

I know the drill: buckets, paper towels, check to see if upstairs is also involved. Then call my personal 9-1-1, my friend Joe who is a fellow unit owner, but who does not live here. (Joe is an engineer by training, but his family has always owned extensive commercial property. Joe and his sibs all learned how to diagnose and repair just about anything. Our condo association is self-managed, and Joe is our main go to when things gang agley. Even when it's not a condo issue, but a personal, my unit problem, I always ask Joe's advise on who to call, what to tell them, etc. Nine-times out of ten, Joe takes care of the problem himself. Because of his family's property, he also knows the best plumbers, electricians, etc. If we need outsiders, Joe pretty much manages things. Without him, I truly could not live here.)

So I called Joe. He said he'd be right over. The minute I hung up, I tried to call him back, but he didn't answer. So I texted him to wait until morning. The storm was just awful - thunder, lightning, gushing rain to beat the band. I knew I could manage the bucket brigade of one, and that Joe might as well wait until it was light and sunny out. 

He showed up anyway, took an initial look, and did an initial assessment. 

His first theory of the case was that the building had another lighting strike - we had one a couple of weeks ago, which triggered the circuit breaker for my fridge and caused a five-minute blackout of my cable circuit - which hit a roof drainpipe and then moved lightning-quick through the building to crack the pipe the runs through the ceiling of my bathroom and office on its way to draining into the city's roof runoff drain system. 

But then he poked around a bit, and the new theory is that the flashflood overwhelmed the gutter that runs over my office and bathroom, and found some areas of weakness where the gutters meet - or, in this case, don't meet - the building's wall. 

So, we're getting the pros - Joe's pros - in to make the fix. Then I'll have to get a painter in to patch and paint the bathroom and office ceilings. I think that the lighting fixtures can be salvaged. But: What. A. Drag.

Note to self: never, ever, ever again live an old building. Never, ever, ever.

Meanwhile, guess I'll let a smile be my umbrella. Or an umbrella be my smile. Or something like that.

Glad it's not Vermont-level flooding, but I'm so sick of water world...