Pipes and solder joints

[teyrnon]

Well, this has been an interesting weekend. Far too interesting in the wrong ways for my liking. Friday I noticed some off moisture forming in washer/dryer nook. I was perplexed and spent some free moments through the day trying to figure out what was going on. I laid out towels trying to figure out what pattern there was to it and determine where this fluid was coming from. It wasn't until that evening when I was fading off to sleep that it occurred to me that I should check the little unfinished room behind the washer nook that I use for storage. So, I bolted up from bed and went to take a look and sure enough there was water on the floor. But I couldn't tell from whence it was coming. So, after some fretting about it, I called my brother up and told him about it. This was around 1:30 AM. I hate calling people at such an unholy hour but this seemed serious and it struck me as unwise to wait until the morning. Thankfully he was at his house, about a third of a mile away from here. A rarity these days as he spends most of his nights at his business across town. I left a message on his voice mail and set about emptying stuff from the storage room in order to get a better idea what was going on. I was a little surprised when my brother called back within minutes, I figured he must have been asleep. He came over and quickly determined that the hot water pipe line going to the washer had broken and was spraying a light stream. It had broken loose at the solder joint. It had been poorly soldered in the first place. This isn't the first time we've noticed problems. (The previous owner of this house was a contractor by trade and fancied himself quite handy around the house. From what we've seen over the years plumbing was not his best skills.)

I continued removing things from the room while he went to work. My collection of vintage catalogs from the 50s to the 80s was completely soaked and ruined. My collection of video tapes fared better. It was contained in several plastic bins and cardboard boxes. The bins were on the floor with the boxes stacked on them. Two of the boxes were worse for wear having been in the path of the spray but the tapes in them didn't get to wet. The box had absorbed the water for the most part.

Thankfully it wasn't worse than it is. the water had only reached across a third of that tiny room. I wish I'd caught it sooner. I don't look in there very often, it's generally the place where things end up that I don't know what else to do with. Like my forgotten VHS tape collection. [sigh]