The Geyser in My Bathroom

My experience with the leaking sink drain pipe the other morning reminded me of a story I never told here on my blog. The story took place in July 2005, just a couple of weeks after we moved here. Rather than take the time to write about it, I am just going to copy the email I sent to my family the day after it happened.

The Geyser in my Bathroom
(July 2005)

I had a good bit more excitement yesterday than necessary. What started out as a peaceful morning turned into a near disaster. I was cleaning up the sink and Destiny was taking a bath. Suddenly she came running from the bathroom, yelling that there was a loud noise and water in the bathroom. I ran back and discovered that there was water shooting out from under the bathroom sink, and I mean SHOOTING! It was like a geyser with tremendous pressure. I think I grabbed a beach towel first and put it under the pipe, then ran for the phone to call Dick. After I called him, I looked more closely and saw a valve that had broken off. I pushed it against the hole and was able to keep the flow down to several sprays instead of a complete gusher. So that's what I did for at least 20 minutes, probably 30, until Dick got home and finally discovered where to turn the main water off under the house. Every so often I would shift my fingers a bit, and the force would blow the valve back and I'd have to frantically try to put it back in place. Meanwhile I was yelling instructions at Destiny, who was running around naked (having just gotten out of the tub). First of all I told her to get all the towels out of the closet and throw them all over the bathroom and laundry floors. Then I told her to get dressed. One time I told her to get me something to catch the water in, and she brought me a huge kettle, which would never have fit underneath! Later she brought me a cup, but I couldn't really catch water with it, because that required moving my one hand, which resulted in the valve shifting and the water shooting out again. Needless to say, I was getting completely soaked under there, my hands were feeling like I couldn't hold on one more second.

When I could hear the water pressure die down after Dick turned the main water off, I felt like I would collapse. Dick went to Bomberger's Store nearby and got a new valve, soon had it fixed, and the water back on. Amazingly, no carpet got wet. The bathroom throw rugs and towels soaked up an amazing amount of water.

I thought I was no worse for the wear until I got up this morning. My shoulders and arm muscles are really sore.

So do you all know where to turn your main water off? Of course, it doesn't do me any good to know - you couldn't pay me to go into the crawl space under our house. I told Dick that if he was under there dying I would probably go in, but that's about it!