Gusher

Ever heard someone say they have a "gusher" to deal with? Well, you don't want that to happen if that person is working in the apartment above you. Because that means that ALL the water gushing out of a hole in their pipe runs right down through the ceiling into your home.

What a frickin day!!! We noticed some water collecting down in our garage a couple days ago. Couldn't see where it was coming from and since it had rained badly that day I figured that could have been the cause of this "little" flood. I couldn't see any other place where the water could have come from - mind you the back wall is covered with - now wet - stuff.
Yesterday I meant to clean out the garage to check for any seepage from the back wall. But somehow I got side tracked and it seemed not to get worse and it was only the garage - most of the stuff stored in their gets wet quite frequently.
This morning I woke up to water slowly dripping out of the ceiling in our kitchen upstairs - right into my tea cabinet for all places. I wasn't pleased at all!!! Although it was only a very slow drip - easily contained in a small bowl on top of the cabinet, together with the water in the garage I figured we better call someone asap. In hindsight I wish I would have called yesterday - if I had not been too lazy to clean out the garage and go partying downtown Vancouver all night. Anyways, the plumbers showed up at 1pm. Leak was steady and slow. They started to cut holes into the ceiling around the leak - the hole got bigger and bigger and they still could not see where the water was coming from. So they figured it must come from the townhouse above of ours - well that had been obvious right from the start I thought. But of course the upstairs neighbours weren't home - who would be home on a Thursday early afternoon - people work. Luckily they did get a hold of someone and that person showed up shortly after. The plumbers went upstairs and guess what - all hell broke loose. The dripping got constantly worse and the area from which it was dripping got bigger and bigger - following the contours of this frickin huge hole in our ceiling of course. I was running for plenty of towels and many more bowls/buckets pretty much exhausting what we had available (lucky I always keep all those tin cookie cans my mom always sends the Christmas cookies in). It was at least a couple hours of hell before the dripping slowed down - I could hear water running in the walls as well - who knows where that all went and I am sure we might see a few more surprises. The plumber was able to stop the leak upstairs - temporarily. They have to come back to fix it permanently tomorrow - could not shut off the water to the upstairs unit due to a corroded valve. They have to shut of the water to the whole complex when fewer people will be home tomorrow morning. Darn - I am going to miss my spin class because of that after missing my cardio-strength class today already.
Well, it's now 6pm and it's still dripping slowly. Jeff will have to take me out for dinner tonight. The kitchen is still a mess but I am not cleaning it up before I know it's all fix. It just happened that I cleaned the kitchen this Tuesday!!!!!!!!! I am MAD!!!