Thankfully it lasted considerably less than forty days.
The rocket scientist who recently rehabbed our apartment apparently felt it was necessary to avoid running pipes through the floor, so instead the plumbing reaching up to the main floor conventiently skirts an outside wall. Ordinarily this would not be much of a problem, but since Greenland is melting (1) and causing some extreme temperatures, the latest freezy week left us bereft of select hot or cold water from various pipes.
Over the course of the week, the hot water returned to the kitchen/laundry area; not so the cold. Ironically, I now suspect that it was the use of the hot water in the laundry machine that finally warmed up the relevant section of wall sufficiently to un-freeze the blocked and (unbeknownst to us) "compromised" cold water pipe.
Thankfully we were in the house at the time, so we could start reacting to the situation immediately (2). Not so thankfully, the same genius who ran the pipes on the outside of the wall also didn't see much value in placing the cold-water shut-off valve near the hot-water shut-off valve, much less even in the same room. A comedy of errors ensued as we lofted furniture over the waterlogged carpet while attempting to reason with the building manager that there was no evident way of slowing the progress of our below-ground swimming pool.
Eventually the building manager and a plumber were summoned - on a Sunday, no less. Torrents were tempered, laundry machines were moved, walls were cut into, pipes were replaced, etc, etc. The management company was very professional, quite apologetic, and very interested in helping prevent this from ever happening again. We had very few things stored in the basement, so not much had to move and nothing was damaged. Time will tell whether the carpet will survive. All in all, things are a little shaken up, but we probably came out of the situation with an even better opinion of the owners.
Then again, it's supposed to drop back down below ten fahrenheit this week. Stay tuned for further mayhem.
1. Yes, I saw the Al Gore movie. No, I don't blame global warming for the current extreme temperatures.
2. Note that "Immediately" only applies to Kevin. I was too caught up in the saga of ejwu's living arrangements to notice the puddle of cold water spreading underneath my feet.
Over the course of the week, the hot water returned to the kitchen/laundry area; not so the cold. Ironically, I now suspect that it was the use of the hot water in the laundry machine that finally warmed up the relevant section of wall sufficiently to un-freeze the blocked and (unbeknownst to us) "compromised" cold water pipe.
Thankfully we were in the house at the time, so we could start reacting to the situation immediately (2). Not so thankfully, the same genius who ran the pipes on the outside of the wall also didn't see much value in placing the cold-water shut-off valve near the hot-water shut-off valve, much less even in the same room. A comedy of errors ensued as we lofted furniture over the waterlogged carpet while attempting to reason with the building manager that there was no evident way of slowing the progress of our below-ground swimming pool.
Eventually the building manager and a plumber were summoned - on a Sunday, no less. Torrents were tempered, laundry machines were moved, walls were cut into, pipes were replaced, etc, etc. The management company was very professional, quite apologetic, and very interested in helping prevent this from ever happening again. We had very few things stored in the basement, so not much had to move and nothing was damaged. Time will tell whether the carpet will survive. All in all, things are a little shaken up, but we probably came out of the situation with an even better opinion of the owners.
Then again, it's supposed to drop back down below ten fahrenheit this week. Stay tuned for further mayhem.
1. Yes, I saw the Al Gore movie. No, I don't blame global warming for the current extreme temperatures.
2. Note that "Immediately" only applies to Kevin. I was too caught up in the saga of ejwu's living arrangements to notice the puddle of cold water spreading underneath my feet.