I want to buy a home. Really, I do. Maybe one day the real estate market will come back to something approaching normalcy, but for now I’ll continue forking over $750/month to a very nice lady for our one-bedroom condo. And on days like today, I’m glad that’s the case.
I went into the kitchen last night as I was heading to bed and noticed a rather large puddle on the floor. It was pretty late and I had to get up early to head out paddling in Deep Cove, and I figured it was just water from the cats’ fountain so I mopped it up with a towel and headed off to dreamland.
Fast forward to this morning. I got up, shut off the alarm (forget Sunday shopping laws, they should enact Sunday alarm clock laws), stumbled towards the laundry room to get my paddling clothes out of the dryer and momentailry paused while my sleep-deprived, daylight saving hating brain tried to parse the cold, wet sensation coming from my feet. A rather large, muddy (thanks to stray clay cat litter on the floor) puddle greeted me. In the kitchen: a similarly large, not-so-muddy counterpart. The kitchen and laundry room have a common wall; water was coming in to the kitchen from under that wall.
I phoned my landlady, who in turn called the property management company, who in turn called a plumber. I poked around and investigated while I waited for him to show up; my theory was that a pipe in the wall was leaking. Once the plumber arrived and managed to knock a couple of holes in the laundry room drywall with his Leatherman’s saw (while muttering under his breath about someone not returning his drywall saw) my theory was confirmed; the cold-water pipe for the washing machine was dripping in the wall, right where it passes through a doubled-up stud. Here’s a crappy illustration:

Plumber #1 got another, more urgent call (pfft, backed up sewage drains are more urgent than my drippy pipe?) and honestly, he probably would have been here all day hacking away with his 3-inch long Leatherman saw, so he called for backup and took off. Plumber #2 arrived an hour or so later (fully kitted out with all manner of saws, I might add) and started enlarging the hole around the problem area. Almost as soon as he started poking around the problem area, the drip turned into a heavy stream. Some quick action by Chris-not-Joe the plumber had the stream back to a steady drip. We MacGruber’d up a funneling system with a plastic bag and a bucket — something resembling a SFU Facilities Mismanagement repair job — and Chris packed up his tools; they’ll come back tomorrow to finish the repair when it isn’t double-time rates.
Water was still seeping into the kitchen so I did what any self-respecting man would do: grabbed a hammer and made the hole in the wall even bigger. Some regigging of the drainage system resulted in this masterpiece:
The building restoration folks are here now removing baseboards and setting up fans and dehumidifiers — shades of a few years back when a pipe in the bathroom ceiling leaked. The laundry machine and a whack of insulation are sitting out in the hallway. Fun times.


















