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Emergency Leaking Pipe!
7/25/2004 5:30 PM

Waterworks
It was 2 in the morning, I had just left the club early because my throat was sore and I was tired, and I was all ready to fall right asleep.  But then I noticed that I needed to wash my laundry, left I have nothing to wear in the morning.  Well, no big problem, I'll just throw the clothes in the washer, check my email, throw them in the dryer, go to bed and deal with them in the morning.  But this was not meant to be.

When I got downstairs I immediately noticed two things: a strange noise coming from the laundry room / workshop and a soggy carpet underfoot.  As I turned into the laundry room, I saw water spraying out of the cold water supply line all over everything.  I dropped the laundry, traced the line all the way back to the main water shut-off and closed the valve.  I had to shut off water to the entire house to stop the leak.  I wouldn't be able to run any water (laundry, sinks, toilet, shower) until I solved this problem.

View the image gallery below to follow me as I learn how to, and how not to plumb.

Image Gallery: Plumb-u-cation
In which I experiment with soldering pipes.
This is more or less what I discovered at 2a Saturday morning while attempting to do my laundry. The cold water line had failed and was spraying water all over my work bench (drenching my MAPP/Oxy torch and bench grinder, but little else of importance). The floor was soaked both in this room and the adjacent one and some carpet remnants were wet. Upon inspection, this old badly-installed saddle valve had corroded and failed. Once removed, there was only a small hole in the bottom that needed to be patched. Because it was not 2:30a Saturday morning (I was also sick with a nasty sore throat and was very tired) my quick-fix (aside from shutting all the water to the house off) was a vice grips clamping a small piece of rubber over the hole. This solution would probably have worked for weeks- but I wanted to fix it "right".
See all 11 images.