Reason #3089 to build your own home

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

When you hear a loud pop followed by the sound of rushing water in the middle of the night, if you designed and built the house, at least you know how to shut everything off and clean it all up, and most likely you built it well enough it won't happen in the first place. 

Just after midnight as I was finally starting to sleep well, I heard a popping noise, the dog barked a few times, and then the sound of running water.  I listened for a few seconds just to be sure that it wasn't just the ice maker on the fridge or something, and then worried that it was the washing machine or something else, so I hopped out of bed and ran across the living room to wet carpet  (eeeewwww).  I opened the laundry room door to find an inch or two of running hot water in the floor, and opened the door to the plumbing access only to get sprayed in the eyes with hot water. Meanwhile, the water has soaked the floor of the third bedroom, several moving boxes, our furniture, etc., not to mention, ruined the drywall between the bedroom and the laundry room, and by this time, it is seeping into the garage and the office.  Thankfully DH woke up the first time I hollered, and he had glasses on so he could actually get to the shut off valve minus hot water in the eyes, and he shut off the water main (which I couldn't see for getting scalded in the face.)  Now, here it is 1 o'clock in the morning, I'm tired and my clothes and hair are all wet, and I'm waiting on some guy to come clean up the flood.  I sent DH back to bed because there was not much else he could do, and there is not a dry towel left in the house.  The rental folks will be sending out a plumber first thing in the morning.  As DH and I were trying to identify and clean up the source of the flood, we had to laugh because this is what we get for thinking we're getting a sabbatical from working on houses by renting for a little while!  WRONG!!!  I think indoor plumbing is highly overrated at the moment.

[glenn kangiser]

I thought maybe you were just having a bit of insomnia again.  Nothing like a bit of entertainment to keep you up.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

I've never seen one of the contraptions that exploded in the laundry room before... it looks kind of like a fuse box only with water hoses all over it.
Maybe this is the in thing for building cookie-cutter houses; I don't know.

Sigh.  Be really glad to be on our own land again.  Hope our house in WI sells FAST!

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

1:34 and still waiting for the guy who is supposed to come help clean up the mess... beginning to think I'm delusional and the whole thing is just a bad dream.

[bobtheengineer]

sounds like one of those manabloc things.  main shutoffs for everything are off of one manifold, actually a really slick system, also called a home run system.  in this case, somebody obviously forgot to tighten everything correctly, which is too bad.

[CREATIVE1]

And that's also why we fix our own cars!

[Sassy]

HG, will the fun never end?  You sure are getting the "testing of your faith" treatment... 

So how's everything going?  How in the world are they going to fix the house & did any of your furniture get permanently damaged?  Here your DD thought you were living in a palace - it did sound nice with the jacuzzi bathtub, although we have one in the house in the valley & I never use it - uses so much water & then cools down fairly fast... the jets are so low to the bottom of the tub they don't really get to your back & neck...  I guess I should try it out again when I'm back there... 

Well, I just hope that the adventures slow down & you can have a somewhat boring existence for awhile... 

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

   Well Sassy, to look on the bright side, with the water shut off this morning, I couldn't wash any veggies, so breakfast was a handful of peanuts...and if I don't eat anything, my blood sugar doesn't get out of range on the high side, at least!  The plumber just left and said he was going to recommend to the homeowner that he replace the manifold system because the attachements at the valves are done incorrectly.  He said he had just been out here three months ago for the same problem and that it was only a matter of time before it happens again.
The fans are really noisy... about to drive me crazy.  Kids and I are concentrating on trying to get their room liveable... it is so little compared to their room at the house in WI that the furniture doesn't fit, nor do their toys or bookshelves.  But they don't want to be in separate rooms.  The weather is so pretty out that it is awfully hard not to be outside all day.  I am calling the realtor in WI today and telling her to lower the price and get that house sold.  I want out of here and in my own place.  It IS a nice house if you like fancy cookie-cutter houses and subdivisions.  It is in one of the neighborhoods that us poor folk used to go and look at Christmas lights when I was a kid... a place I never wanted to live, really, nor did I ever expect to live here.  I remember in highschool a group of my friends and I driving up here just to cruise around and look at the lights along with all the other common folk... it's one of those places where the neighbors all try to outdo each other on decorations... we all couldn't afford to buy dinner out, so I remember stopping at a Mazzio's and pooling our resources to buy two Cokes and an order of bread sticks, and that was supper for five while we drove around listening to Christmas songs on the oldies channel and looking at the rich folks' houses!  To me, all these subdivision houses look so much alike.  If it weren't for our car parked in the drive with the broken side mirror, I don't think I could tell which one was ours... even WITH the car I have to pay close attention, or I'll drive right past.

It's funny... this area and these kinds of neighborhoods were really the IN thing when I was in high school... people wanted to live here and wanted to get their kids in the schools here... Now, just up the road, they're building castles (literally) that make these houses look like shacks by comparison.  I don't understand why anyone would need/want a house that big.  They look stuck-up and lonesome to me.  Some of them have upwards of ten lightning rods on the roofs... that's how huge they are.  To me, this house is nice and bright (things I like about it) but it has a lot of wasted space and we kind of get tickled about how they tried to make it so gaudy and yet used some really cheap-looking components (the ceiling fan in the master bedroom is the most mickey-mouse looking thing I've ever seen... I wouldn't have paid $20 for it at wal-mart.)  I'm GLAD it is not our house, and GLAD that though we'll enjoy the little luxuries of living here for a while that eventually we'll be moving somewhere more practical.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Oh, and Sassy, on the jacuzzi tub, I hate to waste all that water, too.  What I did was after I filled it, I left it full overnight and gave the kids a bath in it the next day... the heater doesn't get it too warm, so I just boiled some water in the teakettle and added it until it was warm enough for them.  They had a ball in there... it was almost a swimming pool to them.

The plumber came back yesterday and replaced all the gray pipes on the manifold with copper. It was the gray stuff that is like flexible PVC that was in there before, and I guess this neighborhood was involved in a big lawsuit against the builders about ten years ago because of the problems like we experienced with it yesterday, but the statute of limitations has run out to file a claim against them, according to our next door neighbor.  Anyway, I feel better knowing it is done... hopefully nothing else will explode during the time we live here.  I almost called the realtor yesterday to schedule a day to go looking at land with her, but stopped myself until I can get this house straightened up a little and at least get a few rooms unpacked.

So glad this isn't my house.

[ScottA]

I feel sorry for people who buy those tract houses. They cut every possible corner to save money. Does not do the buyers any favors. Whats worse is this tract home mentality has bled over into custom houses too. I see tract house quality work in million dollar homes all the time now. I just shake my head.

[glenn kangiser]

I'm familiar with that gray pipe.  We had a mobile home we bought in '79 for a MIL house that had it.  We heard about the lawsuit, but never got involved in it -- we just re-plumbed as necessary.

Note that it is not the same as PEX -- it was a nightmare that may have made some reluctant to use PEX, but not even the same animal.

...and yes-- we had multiple blow outs with it - especially at fittings - connections.

[MountainDon]

That's the PB (polybutylene). You had to have a failure within the time frame allowed by the court settlement. Many folks never had any problems at all. Many never had any troubles until after the time lapsed. Even then I believe the failures had to meet certain criteria. No reason to not use PEX just because of problems with the PB. PEX has been used in Eurpoe long before it came here.

[glenn kangiser]

I think there had been around 20 years of trouble free service with PEX before they turned it loose to us.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Yes, it was the PB like was used in mobile homes... but from my understanding, you had to have catastrophic damage caused by it in order to get it replumbed at no cost to yourself, and then only within the time limit.  In theory, the manifold is nice, with both a hot and cold shutoff to each and every fixture in the house.  When the plumber re-did it the other day, he made one main hot shutoff and one main cold shutoff, and one whole house shut off... it is easier to get to that way, anyway.  As Scott said (think it was Scott, anyway) a lot of these houses were built on the cheap, even though they were really the high roller houses of their day... there are a couple of built-in bookshelves in the living and formal dining rooms that look so cheap to me... they aren't particle board, but they're really poorly constructed.  The bottom shelves have doors which don't hang right, and gap about two inches at the top from really closing... almost like they were some weird afterthought.  I'm not a big fan of textured sheetrock walls... I prefer smooth walls and ceilings, even though it is a heck of a lot more work to do all the sanding.  My daughter was staring at the wall the other day and asked, "Mama, why are the walls in this house all wrinkly?  Were they too lazy to iron them all out?"

[Sassy]

   So hows the unpacking going?  What did they do about the wet floors/carpets & your furniture that got wet?  Didn't you say some of the walls looked like they would be ruined, also?  And this has happened before?  How do they get rid of the mildew?

My oldest son used to work for a large insulation installer.  He said that some housing development builders would cut corners so badly - the houses were just junk although they were the high end houses - then other builders did a really good job.  He said the people buying the places had no idea how badly things were built - the builders have buddies in the inspection business so everything gets passed....   

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

It's going.  We got a lot of our room and the living room unpacked yesterday.  It's hard to unpack anything else because of the stuff we hauled out of the flooded rooms.  Most of the furniture that got wet was pulled out so fast that I don't think it has any lasting damage.  They sent out a guy from a place that specializes in drying up after floods, and he yanked all the carpet padding out from under the carpet, then used high-powered vacuum to suck most of the water out.  Then he set up big drying fans that have been going 24-hours a day for the past several days (the noise is enough to drive me nuts.)  They're supposed to be back (I don't know when) to replace carpet padding and tack the carpet back.  Hopefully the mildew won't be too bad since we dried it up really quickly.  However, under the carpets was so filthy (one of the 101 reasons I hate carpet and will never put it in a house I own.)  Today, I took the girls to a historical homestead in downtown OKC just to get out and about... it was 75 degrees and I couldn't resist, and they were so good yesterday while I spent the majority of the day unpacking.

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Well, finally this morning the guys showed up to redo the carpet and carpet padding, and now I'm waiting for the guy who is supposed to show up to steam clean it.  I don't think we should have to pay the whole rent for this month considering we've only been able to move into half of the house, and not to mention the lousy fence that couldn't deter a cow, let alone a little Ornery dog with a knack for fitting through tight spaces.  The lease forbids us to chain or tether a dog, yet we're supposed to keep him up when the fence has holes all in it and half the boards can flip up for easy access to the outside world!  Thankfully, Grover is  a good dog and stays put, and Ornery is fast and elusive enough that no one can catch him...and when the neighbor's bigger dogs get out and growl at him, he comes running back home with his tail between his legs.  I've come to the conclusion that I am allergic to the carpet itself... it doesn't seem to matter whether it is clean or dirty.  My eyes water in this house, and my throat itches all the time... I'll be so glad to start looking at properties!!!!

[Sassy]

HG, I don't think you should have to pay all the rent either - in fact, with all the hassle, I wouldn't think they could charge you anything, how miserable.

Wouldn't be surprised if you are allergic to stuff in the house - after all, this wasn't the 1st time there was a water flooding problem - no telling what's growing in the walls, in the floor, what kinds of chemicals that have been released with the water being a solvent...  the carpet is probably only one of the problems...   

Well, I won't say I hope things get back to "normal"  as your "normal" seems to have quite a few unwelcome surprises - but, hey, keeps life interesting!     

[Homegrown Tomatoes]

Normal?  What's normal?     It's getting better... I figure about the time we get everything sorted and put away, etc., our house will sell and we'll have to move again! Kids are really driving me nuts wanting chickens.  So, I guess I'd best get off the computer and get to unpacking some more.