Last Wednesday, around 9:15 I went downstairs to do a final check of doors and lights before going to bed. As I rounded the preschool tables I sadly saw and stepped into a puddle of water on our carpet. At the very same time there was quite a down pour going on outside so I really wasn't sure if the storm caused the water to come into our house or if there was a mechanical problem. As I stepped into the hallway I stepped into more water. I followed the hallway around to see where else there was water and found a huge puddle in another section of the hallway, leaking into the "guest" room and the floor of the bathroom covered in at least an inch of water. Fun times. I opened the utility closet door and found more water. I was still really not sure where the water was coming from. I really did not think it was pipes leaking as we replaced all our plumbing shortly after we moved in. I quickly tried to look for any water spots on the walls and ceilings and saw none. Still confused and very concerned I went upstairs to grab my phone and call Mark who was at the airport. We talked for a bit and tried to trouble shoot the problem. He suggested that maybe it was the water heater which in the end it did turn out to be. Our water heater burst draining a whole lot of water into the basement.
We talked a little bit more and then I started laying out towels to try to clean up some of the water and block water from leaking into other places. I called one clean up place to ask a few questions and they said they would call back in the morning which was fine. There was no way I was going to clean up much with what resources I had so I did the best I could, turned off our water just in case it was something else and went to bed. Before going to bed though I had to send an email canceling preschool. I felt bad but really there was nothing I could do. We could not have preschool down there and would not have any hot water for washing hands and what not. When Mark got off work around 1:00 (it was a really bad airport week, Monday night planes were delayed because of storms and he didn't get home until 3:00!!) his supervisor who has a plumbing background stopped by to check out the situation. It was very kind of him. He confirmed that yes it was our water heater and they turned off the breaker to the water heater.
First thing the next morning I contacted our Warranty company to file our claim. Once I had a contact for a plumbing company I called them and then called a restoration company they recommended. Both companies were were great to work with and were able to fit us in that afternoon. The restoration company got to our house around 9:45 to do the initial evaluation and the plumbing company arrived around 1:30. They had told me between 3 and 5 so it was great they arrived earlier. While I was setting up the contract with the Restoration company my dear friend Laura came over and cleaned up most of the standing water. I was so embarrassed that she was down there doing it by herself while I talked to the Restoration rep but Laura is awesome and makes you feel good about any situation. Julie kindly offered to pick Jared and Lydia up from school and have them over to play which was really sweet of her. They had a great time. I'm so fortunate to have such truly caring, selfless people in my life.
I was really impressed with how quickly the plumbing people got our new water heater installed. Because we have a warranty there was a chance we would have to wait on their decision. When I talked to the plumbing guy and told him the model of our water heater (It was from 1996!) he said they had those on the truck (awesome) but sometimes the warranty people want you to use their products so you would have to A. argue which I am not good at. B Wait a few days for them to locate a product and get it to you. I mentioned my lack of arguing skills and asked if he was good at it and he said he was so I left it in his hands. Once I told him I had an 8 and 6 year old and ran a preschool out of my house he reassured me I would have the water heater by the end of the day. We got it even sooner. By 3:00 we had the new heater installed and happily had hot water again. The Restoration company arrived around 5:30 and didn't leave until 10:00. They did a great job and came back to check on things Saturday and by then everything was dried out. We feel really fortunate that we got connected with the people we did.
One drawback was the fact that our old water heater was so old it was not up to code and our warranty does not cover code upgrades. Now had we known there was such a thing when we bought our warranty we may have looked into the upgrade since a lot of our major appliances are so old but we had no idea so instead of the 100 dollar deductible we had to pay 400. That was obnoxious. Thankfully now our water heater is in good shape.
The insurance people were really helpful too. We talked to our adjuster Thursday and the inspector came out today. He inspected everything, wrote up the estimate and handed me a check within an hour. He was really kind and answered lots of questions. He commented on how kind and calm I was being and how refreshing it was. He had been dealing with storm damages all day and lots of people yelling. We found out last week how high our deductible was so I had already had time to prepare myself and was expecting to not get very much money to cover the repairs and saw no need to take it on on him. We feel like he was really generous with his estimate and are really grateful. I joked with Mark that maybe our estimate was a little better than it could have been because I was nice and calm. Seriously just treat people how you want to be treated. I think it has to do with having been on the customer service side of an office at one time and taken a lot of crap from people when I truly had nothing to do with the problem. We also were unaware of just how high our deductible was so that will be remedied soon also.
In reality this has turned out in our favor. We knew our water heater would be breaking eventually (it was over 20 years old and people say you aren't supposed to get more than 10 years from one) when we bought the house so now its done and we don't really have to worry about that and wanted to update our basement if we could so now we can. New paint in the main room, flooring in 3 rooms, new vanity in bathroom and some mold protection. Even though we technically did pay for it because we have been paying for our insurance for all these years its nice that the money did not have to come directly out of our accounts.
The preschool families were really kind about it. We had a make up day today and are meeting upstairs for this week. I hope we can be downstairs for our last week of the year which is next week but we will see how quickly we get this work done. I am not holding my breath but we sure lucked out with everything so far. Mark stopped by to visit the former Bishop of our ward to talk about some other things Sunday night and they were asking about the water heater situation. Turns out that the Bishop before this family had a big basement problem and so did the previous bishop who Mark was visiting with, we are just following in their footsteps. I want to ask them what other things happened during their 5 years so maybe I can prepare myself! Really I think it just has to do with the fact that it is a good amount of time so things are bound to happen but weird that it was the basement for all three families so far. They all joked that they better not tell the next guy. We are really grateful for how this all played out especially that we were home when it happened. It would be so sad to come back from being out of town and walk into that.
So this month is turning out to be quite a bit more expensive than we expected. We had our HVAC system serviced about 2 weeks ago and it was more than originally thought because it had been so long since it had been cleaned out and now our water heater. Our HVAC is as old as the water heater so it will most likely be next. We sure hope things stay calm for awhile now.
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