Disaster

Woke up to a strange noise in the early hours. When to investigate. Found great waterfall raging through the lad's bedroom. Water gushing from the immersion heater cupboard and the ceiling above.

I woke everyone up immediately, and sent everyone to assemble in the living room, which is at the opposite side of the house and therefore not flooding. Just as CL1.1 was out of bed and about to leave his room, his light started buzzing and flashing, clearly shorting out as the water got into the electrics.

Anyway, once everyone was safe, I frantically turned my attention to the main water valve to stop it flooding more, chucked a few essentials into a bag, and we went to my mam's. I turned the electrics off as I left.

Back in now, with no power and no running water. 1.1 is at school and 1.2 is going to his first day in nursery in half an hour. That leaves me and poor wife to clean up, call insurance company, track down plumbers etc.

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Glad to hear that you are all safe, at least. It could have been much, much worse. Well done for thinking clearly!

I hope that the insurance company come up trumps for you...

 

I hate it when stuff like this happens. I remember something similar happening to my family when I was kid. It was all a big adventure then but not so as an adult when there's clearing up to do and repairs to organise. I'm glad you're all ok though and I hope it can all be sorted so you can get back to normal asap

 

It seems that the all singing all dancing gold star 'we cover everything' home insurance policy that I bought from admiral, doesn't cover emergency repairs to plumbing, and has a whopping £550 excess on claims caused by water damage.

On the plus side though, a plumber is coming, and he says if it's what he guesses it is based on our description, it will only cost about £50 to fix. Then we just need to decide whether or not the carpets, ceilings, plaster etc need to be redone. I'm hoping it will all just dry out fine.

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Thanks for the kind words all.

To be honest though, my outlook is quite positive. I'm aware for example that us evacuating our home last night was just because of a bit of repairable damage, and we had somewhere else to go just a mile away.

I'm also thankful that I spotted it in time. Much longer and I reckon the ceiling would have collapsed right onto my son. I've been in a ceiling collapse. It hurts, and that's when you're big enough to take a knock.

I'm also thankful that the electrics held out. It was starting to arc. Much longer and it could have started a fire. Or the wet floor could have become live. Thankfully we became aware of what was happening before it got that far, and we're all ok.

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Sorry to here about your disastor, if I lived closer I would have come round and sorted out the plumbing for you.
If your loft is fibreglassed you will probably have to remove it. Has it will get very heavy if its wet through

 

Plumber has been. Our house is now on the road to recovery.

We have cold running water, and the electric is back on.

The bill is going to be a bit higher than estimated but thankfully a lot lower than feared.

It seems we still had an old fashioned metal cold water tank. It had simply corroded away naturally until it could no longer hold the pressure of the water, and it had split.

Plumber didn't have a spare tank in the van, and its too late to catch the shop apparently (or he wanted to go home for his tea, but I can't blame him for that), so for now he's isolated off the supply to the tank, which means we can have the water back on, but no hot water. I'm sure I can cope with a spongy bath for one night. He's coming back tomorrow to fit a new tank. I'm confident he'll turn up because he declined my offer of payment for the work he's done so far, saying I can just settle up once it's all done.

In terms of clean up, we have a huge amount of washing to do, as although it was clean water that escape, it obviously dragged a lot of dust down from the loft.

Ceiling has held out and doesn't look buckled now. Two of my favourite tea bags have been destroyed when water made it as far as one end of a kitchen work surface. That'll teach me to put them away. House is an absolute mess, as we've just piled stuff into potentially ruined, needs a wash, and fine. Decor seems undamaged. Light fitting in lads room burned out so needs replacing, but that's cheap and simple. Haven't investigated inside the kitchen cupboards yet.

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Sorry to hear your news Clueless but I'm glad to hear you're all safe and repairs are under way.

 

I took a galvanised tank out in my old house as I was putting a new one in the attic, when placed on the floor the valve which was underneath went through a rotted base. A close shave so I think we all need a quick inspection today, takes 10 minutes but saves hours of time and expense.

 

I used the hoover to suck up a lot of the water out of the carpet FC. It's made a big difference.

@Jimcub, 're the base rotting away, do you mean the beams that the tank presumably stands on? Sorry I know nothing about these matters, I'm just trying to establish what, if anything, I need to ask the plumber to check.

Still no hot water today. I'm told that plumber went to pick up the tank he'd ordered but it hadn't arrived, so he's said he'll be back tomorrow. I hope so. I thoroughly didn't enjoy washing in cold water this morning.

Clean up is coming along. Wife has done four loads of washing today, and thankfully it's dry and windy here today so she's got most of it dry now already. I reckon we should be back on track by the end of the weekend.

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Blimey, good luck with it all Dave

You'm need a dehumidifier