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As I was going through my morning routine on Thursday I noticed a brown stain that looked like coffee on the counter next to the sink. My brain is not at it’s best first thing in the morning and I was trying to puzzle out how I managed to spill coffee in the bathroom.
Coming up with no plausible explanation I looked up and discovered the culprit. A water stain that covered half the ceiling of my bathroom had formed and brownish water was slowly dripping from the sagging sheet-rock.
I gathered my addled faculties and grabbed a flashlight and went into the attic and discovered that one of our pipes had formed a pin-hole leak and was dripping water into the insulation and the ceiling underneath it.
After procuring a pan to catch the dripping water we called American Home Shield to arrange for some warranty repair. I called in to work letting them know I needed to stay home and wait on the plumber.
A few hours later I received a call from the plumber informing me that they could have someone out on MONDAY to fix the leak.
This was unacceptable and I called AHS back and let them know that we needed someone immediately if not sooner. The woman I spoke to was very helpful and told me she would find someone to come out that day and would call me back.
30 minutes later she called to let me know that she had made arrangements with ARS and someone from there would be contacting me shortly to arrange a repair for that day.
I was pleased when only 45 minutes had passed and the phone rang. It was ARS calling me to let me know someone would be out in the next few hours to fix the leak.
When the repair guy arrived he informed me that the water shutoff for the house was not working and he would have to shut off the water at the main. I knew the shutoff was having problems so I negotiated a repair of that while he was here.
The pipe was covered by the warranty and cost a nominal fee. The shutoff is outside the house and as a result, not covered by the warranty and cost bit more to have repaired.
After that was taken care of it was now time to call our insurance and figure out how to proceed. They gave us the name of a home repair contractor and we called them and arrange to have someone come out and give us an estimate for the repair.
Later that evening as we watched TV and commiserated about this old house we heard a noise coming from the bathroom and went to investigate.
Not surprisingly the ceiling went ahead and collapsed, spilling wet insulation and sheet-rock all over the place…
What a mess.
The next day the contractors came out and went ahead and removed the rest of the damaged ceiling so we could start drying it out.
On the plus side it looks like the repair will be much cheaper than the deductible.
Another plus is that this was NOT the recently renovated master bathroom….
I’m sympathetic, we woke up this summer at 4am one day to water dripping from our living room ceiling. There aren’t any pipes right there, they’re in the 2nd story attic and the water dripped all the way down through the walls.
FYI, there are pipe clamps with a rubber liner you can buy at a Home Depot. If you develop another small leak you can clean the pipe with a wire brush and screw this clamp in place. It should hold until the plumber can get out there. Our current house had one above the kitchen for 8 years.
Oh, we had that happen at my parents’ house a number of years ago. Ugly mess, isn’t it? I sympathize!
Man what is in our water that is eating through the pipes?
I’ve got the same deal in one of my downstairs bathrooms. The ceiling is all exposed though still. The $#$%$# leak stopped before we cut the wet sheet-rock away. Can’t figure out where it was leaking, not even sure which pipe. Current thinking is that it got a pinprick hole and sprayed for awhile then got maybe a rust particle lodged in the hole and temporarily sealed it up. Temporary going on 3 weeks now. Still can’t find the leak. At least you can get yours fixed and repaired. I still have to look at that open ceiling every day.