Waterworld

Last night on my way home, I received a call from my neighbour Sarah who also happens to be the condo board president...it seems that the pipes in the unit next to mine (currently un occupied, foreclosed and owned by Fannie/Freddie/one of those places) had sprung a leak and flooded part of the unit, its ceiling and the storage units below. The fire department was called and the unit was busted into so that the water in the unit could be turned off....except when they got in there the water was coming from the pipes in the ceiling....so the water for the whole building had to be turned off. The management company (sigh - worthless) was called and we were given the name of their emergency plumber. He was called at 10:20....and showed up at 2:00am. It seems it was the holiday party for
the plumbing company and um, spirits were bright.

You may be wondering why the pipes burst last night - I mean it wasn't particularly cold in Chicago - it had been worse this week....yeah, it seems that sometime between the renter moving out in June and the real estate agents "winterizing" the unit in September, part of the window went missing. So instead of putting in a new window they wrapped the open hole with cling wrap. yes. Cling wrap. Because you know - cling wrap keeps the cold out when there is NO GLASS. It also seems that despite all the notes the winterization team wrote about needing to keep the heat on....they themselves turned off the gas....they left the furnace running....but turned off the gas. They sound like a real brain trust don't you think? Since there was only storage below this unit, the temp keep dropping and when the pipes burst, it was about 33 in the unit.

When the other
Sarah first contacted me she told me that she thought it was my storage unit into which allllllllllll the water had drained. Of course, being Miss Sarah, everything in my storage unit was in Rubbermaid....but was that going to be enough to stop water that was coming from above? While in the cab home, I kept thinking of the large bag of photos I have from high school and college, the letters from my now deceased grandfather and other various mementos from the past 34 years. Thankfully, it is only a wall that will have water damage...everything else went into the storage unit next to mine. Bad for them - but I am thankful my memories were spared!! Time to stop putting off scanning those photos into Flickr!

Once the plumber showed up, I headed to bed since I had to be at LUSH in the morning to open. Needless to say, sleep did not come quickly since I was right next to the demoing of the ceiling to reach the busted
pipes which were then cut and capped.

All seems quiet on the home front today - water is back on. I am showered and clothes have been washed. I will be very happy if there is never another pipe burst incident in my life ever again.