To begin with: The Story of Why presents The Story Of Tuesday.
Having been ignored by a plethora of plumbers, who didn't call back after giving me estimates on installing the washer and dryer, I'd finally called someone a week or so back, got an estimate, and made an appointment for an install. So Tuesday morning, LJ dutifully stays home to wait on this guy (and the exterminator, called to get rid of the bees). The plumber shows up and runs the gas line, then calls me to tell me he can't do anything further because the main shutoff valve was broken. I knew this, of course, because Tom Slaughter's dumbass "contractor" had broken it off the day I moved in, in a vain attempt to fix the upstairs sink which only didn't work because its strainer was full of sediment. (I ended up fixing it myself.) The plumber said I'd have to call the city and have them locate my "water box", which is apparently a little doodad outside which is buried underground and is the main shutoff to the whole house. I'd then have to call him back and he'd come out and hook everything up.
Or at least, that was the plan.
Tuesday night I cooked dinner, did about half the dishes, and took a shower. Toward the end of my shower I noticed the water was a little cool, but I figured "oh well--must have turned it a little too far to the right." I went to bed and was joined a couple of hours later by LJ. A while later, I got up and when I turned on the hot water, all I got was ice cold water. I waited...nothing. I went back into the room and said 'We have no hot water." "Oh, I could have told you that," said LJ--to which I replied "Well, you DIDN'T, now did you." I put on my slippers and went down into the basement with a lighter and a twist of paper to reach the pilot.
I got down on my belly on the damp cold floor--thank god I'd swept the basement out the previous weekend!--and tried to read the directions on how to re-light the pilot. "Turn knob to PILOT," it said, and I did. "Locate the aluminum tube running from the right of the control box, extending next to the thermocouple. Push and hold red button while holding flame to the end of this tube. Hold for about 1 minute or until the pilot remains lit."
This was where things failed to work. I pushed the button, I held the button, I held the flame to the end of the tube--nothing. Not even a hiss. There was no gas going to the heater. I also noticed that despite the chill in the house, the furnace was also not doing anything. I read its directions--it's pilotless--and basically the directions were "It SHOULD work!"
So I went and got my wrench, and turned the valve on the gas meter, then went up to see if the stove was still working. It wasn't. I went up and down stairs repeatedly, turning knobs and then testing the stove til it worked again. So the main gas was on, I realized; but there was no gas going to the branch of operations including the furnace and water heater. I tried valves, turning them every which way--nothing. Not even a hiss of gas.
Meanwhile, it was heading toward 1:30 AM and I was supposedly getting up in a few hours; LJ, of course, was snoring. I called the plumber--it's a 24-hour service--and the poor woman on the answering service didn't know what to make of me! I was pissed to my core and barely civil; she promised to get someone to call me as soon as possible, and about 30 minutes later (as I tried again to light the pilot)--lo and behold, someone DID call. He offered to come out, but since he didn't know the area, I told him to wait til daylight and just take some money off my installation bill--he said OK, and I called off work, telling them I'd be in late Thursday morning, because I had to wait on the plumber.
Well--it was raining. And standing in the door of the bedroom earlier in the evening, I felt something cold on my head....cold and WET. I looked up at the ceiling and there it was--a perpendicular intersection of two damp lines with a droplet of water right at the point of the angle, poised to drop--and a fat, juicy blister filled with water, right in the paint over the door. I poked it with a Swiffer and it blurted rusty water right down the wall.
So my roof leaks. Now, it can't be MUCH of a leak, if HUD certified it--but it's still leaking, and I don't like it. But granted--that was a LOT of rain--like INCHES of rain, in a short time. So while I waited for the plumber for the washer and dryer, I called roofers, who--typical customer service--didn't call me back. And I waited, and waited, and waited, for the plumber. "Well, with the rain and everything, we've had a lot of emergency calls from people with flooded basements...."
He got there around noon and lit the pilot on the water heater--the button was just stuck, was all, and he leaned on it and it lit right off the bat--but if I'd left for work right then, it would have taken me til 2 to get to work, and where was the sense in THAT? So I called in and told them there was no way I was going to make it.
And then I used the downstairs bathroom.
Through a mechanism I'd prefer not to describe, the toilet flushed only halfway before backing up. It wasn't fully blocked, but it was very very slow, and I didn't have a plunger. I remembered, however, that I DID have a wire hanger in the closet, so I went to get it so I could push the blockage through the pipes.
Well, I had forgotten something, as I left to get the coat-hanger and wirecutters: The flapper on the toilet is leaky, and so even though the flush handle wasn't down, water was still coming into the bowl...
...and it had nowhere to go once it got there, except over and down.
I was gathering materials when I heard a strange noise--a splashing, but not from the bathroom...from the BASEMENT. I ran downstairs and water was POURING through the floor above, splashing everywhere. I could see the hole from underneath, and I could see light through the hole; I ran upstairs and realized that the toilet was overflowing out the back, where the water was running down to the lowest point on the floor, where the pipe came up through a rough hole in the floor, unsealed. The hole, around the size of a silver dollar, allowed the water to run through to the basement.
I ran around, swearing, til I could find my wrench--still downstairs sitting on the gas meter--to turn off the water to the toilet and stop the overflowing; I tried all my little tools (coathanger, etc) and nothing worked, and I realized I had no plunger. I walked to the hardware store on Pulaski, bought a plunger, and carried it home--where it ALSO didn't work.
At that point--at which everything had gone wrong-- I called my mom. I knew she had a plumbers' snake, though she couldn't find it, and so she said she'd bring it over. She hung up, and I went back into the bathroom to try the plunger once more...and it worked!!!!! But of course the floor needed to be scrubbed with bleach, and the basement needed to be cleaned up, and so on.
It was just a baaaaad house day.
