The First Day of Summer Vacation
Great moments in building history: Did I mention the pipes in my house are old?
My family and I were headed to the beach for a week on an island off the Massachusetts coast. We’d leave at 9:30 on Sunday morning, which would give us plenty of time to make our ferry reservation for the car.
I woke at 5:30 a.m., made coffee, and drank a cup while checking the to-do list. Among lots of other small jobs, I had to grab the fluffy new beach towels—freshly laundered and sitting in the dryer—and pack them in the beach bag.
After coffee, my regular routine, so to speak, is to head for the john. This morning started no differently.
Now is as good a time as any to mention that our 1930s house has most of its original plumbing, and what’s not original is not new.
I finished my morning constitutional, flushed, stood up, zipped up, and looked back in horror. What was supposed to go down swirled quickly upward. Clog alert! Clog alert!
Every submarine movie I’ve ever seen has a disaster scene involving rushing water. Red lights flash, and a low-pitched buzzing puts everyone in a panic.
I reacted just as quickly as if I were under the sea with water quickly rising around my ankles. I reached for the water shut-off at the floor and turned the handle, but the valve came off in my hand. I’d stopped the toilet from overflowing, but started a gushing fountain that began to flood the bathroom floor.
My first reaction was to stick my finger over the broken-off pipe. The water kept coming. I pushed harder with my finger, and the pipe went through the floor to the basement room below—where all my hand tools were stored in chests, with the lids open. I run a dehumidifier in the room during the summer to keep my hand tools from rusting. I bolted for the basement.
I have no idea how many gallons per minute can come out of a 1⁄2-in. pipe, but in the minute this particular one had been broken, it seemed like half a submarine full already.
I grabbed for the overhead shut-off between the joists. Did I mention the pipes in my house are old? I turned and turned, and nothing happened; the water kept coming. I raced for the garage where the pump and pressure tank sat behind a little door—the door in front of which I’d piled all the stuff for the yard sale we were going to have right after our vacation. I chucked and heaved the 200 pounds of tag-sale junk from in front of the door in less time than it takes to say, “Honey, did you pack the sunscreen?”
I cranked closed the gate valves and ran back to the tool room. The water had stopped, but it still dripped from the ceiling. A growing puddle ran across the linoleum floor, toward the door, and was already showing up as a dark circle on the carpet in the adjoining hall.
From the laundry room down the hall, I grabbed the beach towels and threw them on the puddled linoleum and the sodden carpet. For an hour I wrung out towels into drywall buckets and emptied them into the laundry-room sink. I lugged toolboxes out to the driveway. Lots of rags and a can of WD-40 later, and I had most everything dried off.
The Home Depot is 20 minutes away and opens at 7:30 on Sundays. I bought a bagful of couplings and parts and raced home.
The flux and solder gods were with me that morning, and I got everything capped off, turned on the water, and watched. Nothing dripped, not a drop. I chucked the dirty wet towels into the washing machine and ran upstairs to wake up my family.
As we grabbed a quick breakfast, I gave everyone the rundown, outlining what still had to be done if we were to catch the ferry. When the washing machine finished, I threw everything in the dryer and set up every fan we had to blow across the wet carpeting, the sodden walls, and the ceiling.
We fed the cats, locked the windows, loaded the dishwasher. As I was unplugging the small appliances, the dryer signaled that the towels were done. Five or six more little tasks—find an errant flip-flop, water the last plant, leave a hall light on—and we were in the car, starting the four-hour drive to the ferry, only 20 minutes later than I’d hoped.
On the interstate, I pulled the to-do list from my pocket.
“We’ll still make the boat, won’t we?” my wife asked.
“Yes, I think so.”
“I’m amazed you got everything done,” she said, “including that plumbing thing.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Did you get the towels?”
“They’re still in the dryer,” I said, and drove a little faster.
Drawing by: Jackie Rogers
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