We came home from Utah to a leaky basement and ten billion fruit flies in the kitchen.
Finding the cause of the fruit fly problem was relatively quick and easy—we'd left a singular banana on the kitchen counter. And then let it sit in the house for three weeks. So...fruit flies.
We're still battling them a bit, but they're much better controlled than they were when we first arrived home. They were everywhere. Why did we leave a solitary banana to rot on the counter? I'm sure I had planned on feeding it to Phoebe with breakfast, or something. And then didn't.
Much like the cucumbers in the fridge that I had meant to prepare to take with us...and then didn't...
Anyway, the fruit fly problem was easy to diagnose. The drip? Not so much.
While trying to figure it out on our own, we left a container down there to catch the drips until we finally gave up and called the plumber.
When he arrived I showed him all the plumbing on the main level—the dishwasher, the kitchen sink, the laundry room, the bathroom.
"Now I think that it's a toilet dripping," I said. "But my spatial awareness isn't very good so I'm not quite sure."
We went down into the basement and the plumber agreed that the drip was a toilet pipe. However, he didn't think it was the bathroom directly above us because he could see the tub, toilet, and sink right in a line—no drips. This other pipe...wasn't any of those.
"Ugh," I said, "So that means it must be an upstairs bathroom."
"I'll tell you what I think," the plumber said, "And I'd bet money on this. Someone tried to hang a picture or screw something into the wall and hit the pipe causing the leak."
"But the leak just started!" I objected.
"Nevertheless. A screw, for example, will self-heal its hole as it goes into an object. Initially it will be water-tight, but over time the screw will get corroded and..."
Blah, blah, blah. Fine. You can cut my wall open.
That poor bathroom needs to be redone anyway. Not that I'm super into remodeling things just...remember that time our upstairs bathroom fell into our hallway bathroom? We haven't quite finished fixing the bathroom up from that little experience, so it's already a bit of a mess. What's one more hole in the wall?
So the plumber cuts a hole in the wall (two holes, actually) and comes to report that it's exactly as he suspected.
Some genius screwed the towel rack directly into the pipe.
The genius is Andrew.
Andrew screwed the towel rack directly into the pipe.
So now we have no where to hang our towels, but fortunately we no longer have a leak. Under that tape the screw holes have been cleaned out and professionally sealed. Basically as good as new now!
And the good news is that the water was just flowing so nicely down the pipe that we really don't have any water damage to speak of. Just these...large gaping holes in the wall.
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