Last Thursday night I came home from work and had supper and a nap. Then I came down to the kitchen at about eight-thirty and heard the sound of cascading water in the basement.

I ran downstairs and looked into the laundry room, where I was confronted with the sight of water pouring through the light fixture and the dryer vent in the ceiling. The floor of the tiny laundry room was already ankle deep in water.

I had no idea what to do. I grabbed my garbage pail and set it under the light fixture to at least catch some of the water. I ran up to the kitchen and the bathroom with some wild thought that the water might be coming from there and could be turned off. Then I raced up to my attic workroom where the yellow pages were. The first ad I saw had a graphic of a distraught man up to his neck in water and with a phone to his ear. I could relate. I dialled the number.

The woman who answered told me I needed to turn off the main valve for the house. Right. But I couldn’t figure out where it was. I went into the basement apartment, which is currently not rented, and found that there was a couple of inches of water on the floor. I waded about looking for the main valve. The first place I looked had some lever but when I turned it there seemed to be no effect. I looked in a couple of other places but either there were no knobs or they had no effect when I turned them or were too corroded to turn or something. I went back to the phone and said I couldn’t figure out where the main valve was. They took my information and said they’d send someone, but I had to call the city to come turn off the water.

Water was continuing to pour though the light fixture and dryer vent. I had visions of the ceiling collapsing, of being electrocuted because of the couldn’t-be-good combination of water and electricity, of the water level in the basement rising and rising. I called the city service number the woman gave me, and the guy who answered said, “You should know where the main valve is.” I was a model of restraint and said, though my teeth, “Can you just please send someone RIGHT NOW.”

He said he would. I went back down into the basement and turned that first lever in hopes that it was the main valve. Water continued to pour through the laundry room ceiling. No one arrived. Water kept pouring. No one was showing up. I couldn’t stand it so I put on some shoes (my slipper were soaked) and grabbed my jacket and ran next door. I live in a semi-detached so I figured the people next door must know where my valve was because theirs would be in the exact same place.

My neighbour came to his door when I knocked and I told him about the water and asked him to come help me. He agreed to and went to find some shoes. I realized I was clutching my jacket to me instead of actually having put it on. My neighbour went to the house on the other side of me and got the guy from there to come too. We went down to the basement of my house and found that the water was already slowing down to a trickle. I thought perhaps the city had shut the water off. My neighbours were very alarmed at the sight of the water streaming through the light fixture and suggested I turn out the power before somebody got electrocuted.

I sloshed my way to the bedroom of the basement apartment and, since the switches aren’t marked, turned off the power for the entire house. I lit the candles that normally sit on my dining room table and we used them to look around and try to figure out where the water was. My neighbours theorized that a pipe in the back addition over the laundry room had burst because the back addition would be colder than the rest of the house, and with the repeated freezes and thaws over the past little while lots of people in the area were having pipes burst.

There was nothing more to be done at present. My neighbours introduced themselves because we hadn’t previously met, I thanked them fervently for coming, and then they left.

The guy from the city showed up, said I had found the valve and turned it off myself, and agreed with my neighbour's theory of a burst pipe in the back addition.

I stood around in the dark worrying about other pipes freezing and bursting because the furnace was off. I called one of my closest friends who lives an hour away from Toronto and left her what was probably a semi-incoherent message about my basement being flooded and my being in the dark.

Then I went back downstairs to try experimenting with the electrical switches to see if I could figure out which one was the laundry room switch. As luck would have it, the very first switch was for the laundry room, so I got the power turned back on.

Then I started bailing out the laundry room. I had filled my garbage pail (which is a repurposed 12 kg laundry detergent container) four times before the plumbers showed up.

They came down to the laundry room and confirmed me neighbours’ theories about the pipe bursting and said they would have to cut some holes in the walls and ceiling to find it and would I sign a contract agreeing to surrender my entire net worth, my first born and my soul before they began, please. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little. They asked for a mere three days of my take home pay in return for what turned out to be an hour and a half of their time. I signed.

They cut a series of holes in the walls. I went into the basement apartment kitchen and bailed water like a maniac. And while standing in several inches of water and bailing steadily, got thirstier and thirstier with no way to get a glass of water. Oh, sweet irony.

Eventually the plumbers found the burst pipe at the back of the bottom of my pantry cupboard in the back addition. They capped it. Meantime I had amazingly managed to pretty much bail out the basement apartment – the water was down to what could be mopped up. The plumbers even thought my (new) washer and dryer would be fine if they were given overnight to dry out.

By about eleven the plumbers were gone and I decided the basement was in a condition to leave as was for the night. I was soaked halfway to my knees, so I changed into dry track pants and socks and sat down to watch the news and knit a little before going to bed. On the news I watched as a little Afghani boy who had had both of his legs blown had his bandages changed while he lay in hospital bed, gazing at the camera with his luminous dark eyes. It put my evening and burst pipe in perspective as the mere inconvenience it was.

My washer and dryer are fine. I’m waiting to hear back from my insurance company. And I seem to have pulled a hamstring in the course of my bailing and racing frantically around. But all is well.

I would be on the lookout for mold, although mold USUALLY develops with chonic leaks, not acute leaks like you had. But heat, ventilation, and looking in all the nooks and crannies for wetness.

I just had to shell out $925 today on car repair. . .I can sympathize with unplanned expenses.

Good luck cleaning it up!

I'd like get the back of my right leg massaged. Preferably by someone named Sven. But I'd probably kick him in the balls though sheer reflex (massaging the hamstring myself feels like pure S&M) so it's probably just as well I don't have anyone like that here.

The never-ending joys of home ownership...

[to be continued]

Buy a wet/dry shop vac, if only a small 5 gallon one. It's uses for the homeowner are never ending, not the least being helping to clean up after burst pipes.

And just to make your life easier next time, buy some day-glow toe tags and write on them things like "water shut off", "gas shut off" etc and tie them onto the valves. That way, the next time this happens neither you nor anyone else needs to think about what valve does what. When we bought our house, we did this with the house inspectors.

Also, you might want to do the same thing for your breaker box. It's really nice to be have all the breakers/fuses labeled.

And yeah, water leaks suck. I had a burst pipe in this house and was really glad that I knew how to shut it off pronto.