I really could have used a dryer this week...

We still haven't gotten our broken washer and dryer replaced yet. They said it would be delivered by the 1st. That's tomorrow. I'm REALLY hoping they actually stick to what they said this time. (Doubt it's gonna happen though.) ANYWAY... I really could have used a working dryer. On Thursday all heck broke loose in my flat. Mostly because the hose on the water heater in the office broke loose!! There was water everywhere. I was VERY lucky that my steward, Grace, and a maintenance guy were already back there when it happened. In the short time that it took the maintenance guy to turn the water off the office and my bedroom were flooded. If it had happened while we were sleeping or on vacation, it would have been a complete disaster!!

This is the hallway in my flat, specifically the back half of my flat. My bedroom is on the left and there are 2 smaller bedrooms on the right. The front small bedroom we use for the office and back one is guest/storage.


There was water all the way to my bed in our bedroom.


There was enough water that they were scooping it up with dustpans and pouring it into buckets to dump down the drain. They were also using the sheets Grace had just taken off the bed to mop up the water. (Luckily it was clean water, as clean as you can get here, and it was the hose feeding the water heater so it wasn't hot.)

But what worried me the most was all the water in the office.


We pulled Roy's computer up off the floor out of the water. (It was on at the time.) We also quickly pulled the plugs out of the wall, but it did no good. The UPS took over and everything was still getting power.


And of course the UPS was on the floor between the 2 desks. I had to pull the desks apart enough that I could lean in and hold the power button on the UPS to turn it off. What I didn't notice at the time was this.


This is a splice in the cord that runs from the UPS to the power strip that everything plugs into. IT WAS IN THE WATER!! The entire UPS could have discharged into the water on the floor if it had shorted out. We were VERY lucky that it didn't happen.

This is the offending water heater.


The space beneath the water heater is about 6 inches deep... it was full of water AND my flat was flooded. They had to scoop the water out of the hole with a cup and then we had to mop the rest out. Now we have a fan blowing in there to dry it out. (I really hope that it didn't leak into the flat below ours... sorry if it did!!)


Anyway, we found out from the maintenance manager that the flexible hose they used to hook up all the water heaters and toilets is "substandard". The fitting on ours had completely rusted through and the hose broke loose. (The building isn't quite a year old!!) So we asked him what the plan was to fix them since they know about it. And he said "We will replace them as they fail." I'm really glad Roy was there. (I had called him as soon as it happened and he came straight home from work.) I was FLOORED!! I didn't know how to respond to that answer. We were standing in water hoping our computer wasn't ruined and he had the nerve to say, we will replace them when this happens again. Roy immediately told him that was unacceptable and that they needed to schedule replacing every single piece of flexible hose in our flat because we were not going to do this again. (Isn't he a wonderful hubby.)

Once it seemed that things were under control as far as cleaning up the water and getting all the electronics where they could dry out, Roy went back to work. The maintenance guys were still working on getting the water heater repaired though. For some reason, they decided they needed to completely disconnect the water heater and empty its contents in the sink in the bathroom. That normally wouldn't be a problem, but the guy didn't check to see if the power was off to the water heater first. IT WASN'T. When he put his screwdriver to the screw to remove the power... well you can guess what happened. He was standing on a wet floor... He was very VERY lucky that he didn't die. He did however get a big shock and scared the crap out of all of us. There was a huge flash (lit up the whole closet.) He dropped his screwdriver and jumped/flew out of the closet. He was ok, no permanent injury. That was when he decided to make sure the power was off. This whole incident scared the heck out of me. I am deathly afraid of electricity. I don't even like to hook up the jumper cables to jump a car. Scares me terribly. So I was REALLY shook up when that happened. Even dreamed about it that night. Ugh...

But it seems everything is ok now. The water is all cleaned up. The closet is drying out, slowly. All the flexible hose got replaced on Saturday. And it seems that everything that got wet, dried out ok. We were VERY lucky this week. Just thinking about everything that "COULD" have gone wrong with this adventure, makes me want some tomato soup or some mac and cheese!! Anyway, as I said... I really could have used a dryer!! Wet towels... rugs... sheets.... Maybe we'll get it tomorrow. Maybe.