Gotta love it when this happens.
Today, I was removing a partition wall from an upstairs room in a 15yo house. The house is heated with radiant floor loops, fastened to the underside of the sub-floor. Partition was put up by another, 7 years ago, per the name and date pencilled on the plate.
Minutes before prying out the last bit of bottom plate, I said to the owner how unusual it was that we hadn’t run into any ‘surprises’… No ducting, wiring easily dealt with, no pipes!
Just then, as I’m prying out the very last section, water and air start bubbling out. Turns out one of the plate nails had gone right through the Pex loop; the loop had never been run hot so there were no signs of leakage on the ceiling below.
I cut the floor open and crimped in a coupling, but also had to open up the ceiling downstairs (garage!) to let water out. Shutting off the loop at the manifold did not help, and there was no loop specific drain.
Jinxed myself?
You guys have any ‘All’s well’ to ‘Holy sh*t’ in 1min. stories ?
p.s. Owner understands and will pay for the repairs.
Replies
....the little talked about downside to radiant floor heating.
Expert since 10 am.
Jinxed myself?
OH HELL yes!!!
Very similar to yours.
Customer (a very nice widow) wanted a drop down attic stairs installed in the hallway of her 50 year old house. The attic had full flooring run, but I could see nothing that would get in the way. Still you expect a surprise here and there and I told her this.
After marking out the ceiling, I used a long pilot bit to drill the four corners through to the attic. No Problem!.......................
I then drilled a nice 1 inch hole at each corner to start the sawsall blade. As I got the fourth corner a geyser broke loose! WTF!!!!!
Ran down to basement to turn off the water and holy ####! Valves and pipes everywhere! I must have turned off 8 valves (maybe more) before the water stopped.
Hot water heat around here is very rare. Hot water radiant heat buried in the ceiling plaster is unheard of-especially in a 50 year old house.
She said "That must be why George never let me hang any plants from the ceiling"
So much for the drop down stairs.
John Svenson, builder, remodeler, NE Ohio
lol.
You mean like going from working on pouring a 10" tall basement wall to pouring the basement floor's slab a bit ahead of schedule?
Yea , I have a few.
Yup. Most didnt take nearly a minute. The one that springs to mind I still waffle on who the guilty party is. You decide.
A HO had "finished" part of their basement, and I was later hired to finish the rest of it and fix everything that they had started. One of the issues was a soffit which was just going to look stupid if it weren't rebuilt.
So, out with demo tools. I pulled off the drywall, I pried. I sawzalled. I even looked, believe it or not. Well, Mr. HO had done everything he could to make the soffit small. Which included smashing the top plate right up against the water line which, from my ladder vantage point, was hidden.
It is really amazing what 3/4 pipe and good water pressure can produce in short order.
Real trucks dont have sparkplugs
Full on pressure gushers are definitely worse nightmare scenarios...the damages add up quickly.
As to guilt on your soffit fiasco...damnn, that's a tough call. Owner certainly contributed as he set you up in a way. OTOH, you might have guessed that since this was a DIY soffit, you were stepping into a mine field. Thing is that at a certain point, the investigating has to end and the drills/saws/nailers are fired up. It's fish, cut bait or dither ourselves into paralysis. I hate turning valves in houses that are older than 10 years.
Here's another of my misadventures, and fully my fault:
I screwed up pretty good in a basement, making mods to a 2" horizontal drain line. At day's end, I glued in a 2x2x1.5 rolled Wye into existing line, intending to bring in new branch next day. Decided to 'cap' it off for now with a partially inserted 'streeted' cap fitting, not glued in...yeah, that'll hold till tomorrow. Not.
Later that evening, the owners ran a load of laundry from upstairs. The full line pushed the cap off, leading to a soapy cascade onto their basement carpet. The wetted down zone was pretty small and the carpet was brought outside to dry. Boy did I feel stupid.
Later on I'll tell about the time a house's water main (80yo iron pipe) snapped off 3" away from the foundation, upstream of the house's main and only shut-off valve. Partially finished basement got 3/4" at 125psi for 20-25 minutes... Lots of irony when all is said and done.