Puzzle Description:

At 1:30 this Wednesday morning, after a wicked snowstorm on Monday and bitter cold temperatures on Tuesday, a water pipe leading to an upstairs shower - which had been frozen since Tuesday morning, possibly sometime Monday night - burst open. At press time, the exact spot of the burst is unknown. The water came through the ceiling into a room downstairs, and through there into the basement, where what went into the basement should eventually drain out through the drain in the floor (it's a country house). The image is at the time that the water first began to leak. It was much worse than this when I heard the noise and had to get everyone out of bed. I decided to spare you the picture of my shocked expression in the doorway. And now that it's 5:55 in the morning (ET) as I post this, I'm probably going to be sleeping briefly for a couple of hours. Possibly in spurts every few hours. My sleep clock is so out of whack right now.

#1: Bryan (Cyclone) on Jan 8, 2014 [HINT]

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Poor you. I hope you are covered by home insurance.

Yup, and just got word pipe will be fixed today. The study, meanwhile...

whoa, pipe is a good start but it's the rest of it that the water damaged..good luck bryan

Indeed, been working to clean out the study. That's not where the pipe is; the room where the pipe is isn't damaged otherwise, so we're basically opening a wall and hoping the pipe is there upstairs. If not, there will be a mess of drywall down to the study today that isn't currently anticipated...

At least my Dad has a buddy who is very "handy" so improvements can be made to prevent this again. For today (it's getting warmer now), the key is getting it working...

Bryan, my sympathies. Water damage isn't fun! :(

hope it gets warmer for everybody affected by this cold..yesterday started out at o degrees,with a high of 5 and today it started at 5 degrees here...always good to have a friend who can help :)

Here in Ottawa we had one day just at the freezing point, so we had glare ice on the roads, and now it's really cold again. Florida, here I come!

Bryan, you certainly have my sympathies. I hope the damage to personal things is minimal. Walls,etc. can be fixed. When I was in high school our house burned down and it was the loss of personal things that hurt the most.

We apparently got lucky - one of the irreplaceable family history books (in German, what's more) got hit, but not destroyed. Guess it was just the cover. There were a few things right under the light, and one bin that the water fell almost directly on had no cover, so it was virtually destroyed; thankfully, I don't think it was anything too valuable. We have an old computer that no one uses, so we're going to see if we can get $50 or so or whether it's completely destroyed by water. We removed other electronics that still work.

The big challenge is that now we've learned the work won't be complete until Spring; with winter, it's not usually a good idea to do the entire job since it will make the house colder and increase the heating bill. The current goal is emptying the room and making space for the initial work: ripping up the soggy carpet and checking the sub-floor. Fans will also be installed, I think, to check for mold and such. We did some of the emptying ourselves, but not having a lot of room in the rest of the house (this huge house is FULL of junk, my mother is a packrat and hates parting with a piece of paper sometimes) makes things that much more difficult.

I'm going to suggest we slowly start moving whatever CAN go to the basement down there - however possible, wherever we can put it. That way we don't displace ourselves too much and - once the work is done - we can reload whatever needs to be in there back into the room, and hopefully my mother will learn the lesson for next time there's a bitter cold spell going through to be ready just in case. =)

I'm glad you didn't lose too much, but sorry you have to wait so long to complete the work. But one thing most of humans learn is how to cope. :)

I'm going to post pictures later on Facebook, but are you ready to hear the cause of the mess?

A wasp nest.

Yes, a wasp nest. They ate the pink stuff and that exposed the pipe. With the pipe open, all that was needed was freakishly cold temperatures. It got below 32ºC and froze, and nature took its course.

Not going to even try to make a puzzle out of that. If there are any volunteers, however, by all means.

That's terrible! It was mice in our attic that chewed through the wiring that caused a spark to set off the fire. Blasted rodents and insects.

My sympathies Bryan. I have been where you are and it's not much fun. Get some sleep and things should look better when you get up. Great puzzle by the way

We have water again! I'll be updating the description, but I'm a procrastinator, so I'll do that sometime next month.

Not to downplay your problems Bryan,and I do feel for you,but I'm going to tell you my story now. We went shopping the other night.It was warm for a change,and raining hard.We came home to find our bedroom ceiling coming down and water leaking from the roof. We have to sleep in the living room on the couches now,until we can get the roof fixed.:(

Oh my. I'm so sorry Aldege. I hope you can get it fixed soon.
Glad you weren't in your bedroom when it happened.

You know, things tend to happen in threes. Anyone else have a leaky anything? And sorry to hear that Aldege.

Also, just woke up after a sudden nap. In the middle of a hockey game. Now...if anything is non-Canadian, it's that. We love our hockey. But one hour of sleep in - I think - 38 finally caught up with me, especially because I was roused from sleep extremely early the prior morning (maybe three hours of sleep, likely less, plus daytime naps) before the entire busted pipes occurred. I need a good sleep this evening or I'm going to stay out of whack.

Al, there are *still* houses near me with blue tarp on their roofs, from Hurricane Gustav (2008).

Bryan, re #10 and on a sad topic, my mother was a pathological hoarder and I am sorry to tell you from experience that these are people who psychologically *cannot* learn a lesson. The urge and the behaviour are ingrained and powerful. May I respectfully suggest that you quietly "disappear" some of the junk now that you have the chance. It won't be missed, I promise.

Re #20, the comment you are probably referring to is learning a lesson - and I mean that as something she's never experienced in this sudden pipe bursting situation that, next time there's a cold snap coming, we try to get the valuable items out before something happens and another pipe goes squirt. That was not meant in a mean-spirited way.

As for the other comment that you might be referring to - that in being a packrat - I actually share that tendency, which is why I can identify it. I do sometimes throw things away, however, maybe because of my very limited space in comparison. Neither of us has it as bad as anyone on that hoarding show on TLC; we just don't like to throw things away and would rather store it to deal with it later. I won't comment further beyond that since I agree the behaviour will never change for either of us - though when I finally have a job and my own place again, I hope to go through and throw out some stuff.

If you were referring to something else, please let me know.

My favorite packrat story was about a woman who was going through her mother's things after her mother passed. Her mother was also someone reluctant to throw things away and when going through one of her mother's closets she found a box labeled "Bits of string too short to use."

That's funny, Norma.

Bryan, I myself have those same tendencies, i.e. keeping things, papers, clothing, and stuff in general to deal with later or in case it might be useful some day. I have researched the problem and have discovered that in the children of hoarders it can be a learned behaviour. I keep things I have bought or been given as gifts but have never used, papers (especially papers!), and clothing, as well as stuff I have had for years but don't use now, to deal with later or because it might be useful some unspecified day in the future. But knowing what I do about myself I am constantly watchful, and every couple of years I have a binge of getting-rid-of-most of-it. It goes against the grain and I find it painful, but I get it done. I don't want my children to have to spend the same 5 months cleaning out my house that it took me after my mother died. Sorry for assuming that pack rat means hoarder; my mind goes immediately in that direction.

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