I got a call around 1:30 yesterday afternoon from the housing manager telling me that a pipe froze and burst in our unit or our neighbor's unit and there was water in our house. We were 4 hours away from home at that point. Remember we drove 16 hours in 48 hours this weekend.
We got home around 5:30 to soaking wet carpet and a giant hole in our laundry room ceiling - it was definitely our unit with the broken pipe. There was no note and no one around to tell us what was going on. Someone had supposedly cleaned the carpets, but they were still extremely squishy. Our belongings were all over the place. They still are all over the place. It was freezing in the house despite the heat being on. The gaping hole in the laundry room was letting cold air into the rest of the house like crazy.
We tried to prevent any further damage to our wood furniture, but all the living room furniture has water damage. Every single piece with damage is less than a year old. Rugs are hung over our fence. I have no idea if they've dried out any today or not.
I called our neighborhood office this morning at 8:15 to demand someone come out and suck more water out of our carpets. They showed up by 10:30 and sucked another 20 or so gallons of water out of the carpet.
To top it all off, I haven't been feeling very well. I think the long and exhaustive weekend hasn't agreed with me. I was down for the count this afternoon with a headache and fatigue. I think about everything that needs to be done downstairs and I shudder. Somehow I need to make us something for dinner in the super cluttered kitchen. There also is no word on when the big hole will be fixed.
We have the better part of the next year to live here and I am afraid I will constantly be watching for mold. We live in an extremely moist state where mold is a problem under normal circumstances. I can't imagine how we could avoid having mold after this catastrophe. I almost want to demand a new unit somewhere.
We also have to figure out the process of claiming our damages items on our renter's insurance. I'm really hoping it's not a big hassle.
So, to say the last 3 days have been stressful would be an understatement. My house is a big mess, we can't really function downstairs yet (until the carpets are dryer), I feel like crap and I have to start back to work tomorrow. I could surely use a recovery week.
To end, I'll leave you with a few pictures of the visible damage. (Water damage is extremely hard to photograph, I found.)
^^Our washer/dryer are under those boxes.
^^The thin copper pipe below those wires is the one that was replaced. Water was apparently "gushing" out of that pipe into our laundry room.
^^Damage to the paint along the back wall beside our dryer.
1 comment:
That's awful! I hope getting everything back into order goes as smoothly as possible and that you feel better soon!
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