- Joined
- Mar 10, 2008
- Messages
- 1,960
This is the story as the ravishing Mrs. Squirrel typed it up, in the event we need to get a lawyer:
------------------------------------------
My family moved into our house in mid April, 1999. The then manager of Santa Barbara Homeowners Association (SBHOA) said at the time that he didn’t know where our meter was, and said that he would come out with a metal detector and find it. In 2006 or 2007, someone did come out to locate it with a metal detector, and said that it was under some concrete on our back patio (on the east side of the house). They said they would have to take that apart to find it, according to neighborhood association rules. It never happened. My water bills from the water association have since 1999 been based on estimated water usage, based on an average of what similar sized households use.
In the summer of 2007, I noticed the spigot in my backyard was leaky. Rather than fix it, I attached a drip irrigation system to the spigot so that the leaky water was diverted throughout the yard. It leaked a little over the winter, and I observed ice around the spigot area in January. The amount of water when it melted was very small. The house seemed a little wet along the ground, but I figured it was somehow due to the leaky spigot.
Later that summer, I had hoped to plant a shade tree in that back part of the yard. I carefully dug a hole, but found that a water pipe was running through my yard, roughly parallel to the house. I dug another hole to test another spot, and the pipe was there, too. I carefully refilled those holes and abandoned my tree-planting project.
Between 6:30 and 7pm Friday night (April 18, 2008), I noticed a large puddle near the spigot in my backyard. It was large and I had not been running the water back there. The water from the leak was still being diverted through the yard, so I was confused as to why there would be such a large puddle nearby but apparently unrelated to the spigot or irrigation. I made a note of it, then went back inside the house.
11:15am or so Saturday morning, my son noticed that the floor made wet sounds when walked on in the living room near the fireplace (an area adjacent to the spigot and the puddle). I walked on the floor near the fireplace, and saw water gushing up over the moulding at the floor. I immediately turned off the house water (the only shut off I know about is in the downstairs bathroom cabinet) and called Roto Rooter.
My 16 year old son needed to shower at around 12:30pm. I told him how to turn the house’s water on and off in the downstairs bathroom. He turned it on before showering, then turned it off again afterward.
Jake from Roto Rooter arrived at about 1:30pm. I told him about the leaky spigot and puddle outside, and the waterlogged flooring. I told him that I suspected that the pipe leading to the spigot was leaking. He went outside and looked at the spigot and the puddle, then came inside and cut a hole in the drywall where the spigot pipe would be. The insulation he pulled out was dry, so he said he suspected that the leak was under the concrete. I said at that time that I was concerned about the puddle outside, and thought that maybe there could be something going on out there that could be leaking into the house. He assured me that that sort of thing doesn’t really happen, that water usually won’t pool outside then seep into the house.
He then left to make some calls to find where the leak locator was. He came back to tell me he was leaving to go pick it up. He came back later in the afternoon, with a second plumber to help (Robert). They pressurized the pipes by attaching a gas cylinder to the backyard spigot, planning to listen with a device to the floor to detect the sound of bubbles. The first time they did this, water exploded out of the tank of the downstairs toilet. They then removed the pressure, came into the house and attempted to turn off the water to the sinks and toilets. We helped to turn the water off, as there are six sinks and three toilets in the house. When I entered the master bathroom, Robert was already in there turning off the water; unfortunately, instead of turning off the water, he turned on the water that goes to the roof for the swamp cooler. This valve is clearly marked “A/C water supply.” I was unaware of his mistake until the next morning.
Once all the water was turned off, they again pressurized the pipes via the spigot, and using the leak detector, they located what they thought was the leak. I heard the sounds myself- the sound of bubbling water was distinct. Jake was wearing the headphones, pointing at the spot on the floor in front of the fireplace where he heard the sound of a leak. Robert pointed out that he could hear bubbling at the floor/ground level, through the hole that Jake had previously cut in the drywall, indicating some leak activity at the point where the floor and wall met.
They stated that they would need to cut through the concrete under our laminate flooring, which was obviously already warped from the water. They asked about how to remove the flooring (whether the pieces were interlocking). They removed a large portion of flooring, laying the pieces outside in hopes that they may be salvageable, then came back inside. Hoping to save the rest of the floor, I asked how to get rid of the water that was both over and under the plastic sheeting which is under the laminate flooring. They suggested a shop vac. They left to rent a jackhammer. While they were gone, my husband bought a shop vac which made no difference in the amount of water present.
Jake and Robert returned at 4:45pm to begin cutting into the cement floor, where they had detected the leak. Due to the very loud noises the jackhammer made, my husband and I went outside.
When we came back inside, Robert was shoveling out dirt from the hole they had made in the concrete. It was very saturated, wet, thick mud. As they were pumping and shoveling constantly, they commented that water was dripping in from on top of the concrete closest to the wall where the spigot pipe was. They also noticed that the water seemed to be pouring down into the hole they had dug, under the concrete. I again mentioned that it could be coming in from outside. They both agreed that that was not likely at all, and that there may be two leaks- one in the pipe at the bottom of the hole, and one closer to the wall, still in our house.
After continuing to shovel and pump, they determined that it would be impossible to fix the pipe that night because the water was accumulating too quickly, making it impossible to sauter or cap the pipe. I had noticed that the kitchen faucet was still running a little when I accidentally tried to use it. The plumbers surmised then that the shut off in the downstairs bathroom was not completely cutting the house water off. They asked where the meter was; I informed them that it wasn’t known for sure, but that the neighborhood association representatives had used a metal detector to determine that it was most likely under a patch of concrete on the patio. They asked if I would mind if they pulled up that concrete to find it and hopefully shut off the house water completely. I agreed. After overturning three concrete squares and finding no meter, they figured that the meter probably wasn’t there. I told them that sometimes they have to turn off water for our houses at the street somewhere. They were surprised at that.
I informed them again that our water and plumbing issues are handled through the neighborhood association, who did know how to turn off the water for the entire block, and that the city does not read our meters, so they would not know where the meters are. They called the city water utility between 6 and 6:15pm, to have them come out to find our meter and shut off the water completely. They left, with plans to return on Monday to fix what they thought was a leaky pipe at the bottom of the hole in my living room floor. They did not attempt to cover the hole, nor did they mention that it may be a good idea to cover it. They simply left the house at about 6:30pm with an approximately 2 ft by 3 ft (by about 3.5 ft deep) hole in the floor.
Jake and Robert left a pump for us to use when the water level in the hole got too high. The water in the hole was very murky and muddy.
To calm my nerves, I drank two glasses of wine over the course of the time that the plumbers were in our house that afternoon. They had arrived somewhere around 1:30pm, left several times for equipment and smoke breaks, and left for the night at about 6:30pm.
At about 9:00pm, one of the toilets needed to be flushed after having been used all day without flushing. I went downstairs to the bathroom cabinet where the house shut-off was, and when I tried to turn it on, I noticed that it was not turned off all the way. The water still coming from the kitchen faucets was due to the valve not being shut off completely. Jake and Robert had apparently failed to double check that the shut-off valve was really all the way off. After turning on the water long enough to flush the toilets, I turned the water back off completely, and no water was coming out of any faucets at all. I had stopped the flow in the house completely.
Despite this, the water in the living room hole was still filling, and was at floor level again by 9:30pm. We pumped it out into the south portion of the yard.
At this point, our family friend Paul was visiting. After I pumped the water out of the hole at 9:30, he saw the same dripping and trickling coming from the side of the hole closest to the wall where the leaky spigot and large puddle was. He went outside and saw the same large puddle. To encourage the water away from the house, he dug a small trench, and noted that it filled very quickly. Over the course of the next hour and a half, he and my 16 year old son dug a trench to divert water away from the house, although as they dug, it filled with water immediately. It started at the house (revealing my two black sewer pipes, which I had never seen before), went out about three feet away from the house, then about five or six feet west, through the yard. The area closest to the house was more of an elongated, oval pool, about 12 inches deep. The rest of the trench was narrower, perhaps 10 inches wide and nine inches deep. It filled with water remarkably quickly. Paul took the pump outside and, placing it in the deeper area closest to the house, pumped out nearly all the water (which was refilling quickly). It was then apparent that a clear stream of water appeared to be bubbling up at the house, on the outside. Paul went back inside the house, and noted that the leaking and trickling in the living room hole had stopped. As the trenches outside refilled with water, the leaking resumed in the house. At this point, it seemed that the clear water was leaking outside the house, and finding its way into the house through the wall (we did find one area inside the house where the water was flowing from the wall to the hole in the living room). The only way we were able to stop the indoor hole from filling with water was to continue pumping water out of the trenches outside.
We pumped the water out at 1:00am, first outside, then inside the house. Paul left at that point. I went to sleep at 1:30am, then woke at 4:00am to check the water levels inside and outside. Both areas were full again, so I pumped both out, noting again that the indoor leak stopped completely when the water outside was pumped out into the yard. At about 4:30am I turned on the house water again to flush the toilets, and as it seemed that the leak was outside the house instead of inside the house, I kept the water on to do laundry and wash the dishes. As I used water in the house, I repeatedly checked the living room hole and noted that it was not filling any quicker than it had done when the water was off. I left the water on for about two hours, and it made no difference in the rate the water was filling the hole. I left the water on and returned to bed at 6:30am and woke for the day at 8am.
I immediately checked the indoor hole, and pumped the water out. It seemed to have filled only halfway- at about the same rate as it had all night, further confirming that the source of the water was separate from what could be controlled from within the house. I pumped the water out of the backyard trenches again. I did some more laundry and took a shower. I went outside to the front of the house at one point, and noted that water was gushing out of the pipes that drain water from the roof. I realized then that Robert from Roto Rooter had turned on the A/C water control in my bathroom the day before, and as I had turned on the house’s water at 4:30am, it had pooled on my roof for about 5 hours. I went upstairs and turned off the A/C water supply. I then called the Santa Barbara Homeowners Association office and left a message about our water emergency, and at 10:00am the people from Service master (water damage restoration) arrived to look at the water damage.
As the source of the leak had not been fixed or even convincingly determined, they were unable to begin drying the house out. Rather, I told them everything that had happened so far, and they agreed that it did sound like the leak was outside the house, not inside. They took pictures of the damage so far, and noted that the walls were wet and water was seeping in all along the moulding of the wall which was adjacent to where the spigot and trenches were. The older gentleman of the pair commented that he had only seen something like this once before, in 1986, when water outside the house pooled and seeped into the house. He advised me that this was a serious emergency and had to be fixed immediately; it couldn’t wait for Monday morning. He said I was likely sustaining damage to the support structures of my house. They instructed me to call them the next day, after the leak was fixed, to begin drying the walls and insulation and determine exactly how extensive the floor damage was.
Knowing that my neighbor Janet Harada had been a previous president of the neighborhood association, my husband and I walked next door to ask her advice. Now that we knew the leak couldn’t be in our house, and that the water was coming up at a very high rate, we needed to know who to contact about shutting the water off to our block, and how to get a plumber out to fix the real problem immediately. And, as we were beginning to think that the water was coming from a main pipe belonging to the neighborhood association (the one that runs roughly parallel to my house), I wanted to be sure that we would be able to bill SBHOA for the repair. Janet took me to Cheryl’s house, and we explained what was going on. She came to look at the damage and water inside and outside the house, then called more SBHOA board members to come look at what was going on. They agreed that this was an emergency, that the water could be coming from the water pipe that runs parallel to my house, and that the water on my block had to be shut off immediately so we could pinpoint where the water was coming from. Three board members had to agree that this is something SBHOA would pay for. They agreed that the leak was outside, most likely originating from the main pipe that runs through the yard. They agreed that nobody knew where the meter was (everyone already knew this, as my meter has been flagged as “inaccessible” on my SBHOA account for 9 years).
It must be noted that the board members were exceptionally helpful. Kitty dug trenches and poured out buckets of water. Her husband manned the pump in the backyard trenches, and no more water leaked into our living room hole. Janet and Dan Harada (I don’t believe they’re involved in the SBHOA board anymore) provided a hose and installed it on the pump so that the water could go all the way out of my yard and empty into the gutter. The Haradas offered their house to my family, and my son showered there and my younger children watched TV most of the afternoon in their house. Cheryl and I agreed to call Sunshine Plumbing, a company familiar with the neighborhood, and Cheryl herself called Major Plumbing. There were no responses to our calls. Cheryl called the city and asked them to come turn off the water to my block. In the meantime, I turned my house water back off.
Richard Lucero of Major Plumbing lives in the Santa Barbara community, and he was flagged down as he was trying to leave the neighborhood with his family. They explained to him what was going on, and he agreed to turn off the water for our block, find the leak, and fix it.
Within 30 minutes to an hour, he found the leak. It was the joint at which SBHOA’s PVC water pipe attached to my house’s copper pipe. This was about three feet underground, and between one and two feet away from the house (exactly where the large puddle had been). It was just beyond the two black sewer pipes. Richard Lucero noted that the copper portion was intact, and the white plastic parts of the connection were broken. He then decided to find the water meter, left briefly to retrieve his metal detector then came back and instantly found the meter. It was about another two feet from the leak, and two inches underground. He opened it, shut off the water to my house, then returned to the shut off at the street to restore my neighbors’ water. He then fixed the leak by replacing the joint altogether. I have the broken pieces of white pipe and connections. He turned the water back on at the meter, and there was no leak. At this moment, the plan is for him to return to my house tomorrow (Monday, April 21) to put some dry fill dirt in the hole over and under the replaced joint. My husband and I will shovel the displaced dirt and mud back into the hole after Mr. Lucero has determined that it is appropriate and safe to do so.
With the outside leak fixed, it’s crucial to note that the leak “located” by Roto Rooter did not exist. The sounds they heard which they thought indicated a leak were in fact the sound of air and water being pushed through the spigot and back towards the meter, bubbling out through the faulty and leaking joint. Now that the leak outside the house has been stopped, there is no longer any water accumulating in the living room hole. The spigot has been used repeatedly since the fix, as has nearly every major water-using appliance in the house. My husband and I both showered after the leak outside was fixed. No water accumulated in the living room hole. There is clearly no leak inside the house, and the living room hole itself was unnecessary.
The troublesome thing about the actual placement of the leak is that it was between the water meter and my house. According to SBHOA rules, this leak is my financial responsibility because it is on my side of the meter. However, also according to SBHOA rules, the meters are the responsibility of SBHOA. Because they had never found and unearthed my meter for the 9 years I have lived here, and because having monthly meter readings could have alerted me to unaccounted-for surges in my house’s water usage, SBHOA should be held financially responsible for the cost of the plumbing repair, as well as the cost of the damage to both the inside and outside of my house, including the cost of replacing my heavily damaged flooring.
Further, Roto Rooter committed several errors (such as pressurizing the water pipes without turning off the water to the toilets which caused a new flood when the downstairs toilet erupted, turning on the A/C water supply despite it being clearly marked as such, failing to ascertain that the house water was shut-off before deciding that the shut-off was faulty, and leaving a very large water-filled hole uncovered in a house with four children in it). The biggest error was incorrectly diagnosing the placement of the leak, without seriously considering any other possibilities before taking the drastic step of jackhammering a very large hole in my living room floor. They never explored the possibility that the large puddle in my backyard may be important. In fact, when I suggested (at least twice) that the water could be coming in from outside, they insisted it was not worth investigating and didn’t check. If it weren’t for my friend Paul trying to divert water from my house and noticing how quickly the water was filling the trenches, my house would have sustained another day and a half of damage while we waited for Monday and for the Roto Rooter plumbers to return. I deeply appreciate the fact that they left their pump with us, and both Jake and Robert seem to be very friendly and honest. But their overall work done in my house was, at best, a comedy of errors, and at worst, a case of serious negligence or even incompetence (I hate to say this about two guys who were so friendly to me. Personally, they were great; professionally, there were problems). While I am willing to be financially responsible for some of the time they spent at my house, I will not pay fully for their time and efforts here. I suspect that Roto Rooter carries insurance to cover situations like this. Further, I still have a very large (now covered) hole in my living room floor.
------------------------------------------
My family moved into our house in mid April, 1999. The then manager of Santa Barbara Homeowners Association (SBHOA) said at the time that he didn’t know where our meter was, and said that he would come out with a metal detector and find it. In 2006 or 2007, someone did come out to locate it with a metal detector, and said that it was under some concrete on our back patio (on the east side of the house). They said they would have to take that apart to find it, according to neighborhood association rules. It never happened. My water bills from the water association have since 1999 been based on estimated water usage, based on an average of what similar sized households use.
In the summer of 2007, I noticed the spigot in my backyard was leaky. Rather than fix it, I attached a drip irrigation system to the spigot so that the leaky water was diverted throughout the yard. It leaked a little over the winter, and I observed ice around the spigot area in January. The amount of water when it melted was very small. The house seemed a little wet along the ground, but I figured it was somehow due to the leaky spigot.
Later that summer, I had hoped to plant a shade tree in that back part of the yard. I carefully dug a hole, but found that a water pipe was running through my yard, roughly parallel to the house. I dug another hole to test another spot, and the pipe was there, too. I carefully refilled those holes and abandoned my tree-planting project.
Between 6:30 and 7pm Friday night (April 18, 2008), I noticed a large puddle near the spigot in my backyard. It was large and I had not been running the water back there. The water from the leak was still being diverted through the yard, so I was confused as to why there would be such a large puddle nearby but apparently unrelated to the spigot or irrigation. I made a note of it, then went back inside the house.
11:15am or so Saturday morning, my son noticed that the floor made wet sounds when walked on in the living room near the fireplace (an area adjacent to the spigot and the puddle). I walked on the floor near the fireplace, and saw water gushing up over the moulding at the floor. I immediately turned off the house water (the only shut off I know about is in the downstairs bathroom cabinet) and called Roto Rooter.
My 16 year old son needed to shower at around 12:30pm. I told him how to turn the house’s water on and off in the downstairs bathroom. He turned it on before showering, then turned it off again afterward.
Jake from Roto Rooter arrived at about 1:30pm. I told him about the leaky spigot and puddle outside, and the waterlogged flooring. I told him that I suspected that the pipe leading to the spigot was leaking. He went outside and looked at the spigot and the puddle, then came inside and cut a hole in the drywall where the spigot pipe would be. The insulation he pulled out was dry, so he said he suspected that the leak was under the concrete. I said at that time that I was concerned about the puddle outside, and thought that maybe there could be something going on out there that could be leaking into the house. He assured me that that sort of thing doesn’t really happen, that water usually won’t pool outside then seep into the house.
He then left to make some calls to find where the leak locator was. He came back to tell me he was leaving to go pick it up. He came back later in the afternoon, with a second plumber to help (Robert). They pressurized the pipes by attaching a gas cylinder to the backyard spigot, planning to listen with a device to the floor to detect the sound of bubbles. The first time they did this, water exploded out of the tank of the downstairs toilet. They then removed the pressure, came into the house and attempted to turn off the water to the sinks and toilets. We helped to turn the water off, as there are six sinks and three toilets in the house. When I entered the master bathroom, Robert was already in there turning off the water; unfortunately, instead of turning off the water, he turned on the water that goes to the roof for the swamp cooler. This valve is clearly marked “A/C water supply.” I was unaware of his mistake until the next morning.
Once all the water was turned off, they again pressurized the pipes via the spigot, and using the leak detector, they located what they thought was the leak. I heard the sounds myself- the sound of bubbling water was distinct. Jake was wearing the headphones, pointing at the spot on the floor in front of the fireplace where he heard the sound of a leak. Robert pointed out that he could hear bubbling at the floor/ground level, through the hole that Jake had previously cut in the drywall, indicating some leak activity at the point where the floor and wall met.
They stated that they would need to cut through the concrete under our laminate flooring, which was obviously already warped from the water. They asked about how to remove the flooring (whether the pieces were interlocking). They removed a large portion of flooring, laying the pieces outside in hopes that they may be salvageable, then came back inside. Hoping to save the rest of the floor, I asked how to get rid of the water that was both over and under the plastic sheeting which is under the laminate flooring. They suggested a shop vac. They left to rent a jackhammer. While they were gone, my husband bought a shop vac which made no difference in the amount of water present.
Jake and Robert returned at 4:45pm to begin cutting into the cement floor, where they had detected the leak. Due to the very loud noises the jackhammer made, my husband and I went outside.
When we came back inside, Robert was shoveling out dirt from the hole they had made in the concrete. It was very saturated, wet, thick mud. As they were pumping and shoveling constantly, they commented that water was dripping in from on top of the concrete closest to the wall where the spigot pipe was. They also noticed that the water seemed to be pouring down into the hole they had dug, under the concrete. I again mentioned that it could be coming in from outside. They both agreed that that was not likely at all, and that there may be two leaks- one in the pipe at the bottom of the hole, and one closer to the wall, still in our house.
After continuing to shovel and pump, they determined that it would be impossible to fix the pipe that night because the water was accumulating too quickly, making it impossible to sauter or cap the pipe. I had noticed that the kitchen faucet was still running a little when I accidentally tried to use it. The plumbers surmised then that the shut off in the downstairs bathroom was not completely cutting the house water off. They asked where the meter was; I informed them that it wasn’t known for sure, but that the neighborhood association representatives had used a metal detector to determine that it was most likely under a patch of concrete on the patio. They asked if I would mind if they pulled up that concrete to find it and hopefully shut off the house water completely. I agreed. After overturning three concrete squares and finding no meter, they figured that the meter probably wasn’t there. I told them that sometimes they have to turn off water for our houses at the street somewhere. They were surprised at that.
I informed them again that our water and plumbing issues are handled through the neighborhood association, who did know how to turn off the water for the entire block, and that the city does not read our meters, so they would not know where the meters are. They called the city water utility between 6 and 6:15pm, to have them come out to find our meter and shut off the water completely. They left, with plans to return on Monday to fix what they thought was a leaky pipe at the bottom of the hole in my living room floor. They did not attempt to cover the hole, nor did they mention that it may be a good idea to cover it. They simply left the house at about 6:30pm with an approximately 2 ft by 3 ft (by about 3.5 ft deep) hole in the floor.
Jake and Robert left a pump for us to use when the water level in the hole got too high. The water in the hole was very murky and muddy.
To calm my nerves, I drank two glasses of wine over the course of the time that the plumbers were in our house that afternoon. They had arrived somewhere around 1:30pm, left several times for equipment and smoke breaks, and left for the night at about 6:30pm.
At about 9:00pm, one of the toilets needed to be flushed after having been used all day without flushing. I went downstairs to the bathroom cabinet where the house shut-off was, and when I tried to turn it on, I noticed that it was not turned off all the way. The water still coming from the kitchen faucets was due to the valve not being shut off completely. Jake and Robert had apparently failed to double check that the shut-off valve was really all the way off. After turning on the water long enough to flush the toilets, I turned the water back off completely, and no water was coming out of any faucets at all. I had stopped the flow in the house completely.
Despite this, the water in the living room hole was still filling, and was at floor level again by 9:30pm. We pumped it out into the south portion of the yard.
At this point, our family friend Paul was visiting. After I pumped the water out of the hole at 9:30, he saw the same dripping and trickling coming from the side of the hole closest to the wall where the leaky spigot and large puddle was. He went outside and saw the same large puddle. To encourage the water away from the house, he dug a small trench, and noted that it filled very quickly. Over the course of the next hour and a half, he and my 16 year old son dug a trench to divert water away from the house, although as they dug, it filled with water immediately. It started at the house (revealing my two black sewer pipes, which I had never seen before), went out about three feet away from the house, then about five or six feet west, through the yard. The area closest to the house was more of an elongated, oval pool, about 12 inches deep. The rest of the trench was narrower, perhaps 10 inches wide and nine inches deep. It filled with water remarkably quickly. Paul took the pump outside and, placing it in the deeper area closest to the house, pumped out nearly all the water (which was refilling quickly). It was then apparent that a clear stream of water appeared to be bubbling up at the house, on the outside. Paul went back inside the house, and noted that the leaking and trickling in the living room hole had stopped. As the trenches outside refilled with water, the leaking resumed in the house. At this point, it seemed that the clear water was leaking outside the house, and finding its way into the house through the wall (we did find one area inside the house where the water was flowing from the wall to the hole in the living room). The only way we were able to stop the indoor hole from filling with water was to continue pumping water out of the trenches outside.
We pumped the water out at 1:00am, first outside, then inside the house. Paul left at that point. I went to sleep at 1:30am, then woke at 4:00am to check the water levels inside and outside. Both areas were full again, so I pumped both out, noting again that the indoor leak stopped completely when the water outside was pumped out into the yard. At about 4:30am I turned on the house water again to flush the toilets, and as it seemed that the leak was outside the house instead of inside the house, I kept the water on to do laundry and wash the dishes. As I used water in the house, I repeatedly checked the living room hole and noted that it was not filling any quicker than it had done when the water was off. I left the water on for about two hours, and it made no difference in the rate the water was filling the hole. I left the water on and returned to bed at 6:30am and woke for the day at 8am.
I immediately checked the indoor hole, and pumped the water out. It seemed to have filled only halfway- at about the same rate as it had all night, further confirming that the source of the water was separate from what could be controlled from within the house. I pumped the water out of the backyard trenches again. I did some more laundry and took a shower. I went outside to the front of the house at one point, and noted that water was gushing out of the pipes that drain water from the roof. I realized then that Robert from Roto Rooter had turned on the A/C water control in my bathroom the day before, and as I had turned on the house’s water at 4:30am, it had pooled on my roof for about 5 hours. I went upstairs and turned off the A/C water supply. I then called the Santa Barbara Homeowners Association office and left a message about our water emergency, and at 10:00am the people from Service master (water damage restoration) arrived to look at the water damage.
As the source of the leak had not been fixed or even convincingly determined, they were unable to begin drying the house out. Rather, I told them everything that had happened so far, and they agreed that it did sound like the leak was outside the house, not inside. They took pictures of the damage so far, and noted that the walls were wet and water was seeping in all along the moulding of the wall which was adjacent to where the spigot and trenches were. The older gentleman of the pair commented that he had only seen something like this once before, in 1986, when water outside the house pooled and seeped into the house. He advised me that this was a serious emergency and had to be fixed immediately; it couldn’t wait for Monday morning. He said I was likely sustaining damage to the support structures of my house. They instructed me to call them the next day, after the leak was fixed, to begin drying the walls and insulation and determine exactly how extensive the floor damage was.
Knowing that my neighbor Janet Harada had been a previous president of the neighborhood association, my husband and I walked next door to ask her advice. Now that we knew the leak couldn’t be in our house, and that the water was coming up at a very high rate, we needed to know who to contact about shutting the water off to our block, and how to get a plumber out to fix the real problem immediately. And, as we were beginning to think that the water was coming from a main pipe belonging to the neighborhood association (the one that runs roughly parallel to my house), I wanted to be sure that we would be able to bill SBHOA for the repair. Janet took me to Cheryl’s house, and we explained what was going on. She came to look at the damage and water inside and outside the house, then called more SBHOA board members to come look at what was going on. They agreed that this was an emergency, that the water could be coming from the water pipe that runs parallel to my house, and that the water on my block had to be shut off immediately so we could pinpoint where the water was coming from. Three board members had to agree that this is something SBHOA would pay for. They agreed that the leak was outside, most likely originating from the main pipe that runs through the yard. They agreed that nobody knew where the meter was (everyone already knew this, as my meter has been flagged as “inaccessible” on my SBHOA account for 9 years).
It must be noted that the board members were exceptionally helpful. Kitty dug trenches and poured out buckets of water. Her husband manned the pump in the backyard trenches, and no more water leaked into our living room hole. Janet and Dan Harada (I don’t believe they’re involved in the SBHOA board anymore) provided a hose and installed it on the pump so that the water could go all the way out of my yard and empty into the gutter. The Haradas offered their house to my family, and my son showered there and my younger children watched TV most of the afternoon in their house. Cheryl and I agreed to call Sunshine Plumbing, a company familiar with the neighborhood, and Cheryl herself called Major Plumbing. There were no responses to our calls. Cheryl called the city and asked them to come turn off the water to my block. In the meantime, I turned my house water back off.
Richard Lucero of Major Plumbing lives in the Santa Barbara community, and he was flagged down as he was trying to leave the neighborhood with his family. They explained to him what was going on, and he agreed to turn off the water for our block, find the leak, and fix it.
Within 30 minutes to an hour, he found the leak. It was the joint at which SBHOA’s PVC water pipe attached to my house’s copper pipe. This was about three feet underground, and between one and two feet away from the house (exactly where the large puddle had been). It was just beyond the two black sewer pipes. Richard Lucero noted that the copper portion was intact, and the white plastic parts of the connection were broken. He then decided to find the water meter, left briefly to retrieve his metal detector then came back and instantly found the meter. It was about another two feet from the leak, and two inches underground. He opened it, shut off the water to my house, then returned to the shut off at the street to restore my neighbors’ water. He then fixed the leak by replacing the joint altogether. I have the broken pieces of white pipe and connections. He turned the water back on at the meter, and there was no leak. At this moment, the plan is for him to return to my house tomorrow (Monday, April 21) to put some dry fill dirt in the hole over and under the replaced joint. My husband and I will shovel the displaced dirt and mud back into the hole after Mr. Lucero has determined that it is appropriate and safe to do so.
With the outside leak fixed, it’s crucial to note that the leak “located” by Roto Rooter did not exist. The sounds they heard which they thought indicated a leak were in fact the sound of air and water being pushed through the spigot and back towards the meter, bubbling out through the faulty and leaking joint. Now that the leak outside the house has been stopped, there is no longer any water accumulating in the living room hole. The spigot has been used repeatedly since the fix, as has nearly every major water-using appliance in the house. My husband and I both showered after the leak outside was fixed. No water accumulated in the living room hole. There is clearly no leak inside the house, and the living room hole itself was unnecessary.
The troublesome thing about the actual placement of the leak is that it was between the water meter and my house. According to SBHOA rules, this leak is my financial responsibility because it is on my side of the meter. However, also according to SBHOA rules, the meters are the responsibility of SBHOA. Because they had never found and unearthed my meter for the 9 years I have lived here, and because having monthly meter readings could have alerted me to unaccounted-for surges in my house’s water usage, SBHOA should be held financially responsible for the cost of the plumbing repair, as well as the cost of the damage to both the inside and outside of my house, including the cost of replacing my heavily damaged flooring.
Further, Roto Rooter committed several errors (such as pressurizing the water pipes without turning off the water to the toilets which caused a new flood when the downstairs toilet erupted, turning on the A/C water supply despite it being clearly marked as such, failing to ascertain that the house water was shut-off before deciding that the shut-off was faulty, and leaving a very large water-filled hole uncovered in a house with four children in it). The biggest error was incorrectly diagnosing the placement of the leak, without seriously considering any other possibilities before taking the drastic step of jackhammering a very large hole in my living room floor. They never explored the possibility that the large puddle in my backyard may be important. In fact, when I suggested (at least twice) that the water could be coming in from outside, they insisted it was not worth investigating and didn’t check. If it weren’t for my friend Paul trying to divert water from my house and noticing how quickly the water was filling the trenches, my house would have sustained another day and a half of damage while we waited for Monday and for the Roto Rooter plumbers to return. I deeply appreciate the fact that they left their pump with us, and both Jake and Robert seem to be very friendly and honest. But their overall work done in my house was, at best, a comedy of errors, and at worst, a case of serious negligence or even incompetence (I hate to say this about two guys who were so friendly to me. Personally, they were great; professionally, there were problems). While I am willing to be financially responsible for some of the time they spent at my house, I will not pay fully for their time and efforts here. I suspect that Roto Rooter carries insurance to cover situations like this. Further, I still have a very large (now covered) hole in my living room floor.
