Hi, friends! Just a quick update on what’s been going on the last couple of days. Saturday night around midnihgt, our hot water heater (which was less than two years old) failed and spent the next six hours filling our house with water. When I woke up early Sunday morning to go to the bathroom I discovered the carpet was wet. I was going to investivate the source of the water after using the bathroom, but when the toilet didn’t refill itself with water I knew the problem was going to be serious.

Stepping out of our bedroom, I discovered about an inch of twater standing in the hallway. After getting the water main turned off, we began sweeping the halls and using a wet-van to get the water out of the carpet. The carpet in our bedroom, closet, and my home office was all soaked. On top of that we had standing water in the hallway, both hall closets, two bathrooms, the laundry room, the kitchen, and the dining room — roughly half our house.

After trying to clean up the mess for a couple of hours we realized we were in over our heads. Suan called our insurance company who told us who to call and in what order. The first call was to Serve Pro, who arrived and quickly began damage control. They pulled up the carpet in our bedroom and closet and cut out some of the carpet in my office. They then placed about 24 “tornado fans” around the house and several dehumidifiers about the size of our combination waster/dryer to pull the water out of the walls, insulation, and anywhere else it might be standing. They also pulled all our baseboards off the walls. The baseboards were made of MDF and were already beginning to swell and crack.

Sunday evening, Susan got a hotel room and I stayed behind to empty all the shelves in my home office and move the shelves out (which were standing on wet carpet). I worked until midnight on Sunday and woke up around 5AM to finish that job. All I can say is that when your house is hot and loud, it sure is convenient to have a camper van in your driveway!

On Monday, Serve Pro came out and added more fans and bigger dehumidifiers after discovering water standing underneath our kitchen cabinets and island. The kickplates were removed from the cabinets in an attempt to get the water out and hopefully save the kitchen.

Along with Serve Pro who came on Tuesday (they come every day) to check humidity levels and how things are progressing) the restoration people showed up to start taking measurements. They’ll be repainting drywall, replacing baseboards, and doing other repairs as they’re discovered.

The current schedule as far as I know it is that the fans and dehumidifiers will be in the house for 3-5 days. The three day estimate was made before the water in the kitchen was discoverd and today they’re building a “heat tent” in the kitchen so now we’re guessing it’ll be closer to the 4-5 day estimate. After that the construction people will come in and the timeframe on that will depend on the state of the kitchen, I’m guessing. The carpet people will come after that. I don’t know how long all of this will take but our insurance agent called the hotel we’re staying at and extended our stay for 30 days. We can come and go to and from the house as we want, but I put a thermometer in my room yesterday and it was 103F in my computer room. I’m typing this message from my van, using it as a makeshift office in the driveway.

For the next week or so, I won’t be podcasting or making any Big Rob’s Van videos or doing much of anything else. Fingers crossed, the fans and dehumidifiers will be removed on Friday which will give me access to my home office (carpet be damned). That’ll at least be a slight return to normalcy. The far end of the house, where Susan’s home office along with the kids’ old bathrooms and bedrooms were not affected, although the A/C is turned off to the house right now so even though they’re dry, they’re hot and dry. We got the hot water heater repaired and the water is back on so toilets flush and we have access to water.

The good news is, none of our “stuff” got ruined. The water ruined baseboards, sheetrock, carpet, and our bedroom furniture. All of my computers, toys, and everything else is fine. The only real pain is that all the laundry we had on the floor got wet and needs to be rewashed.

As disappointing and frustrating as the furlough has been, the timing of all of this kind of worked out. If it weren’t for the furlough I would be burning vacation time right now dealing with all of this. Suan is doing all the adulting and I am doing what I can. We’ll be moving more things around closer to carpet time, but for now it’s a lot of waiting and sweating.