Calling All Real Men-Homeowner Disaster

We had a bit of a home disaster yesterday, born out of our own neglect, mind you, and yet another adventure in home ownership. One of our water pipes burst and flooded the mud room, and being a real man in training and all, I had to move quickly to stem the tide of disaster, bearing in mind that this was all new to me.

We have baseboard heating in our house, but we never use it because we heat with wood. The problem is, the mud room is almost a separate room, adjacent to the house. We keep it isolated because it get really cold and thus cools the house. Of course, with the freezing temps we got the past couple of days, the pipes froze, and as the weather warmed up, it caused the pipes to crack.

Luckily I had gone in there just as they opened up and discovered the leak. The floor was covered with water, and it could have been a lot worse if more time had passed. As I stepped into the pool of water that was once the mudroom floor, I did what came naturally to me - I panicked and called for help. Ruth came rushing over and tried to stem the tide, but the pipe wasn't exposed and water kept flowing out.

I ran down to the basement and shut off the water main, temporarily solving the problem, then we thought about the problem while we sopped up the mess. It dawned on me that we never use our baseboard heating. In fact, I didn't even realize that it was connected to our water supply, for some reason I thought it was an isolated system. Either way, we needed water, but didn't need the heating system, so I had this brilliant notion that we could simply shut off the heating without losing our water, since I figured that each "zone" could be independently monitored.

Feeling empowered, I sprung into action and did what I always do. I called one of my real-man mentors, Kurt Boland of Boland Custom Home Improvement. Sorry, just had to give him a plug. Like Paul, he's a good friend and very capable and knowledgeable. Of course, it being Sunday, he was busy with family stuff, but was kind enough to take my call and answer my question. Just for the record, he was at hockey practice with his kids.

He said our idea would work, and that later that day while he was plowing our driveway he would have a look.

Now I don't know about you, but if you've ever looked at your plumbing system in the basement, it's a complete mess. I don't know how to make sense of it all, so I painstakingly traced the pipes from the vicinity of the mud room and found where they connect to the boiler, then took a leap of faith and shut off the valve.

Holding my breath, I turned the house water back on, and voila! All was well, for now. Kurt stopped by later to drop off Clara, his daughter who also is best friends with Audrey. He said it would be fine, and talked real-man talk (i.e., contracting) about possibly just isolating that room by cutting it out of the heating loop, but that's for another time.

We were just glad to avert a complete disaster, and we did it ourselves. How's that for being a real man?

My name is Fred Lee, and until the next time, thanks for reading.