Tag Archives: rental

On Thursday night last week, I was getting into bed when I heard the strangest sound coming from my bathroom. It almost sounded like someone turned my bathtub on, but I knew that unless someone broke into my bathroom to do that, it wasn’t that. I was a bit tired so it took me a moment to get out of bed to investigate the noise, but as soon as I got into the bathroom, I’m glad I didn’t take longer.

The hose that connects the water from the valve in the wall to my sink had disconnected and water was spraying everywhere! There was already a layer of water on the floor and it was spilling into my bedroom.

After a second of freaking out, I knew that I needed to stop the water. My dad had showed me in the past how to shut off the water from both inside and outside my house. So I located the shut off valve in the wall and reached in to turn it off.

Then, I realized that the hose that disconnected was the hot water hose. And I keep my water heater really hot, so the water coming out was really hot as well. I knew I had to turn it off no matter what, so I reached in, ignored the pain from the hot water, and got the flooding to stop.

I then took a moment to evaluate the situation. I could see exactly which hose broke, but I knew that I didn’t want to fix this myself in case there was a bigger problem than that.

I got all the water cleaned up from the bathroom and bedroom floor and sent an emergency email to my landlord about this. Then I called my mom to ask about the pain I was feeling on my arm, shoulder, and back. All my skin was bright red and shiny, but my mom said that I should be fine (this issue was what made my workout on Friday tough).

The next morning, the handyman got to my house. He saw the problem and said that it would be a simple fix. About 15 minutes later, he put a new hose in and it was working great. Then he tested the cold water and the valve broke out of the wall and caused another flood.

And this time, since the valve was no longer in the wall, he had to run outside my house to turn off the water to my entire house from the outside. This also meant that the flooding was worse than what it was the night before.

Again, I cleaned up the flooding and worked on drying things that got wet (towels, rugs, and my shower curtain). But fortunately the handyman helped me because he said that this was his fault.

After about another hour, everything was fixed and better than ever.

So, what did I learn from having 2 floods within 11 hours? I’m sure happy that my dad taught me some very basic plumbing information so I could shut off the water. The handyman said that he’s been to places where the tenant didn’t know how to do that so the flooding was going until he got there and it usually got pretty bad. I’m also grateful that this happened when I was home. I couldn’t imagine how horrible it would have been if this happened when I was gone for several hours. It also made me happy that I rent and none of the repairs were at my cost. But I would eventually like to own a house or condo and I really should learn how to do some more things so that I could fix things like this on my own.

And I guess my floors are probably the cleanest they’ve been in a while since they got washed and deep cleaned twice in two days.

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Unexpected Problems (or This Is Why I’m Glad I Rent) Another Leak In My House (or Testing My Patience) Training Day At A New Possible Job (or Next Time, I’ll Give Myself 3 Hours To Get There) Having Water At A Wine Bar (or Getting A Temporary Job) LA Is Shut Down Again (or Somehow This Makes Me Feel Better) Another Test Of Being Grateful (or Again I’m Glad I Rent)

I thought my test of my patience and being grateful for the week was my car breaking down. I was wrong.

On Monday, I picked up my car in the morning and headed home to get some errands done and then rest before having to work my graveyard shift. Around lunchtime, I noticed that someone from the Gas Company was looking around all of the houses.

The recently had shut off my gas for a minor leak but I was able to have it reconnected the same day. So I wondered what the problem could be this time. So I headed outside to talk to the gas guy.

He let me know that one of the houses had a gas leak outside and he didn’t know which one it was. He was thinking it was either my house or the house across the driveway from me, but he wasn’t too sure.

My landlord happened to show up just then to drop off our rent bills. So he talked to the gas guy and called the plumbers right away. He figured that someone would have to have their gas shut off and the sooner the plumbers were there the faster the problem could be fixed.

After about 90 minutes of the gas guy doing his investigation, they discovered that it was a leak in my house again. I didn’t know this at the time, but when the gas company changed my meter to a new one, they broke the pipe where all the work was done last time. So everything that was fixed last time needed to be redone.

At the time, all I knew was my gas was shut off and it might not be able to be back on for the week. The plumbers thought it would take a few days to do the work, at least.

The one positive that happened right away was that the plumber was able to set up a temporary gas line to my house so I would at least have hot water for my shower after my Monday workout. But that temporary line could only be used for that day since after that they needed to do the work on the real line.

So Monday ended up being ok, and Tuesday the work continued. I still had 1 tank of hot water, so my shower wasn’t too freezing that day. But as the plumbers worked, they realized that the problem was way worse than they ever expected it to be.

They had to replace all the pipes from the street into my house. I’m writing this on Wednesday before heading off to my graveyard shift, and the work was done before I left for my workout. But my gas isn’t back on yet.

I called them around 2pm to get the gas reconnected. They said I needed to stay home until 10pm that evening. I knew that wasn’t possible since I had my workout to go to plus my graveyard shift to work. But I set up a reconnect appointment in the hopes that either they would show up before my workout or between my workout and going to work.

Of course, they showed up about 5 minutes before I got home. I called them immediately to get a new appointment set up, but there’s still a chance that they won’t show up until after I go to work, but hopefully they will be here soon.

If not, the gas will get reconnected at some point today.

I managed to save a little hot water in my hot water heater from when they shut things off, so my shower after my workout on Wednesday wasn’t too icy. But when I was at the end of my shower, my hot water was gone. So until it’s reconnected, there is no hot water left unless I boil it.

I’m now just hoping that 2 gas leaks this year will be the end of it. I really hope that the Gas Company doesn’t find another random problem.

But again, this was a test of my ability to stay grateful. And I was grateful for the plumbers getting to my house so quickly, for them working so hard (and long hours), and again I’m grateful that I don’t have to pay for any of these repairs.

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Unexpected Problems (or This Is Why I’m Glad I Rent) Another Leak In My House (or Testing My Patience) 2 Floods in 11 Hours (or I’m Glad I Knew Where The Water Shut-Off Was) Another Cut On “2 Broke Girls” (or I’m Glad I Went To The Taping) Having Water At A Wine Bar (or Getting A Temporary Job) Pushing A Bit Too Much (or Glad I Took The Weekend Off)