Don't let this happen to you.

[Earfull]

As a public service announcement, listen up.

I have recently spent 2 years busting my butt completely gutting & renovating our home and was 95% finished. My last project was to create a new, dedicated HT room downstairs. It was a completely unfinished room, so this involved everything from new walls, drywall, insulation, wiring, conduit, lighting, crown & baseboards, primer/paint etc. I was just getting ready to have the carpet installed.
On June 9th, I was out for several hours and returned home to find the house half destroyed by water from a plumbing failure in an upstairs bathroom. This of course included a portion of the new HT room. After the amount of work involved to the house, this has been devastating. Insured? Yes, but enormously disruptive just the same........new hardwood floors ruined too.

My point is this: Look in your bathroom and kitchen cabinets, and at your toilet supply lines. If you have any of those grey plastic supply pipes that run up from the shut-off to the tap, get rid of them! I have since learned that these fail on a regular basis, and a BRAIDED STEEL line is the only way to go. It's cheap insurance, and I would have paid many times their price had I known.

Maybe the Panasonic AE700 will be a little cheaper when I make the delayed purchase. Sigh........

 

[Takeereasy]

Sorry to hear about it Earfull. I had water damage last year. I'm just now getting the musty smell out. Good luck, hope it all works out for you.

 

[hopjohn]

Thanks for the advice. Sorry you incurred the damage. Maybe now you can use hindsight to make any plausible improvements to the first system's design. Good luck.

 

[Bryce_H]

I replaced all my plastic flexible pipe with braided steel. Another common culprit is the clothes washer.

 

[Mort Corey]

" Insured? Yes, but enormously disruptive just the same........new hardwood floors ruined too."

Good advice Earfull....luckily I did all that stuff before there was a problem (along with the little shutoff valves too). Depending on where you are, the insurance can be both a blessing and just another PITA at the same time. In my state, an insurance claim for water damage puts a big black mark against both insurability and the house itself....the mold concern. Some people have found that the house they purchased had become almost uninsurable as there had been a water damage claim in the past by previous owner(s).

Good luck. Hope it all turns out better than before.

Mort

 

[Earfull]

Yes, I forgot to mention the clothes washer.......we got a new one a year ago and the grey rubber hoses that came with it had printed right on them: "Replace every 5 years". They're in the garbage can now.

As for mold / insurability etc, there's no worries there because when the Restoration company showed up (1 hour after I did and had 90% of the water removed with my wet/dry shop vac), they immediately went to work ripping out drywall and insulation. Then 10 blower fans and 3 big commercial dehumidifiers were set up and ran for 8 days until the house was drier than a popcorn fart. I must say they did a great job - heck this is what they do.

 

[mtrycrafts]

I replaced all my plastic flexible pipe with braided steel. Another common culprit is the clothes washer.

There is a quarter turn shut off valve that shuts both cold and hot off at once, in a recessed box, about $30. If it is convenient to shut off, it gets used. Training the mate helps

 

[sjdgpt]

I replaced all my plastic flexible pipe with braided steel. Another common culprit is the clothes washer.

Another culprit is the hot water line going to the dishwasher. When mine when it was running for 3+ hours.

Fortunately no basement for me.