troubled water

Posted by tallskinnymommy on Feb 5, 2013 in Ruminations, the daily grind | 26 comments

The other morning as I was preparing to leave for tennis lessons, I heard a strange, almost musical sound coming from our basement. Actually, it wasn’t so much musical as it sounded like an old-timey morse code machine. I’m slightly paranoid, so for a brief second it crossed my mind that a burglar might be trying to lure me into the basement via morse code. Once I convinced myself that thought was insane, I ventured down to the basement to locate the source of the sound. Although we have an unfinished basement, we have a large amount of the kid’s toys stored down there. I thought perhaps a toy had been placed in such a way that a button was depressed, causing it to play non-stop.  I searched the basement and quickly realized the sound wasn’t coming from the section of the basement with the toys, but the area containing our hot water heater and furnace.  It seemed as though the pipes were making the sound.  Once I realized this, I decided to worry about the issue later as I was already running late for tennis.

Now, let’s fast forward to an hour later when I returned from my lesson. As I was climbing the stairs to my room to change clothes, I heard Finley (our yellow lab) peeing on the floor.  (Yes, he pees with such force I can hear it hit the hardwood floors.)  I ran toward him screaming, “NOOOOOOOO. STOP! OUTSIDE!  OUTSIDE! OUTSIIIIIIDE!”, and rushed him out the back door.

This is Finley peeing.

While Finley was outside finishing his business, I went down to the basement for towels to clean the pee. As I walked past the hot water heater, I felt drops of water splatter on my face.

This is me getting splattered.

Frustrated that I had ignored the signs of trouble before tennis, I began to inspect the pipes for the source of the leak. Water continued to drip, soaking my face and clothes. I was concerned because it seemed like a large amount of water was flowing with no obvious pipe issues. I’d finally resigned to calling my dad for help diagnosing what could be causing my pipes to sing in the morning and spit water at me an hour later. Suddenly it hit me. The location of Finley’s pee lake was directly above the hot water heater.

Reenactment of my leaky pipe conundrum.

Long story short, as I stood under the water pipes searching for an answer, Finley’s pee had been raining down on my face. When I told the story to the kids later, Wyatt said, “So, basically Finley peed on your face today?” Yep, that would be a rather accurate description of my morning.

I never found the reason behind my singing pipe. It wasn’t a telegraph-toting burglar, child’s toy or leaky pipe, but yet another unsolved mystery of a 90-year-old home.