Wow, what a shitty week.

After moving all of our shit (and we have A LOT of shit!!) over to the new place by myself (the guy I was going to hire to help me decided he didn’t really need the money), things were starting to settle down and I was finally starting to get a few things un packed. Mostly everything was still on the floor in boxes though. Thursday night at about seven I was sitting at my computer when I heard what sounded like water running, I followed the sound (and the really big puddle) to the corner where there is a kind of utility closet, and there to my dismay is water coming out of a cracked pipe!

Normally that wouldn’t be too hard to deal with but as it turned out the hole was between the wall and the shut-off valve for the house. To put that another way, there was no way to shut off the water inside the house. But being a good boy scout I’m prepared for this kind of thing so I went and got my water meter key and headed outside to find the junction box between the main and the house. After looking around for a while I found what appeared to maybe be a junction box but quickly ascertained that there was no way my Texas-style water box key was going to shut off an Iowa-style water valve. In Texas they bury the box and the meter together about six inches underground since there’s no danger of the frost line getting that deep. (It turned out that the box here was about six feet deep). Realizing that I was in over my head (figuratively and perhaps literally) I went inside and called a plumber who said yeah, he can shut it off he’ll be right out. About an hour or so later he shows up and says “shit, that’s pretty bad” then goes out and tries for about twenty minutes to shut off the water with no success. Mr. “I’ll be right out” then recommends that I call the city and maybe they can do something but he doesn’t think they can and meanwhile he’s going to go back to his shop and see if he can find some tape to tape up the hole.

It is at this moment that two things occurred to me. One is that the plumber that I called doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground; and two is that all our stuff is pretty much fucked.

So at this point in the story it is almost nine o’clock. The flow from the pipe has grown to that of a garden hose on full blast and the water level in our apartment is between three and five inches depending on where you’re standing. It also bears noting that the entire time I haven’t been able to contact the woman who owns the house. I figure she’s out on a date and won’t answer her phone.

After three or four tries I finally got the city emergency shut off crew’s number and after talking to two different people they finally agreed to come out to the house to “take a look.” When they got here their response was the same as everyone else who had seen the place –oh, shit.

So the city people called into their dispatch desk who radioed them back with the coordinance of the junction box. In case you’re curious, it was 41 feet south of the south house line and six feet east of the west house line. The box we found the first time wasn’t a shut-off box at all (just confirming that as I suspected, the first plumber really didn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground). They got our their metal detector and swept it around in the suggested area until they got a strong tone then dug down under the grass a few feet and voila, a junction box. Why the hell couldn’t I have found that?

By then there was a huge city truck and the truck of a passing plumber who stopped to lend moral support (it is, after all, Iowa) not to mention a strong contingent of curious neighbors standing around looking. And just about the time the first plumber showed back up the lady who owns the house turns up too –woo-hoo, it’s a party! To her credit and to my relief she didn’t freak (and why should she, none of her stuff was ruined). I just didn’t want to deal with hysterics after all that.

But the story doesn’t end there. As it turned out, even with the proper key, the valve wouldn’t turn (it was, by all accounts, over 100 years old) so in came the backhoe to dig up the junction box. One really-huge-fucking-hole-in-the-front-yard later and we had the water turned off and our apartment slowly began to drain.

By the next morning there was only standing water in a couple of low spots although the wool Persian rugs were holding several hundred gallons a piece and all the boxes that were on the floor were pretty much soaked.

Now it’s five days later and the dehumidifiers and the fans are still running (although at this point I suspect that its just a matter of Servicemaster™ padding their bill to the insurance company. I’m sleeping on a friend’s couch and I’m still waiting to see just what all is lost. I guess it could be a lot worse but lately I’ve definitely had a lot of those days where I wake up and think to myself “Why the hell did we ever leave Austin?!”

The moral of the story: given the choice, it’s better to have a flood before you move, that way you don’t have as much shit to carry!