Florence and Diane at two years, five months.

View larger image

Steven called at 2 PM Saturday to tell me that water was finally flowing through his kitchen faucet. “Wonderful,” I said, and I then left for my weekly dump run, and 3 PM pickup of Matthew from his work at the convenience store. When I got home, Karen’s voice, mildly frantic, was on my answering machine. Water was pouring from three different places into her downstairs bathroom. She had called every plumber and none had called back. No surprise, I thought, they are all out fixing broken pipes.

I arrived carrying my rather modest assortment of plumbing equipment, including a new torch Matthew had given me for Christmas. The appearance of the bathroom was worse than Karen’s description. Towels used like sand bags to contain growing pools of water on the floor, and water spraying, streaming and dripping from the ceiling. And about that ceiling.

Tile. Not only over the tub, but everywhere. I guessed that the burst pipe was above the tub, under the kitchen sink, and the other leaks were caused by rivers that flowed away from the source. With my 22 ounce framing hammer in hand, and standing on the tub, I whacked the ceiling, only to have my hammer bounce back like a hard ball on phony turf. Uh oh, I thought. Tiles set in concrete. Beautiful white tiles. I flipped my hammer over, using the claw side and whacked some more, chipping holes in the tile, in the concrete and finally through to the joist space where I could see the fractured, spewing pipe.

I could draw this story our forever – I won’t. But I do have to say something about their house. It, like others in this exclusive neighborhood, was built by a collaborative of architects who thought it wise to bring a boxy California style, two level, flat roof, mostly glass house, to New England. In the summer, the interior hits to a suffocating 120 degrees, and the winter brings a tepid sense of dread when newspapers warn about flat roofs collapsing under snow loads. Color those feelings yellow. But that’s not the worst part.

The house is built on ledge and the water main that feeds it is so close to the surface of the ground that the town provides a water allowance which permits Karen and Steve to leave their water running throughout the winter. This prevents: the main from freezing, the town from having to excavate should it freeze, and the house from turning into a useless solid block of ice. Because it was still zero out, I had to do most of my work with the water on, torrents of water spewing here and there (there were no separate shutoffs to the offending pipes). I knew when I did shut off the water, there could be no dilly dallying. .

With much help from Karen (Steven had to take Annie to a soccer game), I cut out the broken section of pipe, soldered a connecting fitting, cleaned up and drove home. Steven called to thank me for the work and asked if he should keep the water running in his kitchen sink. I said, “Yes.”

This morning, the phone rang at 8 AM. It was Steven calling to tell me the hot water wouldn’t turn on.