Life goes on...drip by drip

I have been needing to post for awhile, but feel like I have nothing interesting to write about. The days keep passing, and we keep marching on.

Last Thursday I was laying on my bed, and I heard this weird noise. I thought maybe it was one of the kids playing on the floor or something. I got up to look, and found that it was water dripping onto a piece of paper they had left on the floor. It was dripping pretty consistently, and you could already see multiple soft spots in the ceiling. What in the world?

So we called the home builders, and the construction manager came over and took a look. In these homes, the furnace is up in the attic--because 99% of them don't have basements--and the furnace blows the air when the air conditioner is on. There is a drip pan under the furnace where the water goes, and it has 2 pipes. One goes to the normal drain, the other to the pan, which is supposed to hit a switch, and turn off the furnace, which will turn off the AC if it gets too full. Well, apparently that didn't happen. Because it was never hooked up correctly when we moved in. So not only was the pan full, it had overflowed onto the plywood, through the insulation, and into the drywall, which was now soaking through the ceiling. Lovely!

The disaster cleanup people were called, and they came over. By the time they left, we had a 2 x 2 hole in the ceiling, with more to be removed once it dried; 5 bags of insulation and other debris had been removed, and a dehumidifier machine and carpet dryer machine hooked up and blowing. AC had to be off until they could fix it, windows, doors, and vents all had to be shut in the bedroom, and 3 layers of garbage bags had been stapled over the hole, but it was still dripping. And they weren't going to come back until Monday, to see if it was all dried up. That was 4 nights away!! With the machines, it got up to over 90 degrees in there, and they were loud. So there is no way that we could sleep in our room.

In my opinion this would be inconvenient under the most ideal circumstances, but for me it was just misery. 34 weeks pregnant, in the heat of July, with no AC, and without my own bed. We attempted to re-arrange the kids so we could all sleep somewhere, but it just got to be too hot and miserable. So at 10pm we packed up and went to the nearest motel for the night. That too, was not exactly restful, but at least it was cool.

We were awakened early the next morning by our neighbor calling to tell us that the air conditioner guys were there to fix it. They had told us that it would be 10am before they showed up, but here it was, barely 8 am, and we were still trying to get our act together. Our neighbor let them in, and we got home as soon as possible. They looked at the AC, fixed the problem, and turned it on and said we needed to let it run and run and run, and so they set it for 65 degrees. I was in heaven. Cool!

So at least now the air was on and we were home. Still couldn't sleep in our bed, as it was an oven in our room, but we survived. Monday rolled around and we had several people here. The home builder guy was here to check on things, the AC guys came back, and guess what? It was still leaking. So they glued the part and came back later--still leaking...so they just replaced the whole pipe. The drywall guy came and ripped out a 4 x 8 section of ceiling, and then replaced it and plastered it. That had to dry for at least 24 hours. So today the dry wall guy is back, he will be sanding and texturing it. The insulation guys are coming this afternoon to replace the insulation, and we still have to have the painters and cleaners come.

A week has passed already, and we still aren't done. Hopefully only a couple more days and we will have a partially new ceiling, and cleaned carpets.

And all this because some contractor didn't put a 50 cent bolt on the end of a pipe when they installed the airconditioner 10 months ago. Thank goodness for home warranty!!!