The weekend before Christmas, we had a few home improvement projects we wanted to get done. I planned to deep clean the house, while Wil replaced the faucet and garbage disposal in our kitchen sink - we recently discovered a rather large hole in the garbage disposal and a leak in the faucet that were causing much nastiness underneath our sink!
Waldo came over to help/hangout while we worked on our home improvement projects. The day was going along smoothly when the fittings/pipes/something from the new faucet didn't fit what was already under our sink. Wil had been thinking about replacing those parts anyway, so he decided to turn off the water so he could remove them and get new ones that would fit with our new faucet.
Wil and Waldo went outside to turn off the water so they could continue their manly task of fixing the sink. I was inside cleaning the bathroom, when all of a sudden I heard rushing water. "Huh, I thought they were going to turn OFF the water, I wonder what that noise is?"
Wil came running in the house looking for our water bill. He frantically called the City of Peoria to let them know that we had a "gusher," as he called it, and to request they send someone to come turn off the water as soon as possible!
I went outside to see this...
How high did this gusher go?
Well... about this high...
Yep... that's definitely higher than the street lamp outside our house!
Apparently, you turn off the water to your house at the meter in most cities in the Valley - and in any city where Wil and Waldo have ever lived. Unfortunately, in Peoria, there is a separate valve up by your house, and you are not to ever touch the meter for any reason, ever. So, when they tried to turn the water off at the meter, it broke.
I laughed and giggled and laughed and made jokes, while Wil got more and more mad that it was broken. He was SO bugged! :-)
Neighbors came out of their houses and all asked the same thing - what happened... "uh, it broke!"
It took more than an hour for someone from the City to show up, and that guy wasn't qualified to fix it, so he waited outside in his truck for at least another hour, with the geyser of water gushing from our front yard all the while, waiting for the guy that could fix it to show up.
In the mean time, Wil and Waldo turned off the water at the house and took off the fittings/pipes/whatever from under the sink and Waldo ran to Home Depot to get new ones that would fit properly.
I thought Wil went too, but he was outside watching the new City guy fix the water. I was sitting on the couch surrounded by our child size table and chairs, cleaning/disinfecting them.
The City guy asked Wil to turn the water back on to our house so he could get the air out of the water line and turn the water back on to the street (yes, they really did have to turn the water off to the entire street while the guy fixed our meter! I'm sure our neighbors all love us now, and there's really no way to pretend it's not your fault when a geyser is shooting out of your front yard!).
Wil forgot about the missing fittings/pipes/thingys under our sink and turned the water back on to the house to get the air out of the line. At this point, I had the small table on my lap and heard the sound of many rushing waters coming from the kitchen!
"Oh no, oh no, oh no..."
So...I promptly removed the table from my lap, stood up, hobbled around all of the chairs surrounding me on the floor and ran to the kitchen - where I saw water projectile spewing from under the sink.
"Oh no, oh no, OH NO!!!"
Add to my freaking out the fact that I thought Wil went with Waldo to the store and that it must have been the City guy who turned the water back on to our house. I ran out of the house, trying to figure out how to tell the guy from the City that he had to turn the water back off because the fittings/pipes/important parts were missing from under our sink!
I ran out yelling something clever like, "you turned the water back on, you turned the water back on!" Luckily, Wil was still home, heard me and turned it back off - because the City guy just looked at me like I was growing a second head.
Needless to say, my deep cleaning plans were extended to include mopping up a small flood in the kitchen and cleaning behind the fridge and oven because we had to get all the water cleaned up.
Our quick, few hour cleaning/plumbing project ended up taking closer to 10 hours! But, our new faucet is beautiful and we got a GREAT story out of the ordeal! :-)
