Last night at about 9pm I was at home finishing up some work on the computer while my wife was reading a book beside me. Suddenly, our home alarm sounded which was made all the more frightening once I realized that I hadn’t even set it!
I quickly made my way downstairs trying not to imagine which crime could possibly be so heinous that it could sound an unarmed alarm. When I rounded the stair case and looked into the laundry room I immediately saw the culprit: water. Pink water to be precise, and it lots of it.
“WIFE!” I yelled “Get every towel we have and bring them downstairs now!”
“Why?”
“No time, just bring them down!”
She hurried downstairs with an armload of towels, took note of the cacophony with which she was faced, and began sopping up water with towels; all within a few seconds. I desperately sought out the source of the water so that I could turn it off before it got out of hand. The alarms was screaming the whole time, and I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the confusion the dogs started to bark.
Chaos reigned.
I had turned off the washer, and whatever had created this mess was no longer adding to it. I ran downstairs to cut the power to the damn alarm before I went mad.
“WIFE!” I yelled. “I need more towels!”
Water had run from the laundry room, into a hot air vent, down to the basement, and all over the electrical panel. Somewhere along it’s path, it also managed to short out the alarm. I managed to kill the AC power to the alarm, but it continued to sound. Crap. I opened the alarm panel - shortly after I found the DAMN KEY - and disconnected the battery backup.
Silence.
After much cleaning and figuring I was able to discover that Jayman - being the quality builder that they are - had cut an access panel out of the side of my house. Rather than plug the hole once they were finished, they chose to put some vinyl siding over it and call it a day. The sewer trap for the washing machine just so happened to run right next to this gaping hole, and lo and behold, the sewer trap froze. Nice. That way, when our high capacity washer tried to drain, rather than the water flowing nicely down the pipe, past the sewer trap and into the sewer, it spewed back all over the laundry room.
Oh, and the reason that the water was pink was because my wife was washing her red housecoat. She also happened to be washing all of my socks, underwear, and t-shirts which are now a delightful shade of pink. Luckily for me, pink is totally the new white.
In the end I suppose I have to congratulate Jayman. If their goal was to make as many stupid mistakes as humanly possible, they’ve exceeded my wildest expectations. Kudos!
