Grand Canyon - water. Just sayin’.

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
When we leave town, I shut off the water at the street, and trip the breaker for the water heater.

Good catch, cause yeah water damage is expensive.

I do the same. If it's winter I turn the thermostat way down too.

Bathroom sinks, too - crank down those supply knobs some until it won't splash all over you washing your hands.

I can't imagine why more store managers don't get irate phone calls over the sinks in the public restrooms being turned up as high as they can go. I kept them down and even then some would crank them back up again. At that point they would mysteriously direct the water out the aerator into the air . . . sometimes ya gotta break in a new employee . . .

We had a leak recently, wife had been down in the upholstered basement room and right after lunch we noted wet cat paw prints up the unfinished stairs. Investigated and found what appeared to be a slow leak working its way across the new vinyl plank flooring. It took a second to get the main water shut off, it's in that room, and then two hours of vacuuming 15 gallons up.

The outside faucet line had frozen in 4F weather the day before and it thawed as we were eating lunch. That faucet has been problematic, it doesn't exist right now. Upon recollection it went thru two weeks of below zero weather with no issues, tho. -14F one night, which really hit the shrubs but the spigot was fine all summer.

We keep tripping over our bad habits as this room has flooded before when surface water raised the water table and it crept thru foundation cracks. Once again corrugated cardboard filled our trash can and a lot of uneeded things were sorted, and sent out to DAV. I do need to figure out how to put a valve in the vac drum outlet - unscrewing a 2" cap does too much too fast trying to hold it up over the toilet.

Do it enough and these little finesse points start popping up. And BTW the water alarms were all 1/4" too high to go off. They got moved around to lower points on that wavy concrete floor. Now I'm glad I didn't raise it with sleepers, how would we ever get that dried out?

quote:

Originally posted by Schmelby:

quote:

Originally posted by MikeinNC:
When we leave town, I shut off the water at the street, and trip the breaker for the water heater.

Good catch, cause yeah water damage is expensive.

I do the same. If it's winter I turn the thermostat way down too.

If you do turn off a water heater and let it go completely cold, be careful when turning it back on. If your system has a back flow preventer, it will build up excessive pressure when heating up. Be sure your house has an expansion tank to absorb the pressure, or crack a faucet or use some water somewhere in the house while the heater is warming up the cold water. Many cities are installing back flow preventers due to meth labs contaminating the water supply, so they want each house isolated.

I purchased a house in the spring of 2019. It had been empty with the utilities off for a few months. When I was ready to rent it, I started the water heater and then left for three days. When I returned, the pressure from the heating water had blown out a shower valve. While much of the water was contained in the shower, there was still three inches in the finished basement, and all the basement ceiling drywall was laying on the floor. It took me four months and $14,000 to get it all repaired. I have now gone through and installed expansion tanks in all my properties. Well, almost all. I still have a few to do.

quote:

Originally posted by Tirod:
Bathroom sinks, too - crank down those supply knobs some until it won't splash all over you washing your hands.

I can't imagine why more store managers don't get irate phone calls over the sinks in the public restrooms being turned up as high as they can go. I kept them down and even then some would crank them back up again. At that point they would mysteriously direct the water out the aerator into the air . . . sometimes ya gotta break in a new employee . . .

in all my years in retail, many as a store manager, never had that complaint,

guessing most don't wash their hands,


now, if we were out of towels, or TP or a toilet clogged (mostly in the women's room) then yes, that happened frequently