Water Heater Hell, Again (as if once wasn't enough?)

*UPDATE* My apartment should be back in order by Saturday AM! Well, not back in order necessarily, but ready to be put back in order! WOO-HOO! Hooray for speedy contractors! Written February 1st: It's after 7:40pm and I'm still at work because I. DO. NOT. WANT. TO. GO. HOME. Why not? It's happened again, but THIS TIME, I'm not yet sure if this will be the worst of it or not, when compared to the first time...

THE 'FIRST TIME': Right at the tail-end of a long, hot Vegas summer (blak!), a year ago or more (Honestly, I've blocked the date from my mind - I think it all happened shortly after I met my honey-man though, so that's nearly a year and a 1/2 ago?) the water heater in my apartment decided to EMPTY ITSELF, flooding over two-thirds of my bedroom, part of the front room and the entire patio (no, I'm not saying the patio was a big worry). Although my water heater closet is only accessible from the patio, I was later told that most of the water must have gone through my bedroom wall into my apartment - this assessment was determined by the total gallons of water extracted from inside my apartment. And the explanation for it? "...interior flooding caused by a 'minor slant' in the water heater closet's flooring surface." ~ It was juhhhst so lovely.

First of all, I was home alone and hadn't discovered the state of things until nearly midnight... I remember wondering why the air felt so humid that evening. TANGENT: I'm NOT a lover of humidity. I hate it, no matter how many times everyone tells me it's good for my skin and hair. The presence of humidity has also never helped my neurotic hatred of molds and mildews either. If one doesn't have a dehumidifier in Iowa (my parents did), you could spend an hour toweling yourself dry after a shower and still feel like you hadn't even tried. And the towel you use? It will take more than a day for it to dry out. [end of tangent] Come bedtime, you can only imagine how absolutely befuddled I was to discover over 2 inches of standing water in my bedroom. Was I struck speechless? Not exactly, when I realized my compooter was stuck in the deep end of it all!?! Ohhh my - the obscenities that flew from my mouth!?! I called management's emergency maintenance # and some poor fellow showed up 40 minutes later with his very adorable, very groggy, pink jammy-clad 6 year old daughter in tow. As if that wasn't bad enough, it turned out the only thing he could do at that time was to make sure the water line to the water heater had been turned off, which I had already done before calling.

Regardless, he did tell me that I needed to move all my stuff out of my bedroom and away from the front room wall to make way for the carpet crew to arrive later in the morning, sure to make this point very clear to me, explaining that if I did not do this, the carpet crew wouldn't lift a finger upon their arrival... He then left and I was up well past 3AM moving stuff. NOTE: NO, I had not expected him to stay and help me - I wanted him to leave and take his poor sweetie back home, to her bed!!
My bed and boxframe were relocated to my bathroom, propped up on end, standing against my closet and one of my dressers. In turn, my massive monitor (I so hate it!), compooter, computer desk, sewing table (which doubles as a kitty litter cove, since I don't use it for its intended purpose, obviously), 3 cabinets, and 7 underbed-storage bins, etc. etc. were ALLLL relocated to my front room. I had zero hot water for 4+ days and slept on the bigger of my two couches for nearly two weeks, closely surrounded by all my stuff, stacked high, plus 4 -yes, FOUR- commercial, industrial size carpet fans strategically placed throughout the joint, blasting away on "high," 24/7 with all my windows open and no AC. My electric bill for that month was ABSURD! And the home wreckers? I mean, the carpet crew? They broke frames, scratched up multiple furniture pieces, ruined a rug...and then told me I couldn't prove anything. I can't put into words how bad they were. And my apartment mgmt. was just as bad - told me they couldn't do a thing about the damage to my personal items. 10 days of chaos and I got $100 off my rent - how generous, eh?


Foremost, I was sick with worry for the first 24 hrs, convinced my boys, Otis & Owen, would be forever traumatized by the whole experience... In the end though, I think it was me, who was the more distraught at any point (more like frazzled). In fact, I'm 100% sure that Owen actually enjoyed it all, scaling the mattress in my bathroom on a daily basis, creeping towards and dashing up from behind the fans to sniff them and mark them "mine-mine-mine" with the rubs of his whittle kitty head, and dodging the blasting carpet fan airstreams, as if playing chicken with a Mack truck. It was hysterical and highly entertaining. And Otis? He just slept through the whole experience, I swear. But Me? I couldn't hear myself think over the ever constant, raging noise of those damned carpet fans! It was not unlike living on an airport tarmac, I suppose. I was a zombie for days, totally sleep deprived.

'THIS TIME': The night before last, I walked into my bedroom to retrieve something for my honey-man and since then? I've completely forgotten whatever it was I was going to get him...no recollection, whatsoever! I only know that once I rounded the corner at the end of my bed? oh, indeed, the obscenities -once again- began to fly outta my mouth in rapid fire! Lickety-split, my honey-man ran in to see what was the matter (I love how speedy he can be!), and I stopped my fit of swearing just long enough to lift up my left foot to reveal to him a sopping sock. We then both made a bee-line for my patio, straight away. Sure enough, there was water and while I repeated "NO WAY," over and over again, I opened the water heater closet door to reveal more water as expected, but the water wasn't from my water heater - ??? A puzzled moment was then had, until water dripped from above, behind my shoulder and we saw rivulets of water coating the interior walls of the H20 heater closet. And off we went to visit the upstairs neighbors, who, turns out, had not a clue what was going on and gushed a gazillion apologies before we returned downstairs to my place. And I am soooo grateful that my honey-man was there to 1) keep me relatively calm; 2) offer up his muscles for the moving of many and heavy items; and 3) provide some sweet sanity to our circumstances at hand. NOTE: Had it been MY water heater that had causing the flooding for a 2nd time, I'd have had someone's head and I would have fed it to Owen!

CONTINUATION of my Story, February 2nd: To make a long story not quite so much longer, the upstairs neighbor's suspected water heater was indeed the culprit, and had drained itself into the lower walls of my apartment. Luckily, there wasn't even a third as much water-saturated carpeting to deal with as there had been when it was my water heater at fault, but my bedroom/front wall has swelled and some of the paint is bubbling loose. Worst of all for me (no making fun of me now), there's a mild yet distinctly mold-like smell that has since permeated EVERYTHING in my apartment. BIG DEEP HUGE GROSSED OUT GUTTURAL GROAN. Quickly returning to the comparatively positive aspects of the situation... The carpet fans were reduced to one by comparison to the "first time," so my first two nights weren't sooo bad, but "this time" involves major dry wall replacement efforts, beginning tomorrow. So, I still can't put anything back in its place yet and I may have to continue sleeping on the couch for the next week. And "this time," again by comparison to the "first time," I don't have the kitty-boys here to entertain me or cuddle with me on the couch at night, as they went to LA with their daddy-man, so as to keep them outta the way of the soon-to-be apartment-invading dry wall contractors. *sniff - sniff* All the pictures posted here are from "this time," including the one of the blissful, mattress climbing kitty, Owen.