The Plague of The Pipes

The plague of the pipes is the start of our 7 plague series. This series will likely be one of the more nail biting of the blog series you’ll read from us. It’ll focus on some of the hurdles we needed to jump, as well as some crazy situations that have occurred throughout this journey.

If you read our Cleaning & Moving Day! blog, you’ll remember that the day after closing on our house we had a group of people come help us. The day went very smoothly. We got the majority of our stuff moved over from our apartment and we were also able to clean up a lot of the grime around our house. Everything seemed to be going very smoothly, until Austin turned on the water.

Suddenly, it was like we lived in a water park! From every different side of the basement there was water dripping,no, not dripping-falling. It was like a rainfall in all different angles. So, suddenly Austin’s attention was on the water. He was running from one bathroom to another looking to see if he could find the causes of the leaks. With little to no success on finding the leaks, Austin’s dad took a hammer to one of our walls that he assumed pipes must be going through.

This of course happened without my knowledge and I walked into the hallway and said “Hey! You’re hitting holes into my walls!” We laugh now, because that wall has been completely gutted, and also there was not plumbing in that wall either.

Well, it certainly wasn’t just one leak, or one faulty pipe, or even two! No, after some more investigation we found quite a bit.

For starters, there was a sink in one of the bathrooms that was mounted, but if you followed it down the drain, it just ended. It was just a big hole going into the basement. So, of course, if the water ran from that sink, it just poured straight into the basement.

Another drain fell apart with one hit by the hammer. It just crumbled into a million pieces. The water lines connected to one of the bath tubs had cracks in it that was causing a constant leak. Most of the water lines were completely corroded and many copper pipes had actually been stolen. We found out from a neighbor, that about a year prior a group of kids had been arrested off of the property for breaking in and stealing copper.

When we had first seen the house, it was clear that it had had water damage in the past. We also knew from our inspection that there would be plumbing issues, but since the majority of the problems were hidden within the walls and the water was turned off, we didn’t know the extent until we turned it back on.

From all the pipe disarray, the only solution was to completely gut it and start fresh.  So, from day one, was our first plague. The plague of the pipes.

Keep the Reno’s Comin’
Austin & Devina Griffith
Griffith House Projects