Water, water everywhere. Not a drop to drink.

I knew the cold weather was coming. Worried about yet another broken pipe fiasco, I decided to turn off the water at the street knowing I wouldn’t be around to check on things while in New Mexico for Christmas. I don’t like turning off the water that way. Keeping the pressure in the pipes is good for the system, I think. Less likely to break something? When I turn it off, then on again with the pressure surging in all at once, I cringe, imagining old joints giving way. It has happened before.

Well, it happened again. I turned the water back on weeks later on a warm day. I saw the meter going round and round and sprinted into the house. Heard water gushing. No, no, no, I hissed at myself. I finally found it. Water squirting up from under the bathroom floor. Disgusted, I ran back out and turned it off. I let it sit that way for a month, as a form of punishment, burdening myself repeatedly with jugs of water for my dog and I to drink while watching past episodes of Lost.

When I got the courage to take a close look. I found this. A crack in a 90 degree elbow joint.

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This is the main cold water pipe that comes into the house. I don’t know anything about plumbing, but this can’t be standard. It comes out of the ground beneath the bathroom and does a zig into the wall. Bad place. Hard to get to. Right next to a gas pipe. I’m screwed.

This can only mean a total plumbing redo. I was hoping to replace many of the pipes after this point with all the new pex piping and stuff I ordered, but now I have to start, literally, from the ground up.

The thought withers me. Despite all the effort I have put into this house the plumbing has gotten worse. At least when I bought it, all the plumbing while butt ugly, was actually working.

Worse still, the next step is to crawl underneath the house to get at this thing and figure out how and where to cut it out. I’ve been putting off crawling underneath my house for six years. Why? I’m claustrophobic. It’s dark, cold, disjointed and cramped down there. The last time I cut a hole in the floor and looked underneath, there lay a single child’s boot in the dirt. That, in itself, is disturbing enough.