On Friday, my wife and recieved something distressing in the mail...a bill! Not just any bill though...the water bill for the house we have on the market in Belfair.
You might think that the water bill for a house your not living in shouldn't be too distressing, and you would usually be right. This months water bill was a tad bit higher than usual though.
How high? Well, our normal bill, which is pretty steady since there is not usage, is about $50 a month...heck, the company charges $35 a month just to have the water hooked up. Add in a feee or two, and there you go. The bill for February was $600 higher than that...
Whatever...I figured I would call them on Monday to work out the accounting error.
According to the lady in the front office, it was no accounting error. She said that the when the technician showed up to read out meter, it was spinning at a high rate of speed. Since the house was unoccupied, he figured the only thing that would make the meter spin that fast was a leak somewhere in the system.
Yay.
First, I appreciate the technician shutting the water off...that's nice. Boo on the front office folks for not calling me when this was reported on the 16th of February. Letting me wait until I get the $600+ water bill to find out is poor customer service indeed.
So...the question is, what is wrong with my house? My wife was there a week before the problem was noted, and the weather wasn't that bad since then. Frozen pipes under the house aren't likely, but are possible. Another possibilty is someone who looked at the house(or even my wife when she was there) left some water running, or a toilet valve had a horrible failure.
The worst case would be some spontaneous, horrible failure of piping inside the house. According the water meter, there was 7000 cubic feet of water missing from the system. If all that water ended up somewhere in the house, well...it could make the whole 'walking away' decision easier.
My wife and I talked things over...my plan was to have one her friends that has a key do a walkthrough...look for obvious damage, and then check all the faucets...elimate the easy stuff first. However, my amazing wife stepped up to the plate. She offered to throw the girls in the car, and head to my mom's house. From there, she would hook up with the water company Tuesday morning, so they could turn the water back on, and she could look for the problem.
It made sense...any repair would require she/I be there anyway...might as well get on it now instead of waiting for the weekend. It was just a heroic decision to make, taking to the road with kids...the type of decision only the worlds most amazing woman would make.
Unless I am tougher to live with than I think I am.
The only negative, well...no wife and kids tonight, and possibly tomorrow night.
Well, and the negative that the leak might have happend upstairs in the master bath, and destroyed half the house.
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