An unfortunate occurence

It was a cold, dark evening in March 2018. I had been watching television and, late evening, I walked to the kitchen to prepare a hot drink before retiring. Entering the kitchen, I was surprised to find it raining, inside the house. Water was dripping from the ceiling everywhere and more water was cascading down the walls. Thankfully, I recovered from the shock fairly quickly and started to work out what might have happened. I knew that directly above the kitchen, two floors up, there was an attic room with two water tanks fed from the incoming cold water main. This seemed the best place to start investigations so, as quickly as I could, I climbed two flights of stairs and opened the door to the room with the tanks. I was met by a horizontal jet of water and a wall of mist which made it hard to make out the source of the jet. Trying to ignore the chilling effect of the water jet, I pushed forward to try to understand the tangle of plumbing in front of me. As far as I could determine, there was a burst in one of the two copper water pipes feeding a ball valve in each of the two tanks. Potentially, that was good news as a leak in either tank outlet could only be stopped once the associated tank had emptied itself. The incoming cold main was teed and each branch had a stop cock. Hopefully, I closed what I thought was the correct stop cock. Water continued to sluice over me. Puzzled, I closed the other stop cock and the spray continued. It was difficult to see clearly with water spraying everywhere so I decided to close the main water stop cock in the cellar. Cold and wet, I went down two flights of stairs to the ground floor then down one more flight to the cellar, followed by a lengthy walk through the cellar passages to reach the main stop cock. I wound it closed, not knowing if it had produced any effect. Now cold, damp and rather dirty, I made my way back through the cellar passages and up three flights of stairs, walls dripping with water, to the tank room. The horizontal jet of water had ceased but everything was wringing wet. With the conditions somewhat improved, I was able to confirm that there was, indeed, a fracture in one copper pipe after the tee but before the associated stop cock, rendering both local stop cocks useless.

With no cold feed to the system, hot water and the central heating could not be used and, with a number of ceilings and walls thoroughly wet, I was a bit circumspect about using electricity as well. I'm usually rather grumpy about the house insurance premiums I'm invited to pay but, for once, I was delighted to find that the insurers had supplied an emergency number to ring in these circumstances. They were a bit apologetic that they were having a very busy time but, within a few hours, an emergency plumber arrived (who'd come from a base in Runcorn, 70 miles away). Within minutes, the offending split copper pipe had been removed and replaced with plastic pipe and fittings.


Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe: Detail of the split half-inch copper pipe which caused the trouble after removal.

Further telephone calls established the beginnings of a plan. The insurers were anxious to first install temporary de-humidifiers to start drying out affected areasI enlisted the help of our builders, A. M. Griffiths, to advise on what would be required and the insurers authorised the hire of two industrial de-humidifiers which were delivered and, with a lot of effort, manhandled into place, initially with one on the second floor, one on the first floor. Being intended for industrial use, both units were for operation from 110 volts a.c., requiring hire of industrial 240/110 volt isolating transformers. The two units were of different types but similar capabilities. In each, the water extracted was delivered through a short hose into 5-gallon plastic containers which initially required emptying with rather disconcerting frequency. With two large de-humidifiers running continuously, it was rather noisy. After a few days, the volume of water extracted reduced and the de-humidifiers were relocated, one to cover another part of the first floor, the other to start work on drying the ground floor.


Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe: Hired-in industrial de-humidifier used to dry-out the affected areas, shown in use on the first floor.


Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe: Hired-in industrial de-humidifier used to dry-out the affected areas, shown in use on the ground floor. Note the yellow 240/110 volt transformer

The leak had been in one room on the second floor but, once under the floorboards of that room, water had been able to flow sideways so as to affect a number of rooms, a landing and a stairwell on the first floor. On the ground floor, the damage appeared to be confined to the stairwell and the large kitchen. The local decorator I'd used before came in every day to check the moisture content of the affected plaster-finished walls with a hand-held electronic tester and after a few more days, periodically adjusting the position of the de-humidifiers, only small amounts of water were being extracted and measurements indicated that sufficient dryness had been achieved. The house seemed very quiet with the de-humidifiers switched off.

The insurers arranged a visit by an electrician to check the installation for water damage. To my surprise, electrical damage appeared to be confined to one light fitting. It was now possible to obtain estimates for repair and re-decoration and the insurers approved the estimate from the local decorator. Immediately after the leak, I'd frantically moved pictures and smaller items of furniture out of harm's way so there didn't appear to be damage there. The main cost was remedial work to ceilings, walls and one area of floorboards, together with redecoration of ceilings and walls in a nuumber of areas.


Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe: Ceiling damage in the rear Bedroom, some distance away from the leak


Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe: Wall damage in the Servants' Passage, after removal of pictures




Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe: Water damage to lath and plaster ceiling and walls in the Servants' Passage, looking towards stairwell.


Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe: Water damage to the ceiling in the Victorian Sitting Room, also affecting the floor.

Once the decorator had finished, the appearance of the affected area was restored substantially to their appearance before the burst occurred. A distressing experience but as nothing compared with the heartbreak of the increasing numbers of people who find their homes completely inundated by flooding as weather patterns appear to change. And, in this case at least, the insurers responded promptly to indemnify me for the damage.

My posts about Brewood Hall

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Brewood Hall Burst Water Pipe