It Leaked

Soooo, what I didn't tell you when I wrote about our hardwood floor being installed is that the flooring guy pierced the PEX tubing when he nailed the floor down.

He said he didn't know there was tubing below the sub-floor and was about halfway done when he realized that he hadn't been working around any heating vents.  Rob went down and checked the valve right then and said everything looked okay.  I double checked it the next day when we were cleaning up the dust from the drywall and it was at ZERO.

ACK!

We let Jesse know and he had the heating guys come up and re-pressurize the tubing.  They were able to hear a leak and did a quick and painless repair.

See this doesn't look too bad, does it?

This required a very small hole in the basement ceiling.  Easily patched, we'll hardly know it was there.  But the pressure valve was still showing there was a leak somewhere.

So, Jesse had the heating guys come back and put water into the system.  They let it sit all weekend hoping that would be long enough for water to drip out so the other leaks could be found and repaired.

Getting the water into the system looks like it was a little messy.  It made us glad that we had laminate flooring in the office and not hardwood, because it got WET.

And on a happy note.  We have water!  And we know our hose bibs work.

Rob was anxious about getting up to the house to check on the leaks this morning so we went up during a break from his phone calls.  We just happened to catch Jesse up there and when Rob asked him about the leaks he didn't say a word.  Just walked down the stairs and waited for Rob to follow.

At first glance this looks AWFUL.  We were both stunned to see this large hole and the resulting mess.  Jesse said he was actually prepared for it to be worse than this.  

But Jesse talked us through the damage and the repair and helped us see the bigger picture. It looks like most of the punctures happened right in the area where the PEX curved to fit between the joists and ended up touching the subfloor above it.  Jesse said if we'd nailed the tubing to the subfloor everywhere (like the guys at Peterson wanted us to) we would have had to rip out the whole ceiling.

We are relieved that the leaks seemed to be confined to one area and that we don't have huge patches of ceiling torn down through the whole room.  We are also relieved the leaks were found now, before the room is painted and carpeted.

Jesse said they are going to leave the water in the tubing just to make sure that if there are any more leaks they will have plenty of time to show up between now and closing.

He also reassured us that the Sheetrock on the wall didn't get completely saturated and said it will dry out just fine.  He is going to have the trim guy replace the side board of door trim that got wet.  He said the MDF swells up when it gets wet and it can't be repaired, just replaced.