The Latest Insanity

 If September was family Covid month, October was flood-the-first-floor-of-your-house month! Whoopie! The little tube that connects the toilet tank to the tap that is on the floor decided it wanted to make a splash, and splash it did! My son came home about 20 minutes before I did from school, opened the door, and there was about an inch of water on the entire first floor of our house. We don't know how long it had been gushing, but it was a major mess both on the first floor and in the crawlspace. I guess I should be happy that it seems to be just the tube and not the spigot. My wife, daughter, and I spent the evening with shop vacuums borrowed from neighbors sucking up the water, and throwing out whatever paper items that were soaked beyond use.  

The upshot is that all our heating ducts had to be replaced, the restoration people (they are responsible for power drying the subflooring and walls) had to tear all our beautiful flooring that my wife and I put in about two months work on last year, and our first floor currently sounds like the inside of a C-130 transport plane from all the blowers and industrial-strength dehumidifiers running 24 hours a day. Fortunately, it seems that our house insurance will pay for most if not all of it, including putting in new flooring. Equally fortunate, the contractor in charge is very no-nonsense, and seems to really know what he is doing. The owner of the HVAC company that tore out our old ducts and put in the new ones that this guy is the best in the business. If all goes well, we should have our new floor in no later than about two weeks. Hopefully, the rest of November will be very uneventful.