Wrinkled wood floor. The bad news: We still don't know why it was wet in the first place.
We spent all weekend with fans and wet-vacs and baking soda trying to dry out the wet carpet in the girls' room... After four days it's not damp anymore. Now we're left with dirty carpet and a mystery.
Since we have no other plausible explanation at this point we're going to assume that it was indeed the HVAC unit drain backing up... Water does funky things and it was possible that the majority of the backup soaked into the carpet pad in that room and then pooled in the lowest point in the room near the girls' closet.
If that was the only water-damage (what is it with us and water damage....) we'd be happy campers... but apparently there was also seepage under the floors in the hallway and near the newly-installed stairs because the wood floors there have taken some damage. (At no point did that area actually look or feel wet -- so water had to have been coming from underneath...) Sigh. Didn't we just spend three years ripping out water-damaged flooring? This isn't catastrophic though... Just enough to add character. Yeah. That's it -- character. Of course this also means we're not all that thrilled with our downstairs wood flooring at this point. Durable, it is not.
Now on the to-do list: Add an alarm for HVAC drip-pan overflow and look into sealing the wall of the A/C unit that adjoins the girls' closet wall.
3 comments:
This must be really disheartening after all your work (and expense)...
Here's an Internet hug...
Anita, you know how sorry I am that this happened. Keep your chin up and move forward and when you want a good laugh, come watch my lunatic neighbor in action. lol
Anita, I do apt maintenance for a living and blowing out AC drain pipes is the usual for this hot time of year for me. Did one today actually.
This is the condensation drain pipe from the AC unit which often gets plugged with grahdoo (sp:) from the unit.
I don't know what an HVAC is, but if it is a central unit I would go straight to that condensation drain pipe.
Also you might need freon in your unit.
Hard to say without being there but have been following the work and hate to see this.
The bathtub idea sounds iffy as if it was leaking you would probably see it in the way it would drain (or not)
To blow a cond/pipe you get a tank to fill with appx100 lbs air. this tank needs to have a hose with a valve of some sort (ours has a trigger thingy) You will have to cover all the relevant drains in the plumbing system:tubs sinks etc...to "seal" the line so to speak...then you stick the hose into the pipe (these pipes usually have access at some joint near the unit--you want this to blow on through to drain)(Understand? downward) when you get the tank hose in there then you need to use duct tape and hold it tight when you hit it with the air as it will want to blow back hard---if indeed this is the problem and it is stopped up.
I hope this helps. The one I did today, I even used the shop-vac on the carpet to suck up the water, even putting the hose nozzel flat and tight on the carpet and holding it there made the water suck up into the vac through the carpet. I would let it sit in one place for about 5 min and eventually got all the water i think but still had to keep a fan on it over night.
Anyway, this probably helps none at all, but hope so.
Good luck.
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