Just as I was leaving for church today, I noticed something peculiar. Running along the tiles in the hallway was a little stream of water. It wasn't a torrent, but it was definitely flowing water from somewhere. A quick inspection revealed that it was not coming from the bathroom, but from the garage. I opened the door from the house to the garage and found myself looking at a flow of water originating from the water heater. It wasn't gushing, but it was definitely pouring out in a steady stream.
I made a quick call the the home warranty company (I could tell immediately that this was not something I would be able to fix on my own), and started the process of trying to get the water under control.
By building a dam out of towels, Daniel and I managed to stop most of the flow of water into the house and redirect it out into the garage, and eventually out into the street. The good news is that this was discovered very quickly after it started (about 10-15 minutes), so it wasn't quite as bad it could have been (for example, if we had already left for church and came back a couple hours later, or if it happened overnight).
I also learned two very important things about my house. The first is that the shut-off value to the water heater is broken, so closing it will not stop water from flowing into the water heater. The second thing is that the main shut-off valve for the house also doesn't work. (I guess I learned three things. I now know how to shut off the water to the house at the meter. But I didn't learn this until a couple hours later, when I was talking with the plumber.)
Having never considered water flow in this way, I'm not quite sure how fast the water was leaking, but if I were to imagine some sort of analogy, it would be as much water as when the kitchen sink is running at 50% of maximum flow, right about where the water changes from flowing clear to flowing white. A quick experiment to the kitchen with an empty half-gallon milk bottle tells me that this as being about a gallon every minute and a half. So if you figure that it took us 10-15 minutes to discover the problem, that's only about 7-10 gallons of water in the house (as opposed to potentially 50-60). At the same time, if you imagine dumping two full water cooler-sized jugs of water in the house, it's still quite a bit of water.
Since the hallway is tile, the "damage" was minimal. There was a lot of water that flowed into the bathroom, and it flowed down the hall towards the master bedroom, but didn't quite get there. The living room carpet has a wet spot that's probably about 3 square feet in size. We soaked up as much as we could and now we've got two box fans blowing air over the top of it to try to dry it out more quickly. I'll have to see whether there are any long term consequences. But I had wanted to get rid of the carpet and go with hardwood flooring, so I'm not too put off by the idea of having to tear out the carpet.
It took about 75 minutes for the plumber to arrive (I think the call from the home warranty company woke him up). He was a nice guy. He worked quickly and bypassed the water heater so that we can have water for the house. He also drained the water heater (the water heater drain valve was stopped up because of mineral deposits -- the water is quite hard out here -- so he had to remove the valve completely and drain it into a garbage can, then drag it to the driveway to dump it.) Since it's a Sunday, he wasn't able to actually get a new water heater, so he'll be back tomorrow to replace it. Hopefully, the scheduling will work out well. I teach an 8 AM class and a 3:30 PM class, so there's a good gap of time when I can disappear from campus and deal with it.
