The (hopefully) rest of the story about the leaks

Today, we finally had all of the fans and dehumidifiers removed. They'd taken the ones out of the bedroom on Tuesday night, but the bathroom was a lot more soaked. We can't repair the water damage until the insurance appraiser comes out, which will be another week and a half. Fun times.

The "unrelated" shower leak: We'd called someone out to look at the shower a couple of weeks ago. The handle was dripping, and it's not a huge problem; I just didn't want it to shoot off in the middle of a shower. We know this is possible from the time I flushed the toilet and the cold handle blew off of one of the sink faucets in that bathroom. Our water situation is weird. Anyway, the plumbers said it was likely the cartridge, said they'd order one, and promised to call the next day to schedule. I followed up early the next week, but it ended up being over a week before they called back. By the time they came out, there was water in the bedroom floor (and under the bathroom tile; we'd had some re-grouting done and apparently they used silicone instead of grout, because it got wet and came up. Good help is hard to find.). The replaced the cartridge, said that the handle was still leaking, but that it was okay to use the shower because he ran it with the faceplate off of the faucet, and it was not leaking into the wall. He said we likely needed to replace the shower valve, and he asked us to get the valve ourselves so it would be cheaper. We also thought maybe it was the overflow drain, so ordered a new gasket for that. Meanwhile, I used the shower a couple of days later. The following morning, there was water in the bedroom floor again.

This happened to be the morning of the water heater line leak. So instead of just running our fan, we had serious equipment in there.

We got the valve in, the floor dried, and I called the plumbers to see when they'd be back out. They were booked for the whole week. I didn't want to have to turn the water off to the house, but we also didn't want to risk a plumbing leak putting more water into the floor. I found a new plumber who was able to come out that day. He cut a hole in the drywall (sound familiar? we just did this in the laundry room after the freeze), prepared to replace the valve... but there was nothing wrong with the valve. He did do something to the handle, though, and it's not leaking now, so that's neat. He recommended we call a roofer to see if there were a roof leak.

One came out the next day. He didn't find anything. So I called the plumber and asked him to come out the next day and check the drain. James had crawled under the house and looked to see if there were anything obvious there. It was definitely wet under the drain area. The plumber came back out, and they happened to look up on the roof. The flashing that had been around the drain vent had been chewed through by an animal... at least that's my guess. What do you think?

WHY the roofer did not see that is beyond me. But since we knew that, I hustled off to Lowe's to get stuff to repair that. I did a craptastic job, but it will work for now. While I was up there using way too much silicone sealant, it was thundering profusely.

So now we just wait until we get the insurance settlement. To meet our deductible, we ended up using money I had budgeted for our October vacation that is now not going to happen. I guess it's good that we had it.

We're trying to decide what to do about the stupid water heater being in the stupid attic. We're looking at Water Cop. We have to do something.