Well, being the weekend and I rent...turns out there's no emergency number for repairs. Nice. (I had an emergency number but it's no longer valid and the office is closed until Monday)
The handle on the kitchen sink water faucet kind of popped up and the cold water wouldn't turn off. If I pushed (hard) down on it, I could make it turn off, but it took a lot of force, and I can't stand there until Monday.
LOL, I actually tried rigging a series of items (wooden spoon and some stuff) as a push down thing against the bottom of the cabinets, but got it to work once, and then turned on the hot water. The vibration of the hot water caused my contraption to collapse and I couldn't get it back again. (Idiot me, this all required so much muscle force that I've now pulled something in my neck and shoulder and can barely move it...I just hated to have to turn off the water.)
Anyway, I let it run and went ahead and took a shower and filled up some buckets and then went to the basement and found the main turn off valve. Turned it off and figured tomorrow I'll turn it back on long enough to fill more buckets and flush the toilet a few times, maybe take another shower.
In the meantime, two things:
1. Apparently this faucet or something has been leaking and I didn't realize it. When looking for a turn off valve under the sink in the cabinet (never found one), I discovered it's all wet under there, everything is soaked and ruined, and the floor of the cabinet is all melty and rotted. I just store my toolbox under there, along with some junk, and my toolbox is sitting with two inches of water inside.
2. The basement, which is not finished and just a typical concrete basement with the furnace and water heater, laundry and stored junk, now has some kind of leak. (Because it can get a wet floor, stored junk is on shelves, so nothing is ruined)
I can't decide whether the leak is coming from the water heater or more likely - but this makes no sense - from the spot where I turned off the water.
There's a big pipe that comes into the basement, where the water from outside comes into, then pipes all over the ceiling of the basement and along walls to send water to various places in the house. But this spot is the valve to turn off the water to the house.
There is water on the floor from there, that goes along the floor and looks like it kind of stops where the water heater is. This area of the basement has never been wet before, so it's some kind of leak.
Could the water heater leak out from turning off the water? It's a natural gas heater. (And that plus the furnace are up on brick platforms in case of flooding) It must still be working, because when I still had the water on and used water, I heard it turn on and start firing the water.
So it really looks like the leak is coming from somewhere around the turn off valve. How is that even possible??? If the water is off, how can there be a leak? Yet that's what it looks like.
Is there anything I can/should do until Monday when I can get ahold of the landlord office? (Please don't say I should call a plumber, pay for it, and deduct it from my rent....I went that route a few years ago when the overflow valve on the water heater broke and flooded the basement....their maint. guy "fixed" the problem, and I don't know what on earth he did but he didn't fix the valve. I'm not a plumber and even *I* knew it was the overflow valve. So I called a plumber, had it fixed properly, and then they threatened to evict me if I didn't pay my full rent. I like where I live and don't want to be evicted and have to move...I've even tried to buy the house, but the guy wanted double what it was worth..he's a sleaze, but where I live, they all are, and they can get away with this. So I'm stuck until Monday because I'm not going to eat this one.)
I did try and fix the faucet by popping off the little cap and unscrewing the thing, but the screw is too tight, and then sadly, I guess i stripped it.
Will the maint guy be able to make a new bottom on that cabinet? I'd hate for them to pull out the cabinet and stick some horrendous thing in there that doesn't match the rest of the cabinets. I hope I don't get blamed for it...I didn't know there was a leak under there.
This is awful.
Thanks for reading!
I'm not a plumber.
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