Sinking Feeling

On Thursday night, as typical of any night, I check all the doors to the house before going to bed. We live in a good neighborhood, but my parents raised me that way and I figure it's better safe than sorry. I walked into the office room, checked both doors and where there is a step up into the kitchen from the office, I noticed something wet on the floor. My first thought was, "Ut oh, Pebbles had an accident." Then I realized she was in the office all that time, so this couldn't have been the case. As I looked closer, I saw it was a moving puddle and getting larger by the second.

I grabbed towels and called out to Greg. I hated to wake him up, especially as he just put his cpap mask on and it was late at night. Greg tried to pull out the dishwasher, but we couldn't because the new tile floor, well, it was higher than the old tile floor. Greg took off the bottom faceplate of the dishwasher and we could see a lot of water and it was moving. With flashlights and towels, the water kept going (I swear it looked like we had a spring trying to come up from under the house).


He touched all of the pipes and coils under the dishwasher, but none of them were wet. At this point, we were going through all of the towels in the house, leaving a mountain of wet mess. Greg turned off the hot and cold water, hoping it would dry up at night. Thankfully it did, but it didn't stop me from checking at 1am and 3am just to make sure the house wasn't flooding from the inside.

The next day, Greg went through a systematic method of finding out what was wrong. I love this man. I love the way that he thinks, how he plans and that he stays calm through it. First he turned on the hot water and about an hour later sent me an email: "Tiles still dry. I'm turning on the cold water." At this point, Dad sent me an email of three appliance repair guys to call. I also posted on Facebook about the situation and a couple of people wrote back to check the drain pipe connection at the disposal.

Greg replied:

"LOL you don’t listen honey… I showed you the connections all to be dry last night. Silly.

We did the right thing… we turned on the HOT this morning and no leak…. That rules out the hot connections from the wall valve to the sink to the hot point and then the dishwasher hose… which is only hooked up to the HOT.

Now I turned on the COLD… which if there is no water build up will rule out the valve from the wall to the big filter, to the sink

If it remains dry all day… then it will be either the drain line that comes from the dishwasher… or (God I hope not…..) the drain that goes into the wall that separates the kitchen from the living room. Lets hope it’s the dishwasher drain with a crack in it possible. But the connections seem dry and fine so far."

Just reading, "goes into the wall" ~ not what I wanted to read. I'm thinking "Plumbing Bill" at this point. Greg could tell I was getting nervous and replied, "Don't be a pessimist. Look at it this way... Once its fixed... it will be one less thing to worry about for a very long time. You have a very handy husband. I did ALL of the work on my house (with the exception of refinishing the flooring.) All is OK."

He knew exactly what I needed to hear.

At this point, the hot water wasn't the culprit, neither was the cold water. Greg checked the connections all around and under the dishwasher. He ran the dishwasher through all the cycles and no leaks. Plus, he checked the water line coming from the wall to the icemaker. He determined that in order for him to check everything, he'd have to empty out all items (there are a lot) under the sink, including disassembling the rollout rack and garbage disposal. Then, fill up the sink with water and drain it, to see if he could spot the leak before assuming it was in the wall.

When I came home for lunch, everything was out. The kitchen was a mess of wet towels, dirty dishes on the counter, cleaning supplies on the floor, sink filled with water, cabinet doors open and dishwasher faceplate off.

Greg stopped what he was doing to make us chicken salad sandwiches and then said, "Want to unplug the sink to see what happens?" He did so and got down on the floor. Nothing yet came out from under the dishwasher. Greg said, "Give me the flashlight, quick." Then I heard magical words, "Ah ha! I found the culprit!"

It was the pipe right above where the rollout rack had been. The water was running under it, which is why we couldn't find it before and the drips had built up over time. We put a bowl under the leak to catch the water and I left for work.

Workday went by like normal. As I got in my car to go home, I thought, "OK, I'll have to put all that stuff in the cabinets." (sort of a mental preparation for handling the mess) But I had a surprise in store for me....

Not only did Greg fix the pipe, he reinstalled the sliding rack, put the cleaning supplies under the sink, put the dishwasher back together and secured it back under the counter, loaded up the dishwasher with the dirty dishes, which was almost finished running and he did two loads of laundry for the towels. The house was clean, organized, put back together and working.

I did a happy dance! Nothing is sexier than a man who can do it all like that.