Scott and I seem to have bad luck with plumbing.  It seems that at every house we have ever lived in, we have, at some point, detected a catastrophic leak in some part of the plumbing system, usually involving the bathroom.

In South Milwaukee, in a 80 year old house, we had horrible troubles.  Every time we turned around, something was leaking somewhere.  The toilet alone (presumably as old as the house), developed an undetected leak that eventually led to a complete reflooring and subsequent remodelling of the bathroom.  Scott became so touchy about plumbing at that point, that I was able to pull the best April Fool’s day prank on him ever by running screaming into the bedroom, waking him from a sound sleep, and frantically telling him how water was spraying everywhere in his newly remodelled bathroom.  You’ve never seen somebody move so fast in all your life!

After that experience, Scott swore he would never have an “Old” house again.  However, in South Elgin, Illinois, in a brand new home that had never been lived in, we had water coming through the ceiling from a second-floor hot tub.  So much for new homes having good plumbing.

In West Palm Beach, our little 80’s house was shoddily made (but well-loved!), and had its fair share of problems with the plumbing as well, again resulting in a complete re-do of one of the bathrooms.

Scott did a beautiful job with this bathroom, even going so far as to take out a closet to increase the size of it.  He redid all the very poor plumbing into a beautiful work of piping art, almost a shame to cover it all by a wall.

Lucky for us, during our trip back to the US this Christmas, we got the pleasure of seeing it all again.

It seems that by some twist of fate, the beautiful plumbing job decided to start leaking just as we arrived in Florida on Sunday night.  We didn’t detect it until the next morning, when a puddle of water on the floor in the living room alerted us to the problem.  Upon further inspection (which involved me putting my ear to the wall), we found that it wasn’t just leaking, it was SPRAYING out. (Hearing water spraying inside a wall is never a good thing).  My exact words:  “Scott, Open this wall…NOW!”

So, a good portion of Scott’s time in Florida was spent repairing this problem.  Here’s a nice view of Scott’s plumbing handiwork.

I am sorry to say that the plumbing curse has followed us all the way to India.  In the year that Scott has been here, leaks have been detected on 3 separate occasions.  Water marks line many of the walls, and poor paint jobs are unable to conceal the previous damage.

Last week, I heard dripping outside.  I went to the kitchen to find that water was leaking down the wall and through the door from a damaged pipe above.  We thought it was a pipe on the outside of the house leading up to Ender’s room, but it turns out that it was actually IN Ender’s bathroom and was just leaking so much that the water was now spraying out of the hole the pipe went into, on the outside of the house.  By the time someone came to take care of this, the leak had spread to the stairwell, causing one whole wall to be wet and water to be dripping from the ceiling. (Not to mention the fact that we ran out of water due to the fact that we only recieve a set amount of water each day).

Here’s what Ender’s bathroom looks like now:

As you can see, its the same idea as in Florida, however it is much harder to get to due to the fact that you have to chip away BRICK in order to find the pipes.  Scott is thanking his lucky stars that he’s not responsible for fixing THIS house!  With the Indian sense of timeliness, I expect Ender’s bathroom to be usable by May or so.

Hmmm…perhaps the US and India are not so different after all, at least not when it comes to plumbing!