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Insurance - the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems...

kronin323

Font of Useless Knowledge
46,014
7,943
Austin, TX
What a day...

My wife is a CPA and this was the first day of her busy tax season schedule so she got up real early. When she flushed the toilet, the flapper valve in the bottom of the tank got out of alignment and didn't close properly. She later said she did hear it running but was in a hurry and didn't think much of it.

Normally this would just be a nuisance as lots of expensive water is wasted down the drain, but this morning's unfortunate flush happened to follow one of her giant toilet-clogging turds. The result? I wake up 45 minutes later to find a flood.

Entire master bathroom under at least an inch of water. Good part of the master bedroom carpet soaked. Master closet carpet soaked. But wait, there's more! Our master is on the second floor...

Downstairs it sounds like its raining. Water stains all over the ceiling, water dripping everywhere, kids toys and books and furniture and all sorts of stuff soaked, etc etc etc.

A call to the insurance company and in less than two hours there's a team of guys tearing up my house. Tearing out baseboards and drilling ventilation holes, tearing out a portion of the sheetrock against exterior walls and yanking out wet insulation, tearing massive chunks of sheetrock out of the ceiling, tearing out carpeting and foam padding. Half of the house is a disaster.

I'm now sitting at the kitchen table writing this, surrounded by the roar of a dozen industrial fans and dehumidifiers. Which is scheduled to go on non-stop for three days. It's gonna take a couple of weeks to get the insurance claim fully sorted out and who-knows-how-long to get everything repaired and back to normal. We're sleeping in the guest bedroom for the time being.

My wife's take on all this? "I had no idea one little toilet could do all that... maybe we should upgrade the tile while we're at it."

A nearby relative's take on it? "I'm so glad it wasn't your fault, she would have killed you..."

Insurance is an expensive drain that many may never use, provided by companies who's main goal is to make a profit, helping you being secondary. But if we didn't have homeowners insurance, we'd be truly eff'd right now. One of those things it's better to have and not need than need and not have...

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my Oakleys made it though ok. Life is still good.

Time for some Scotch and beer. Gotta go back to the office tomorrow.

[EDIT - OP on 2/3. Update just added later in this thread on 5/12.]
 
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damn! sorta like a true -to-life, bad comedy. bottomline, glad your oaks...er, your family is fine.

Exactly - I'm not creative enough to make up something this sad/funny. But there was never any danger to my family, only our possessions.

You bring up a good point, though - the wife keeps nagging me to get better life insurance...
 
Who are you insured through? I got tired of clogged toilets and poor flushes so I replaced my toilet with the largest diameter drain I could find in a toilet. It waste water but you could flust a hand towel and it wouldn't get plugged. Look at the video on the right side of this page. They flush 11 water wiggles down, that's pretty impressive.

Amazon.com: Toilets Buying Guide
 
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