Back when we were having the pool resurfaced and hit the snag of having a blocked bottom drain, we tried to sort out the purpose of the various taps in a christy box outside of the studio building. An unforeseen consequence–one of the taps was not closed completely and the next day I walked into the small downstairs room in the studio and found myself standing in an inch of water.
To understand how that happened, I will start with the first image below. This is a shot of the south side of the staid and if you look closely you will see a small odd rectangular box affixed to the wall near the left corner. That little box was actually a half-assed attempt by the previous owners to have an outdoor shower. They took a small shower unit you would find in an RV and shoved it into the wall. We had never attempted to use the thing and it was infested by bugs and the spiders who like to eat them. Yet when POs built the studio and installed this rinky thing, they didn’t actually connect it for use, or if it did ever work, at some point they disconnected it and sealed it with just plumber putty. I kid you not.
Next is a shot of inside the wall once we we excavated the box the from wall–my PM from Adams Pools rushed over to help me sort what was going on and helped me pry it out. That’s a pipe and remnants of plumber’s putty in the sodden insulation.
Lastly are some shots of the floors. They are not normally shiny and this shot was taken after some of the carpet tiles had been removed.
After standing in water for 20 minutes and lifting up carpet tiles, I determined there was no way I alone would be able to address the wet mess, so I did some online searches and found a firm named Supra Clean who came out that day and set about drying the building out.
Only it turns out the flood from the silly pipe was only half of the issue. When Mike from Supra Clean used his special camera to look at all the walls for signs of moisture he discovered that in addition to our flood in the south west corner of the building, water had been entering the building from the east wall. He suspected it was due to our very high winds in the winter as the flashing on the new roof atop the studio building has as a slight gap between the layers.
So then we set about moving just about everything out of the building. The bathroom we do not use became wine storage, the blue room became the place to put a bunch of random items and all the furniture was moved into the great room. Mike and his helper then set about drying the room. They used some very large industrial dehumidifiers and heaters.
As part of the process we had to have another mob come in and test the walls for mold and asbestos–both of which were thankfully not present. So a few days later after the space was dry, the crew returned and removed all of the baseboards and sections of drywall along the bottom of the eastern side of the building.
Once everything was dry, I made a call to our roofing company (Armstrong) and asked if they could assist with the flashing. They kindly sent out a guy who secured the flashing at regular intervals with large bolts. We found out later that while some water may have come in from up top, it wasn’t the main point of entry, but we only found that out when we set about renovating the space to not only repair the damage, but make it something we liked and actually wanted to use, but more about that soon.
