We are currently working on a lake house for a guy who is very particular. He wants things done the way he wants them done, and is kind of hard to deal with unless you just stand toe to toe with him and bash away. Once you have done that, he is your friend and things go pretty smoothly. If you don't join in the bash fest, you are lost, and nothing is easy. All this is leading up to what being nosy led me to find...
We drove to the job to cut the concrete we had poured the day before. I do not like to be around when he saws a slab because it is noisy and dusty and icky. I had seen a bald eagle the day before and went to the back of the house, number one to escape the ick, and number two to see if the eagle was there again. No dice. So...here is where the nosy part comes in. I wanted to check and see if anything had been done with the pool. Nope, still the same. Then I noticed that the strand board they had placed to protect the pool deck was wet *under* the covered patio. Hmmm I thought. I looked along the board, and the water led right to the back door. So, I went to the door and looked in. Holy Mother! It was a miracle! It was raining *inside* this almost finished million + dollar home!!! Water, water EVERYWHERE! I thought, shit, that really sucks. Then I thought, thank goodness this wasn't our work, 'cause someone was in really BIG trouble.
I got on the phone and called the builder and delivered the bad news. He sounded so resigned. I felt sorry for him. He asked if we could turn off the water, and I told him that we had our personal truck, so we didn't have any tools. He said he would call security and thanked me for letting him know. A few minutes later, he called me back and asked if any of the doors were unlocked. Now, I will look through a window, or step in if someone else is working, but I am not *that* nosy. I don't go inside someone elses' house! I told him I would check and found one door out of about 11 that was unlocked. He walked me though turning off the water from inside the house. We checked, and water was still pouring out of the ceiling. Then he asked if we would use the shop vac's there to suck up what water we could. We did what we could, but it was still raining, and we had to drive back to Tulsa - over an hour away. We ended up putting the shop vac's under the worst leaks and leaving.
There is no telling how much damage was done. The visible stuff was bad enough. The walls had big oozing tracts of water behind the knock down treatment, all the woodwork kept oozing as we were vacuuming, water in the electrical boxes in the floors, and the ceiling...well.... scary that was. We heard later that over 400 gallons of water had been pumped out of a humidifier system that was damaged by some heat tapes. Fortunately, it was limited to about 1/3 of the house from what we could tell. The owners were planning on moving furniture in this week. Not happening now unfortunately. They must be *very* upset. I know I would be, and have actually experienced the same thing with our office. We were almost ready to move in and I drove up one morning to find water pouring out from under the walls! Ugh. Fortunately our office is a tilt up concrete building, so no real harm done other than not being able to move in as fast.
The thing I find most interesting is that nobody can understand why we won't give them a bill for turning off the water and vacuuming up what we could. I happen to believe in Karma. I know how I would feel if it were my house. We did it because it was the right thing to do, not in hopes of a reward. There is absolutely no way that I could have just walked away after seeing what was happening. That would be so wrong. It is actually pure luck that I went along for the ride that day, because if I hadn't, that water would most likely have run all weekend. When Bill goes to a job to cut a slab, he doesn't mess around at all. He cuts it and leaves. He would not have gone searching for the eagle, or looking in the pool, nor would he have noticed the wet strand board, because, he just isn't nosy like me :)
Sadly, it won't end there. Now there will be legal stuff, and firings and lawsuits. I can only imagine how disappointed the owners are. It is a beautiful house with, I am sure, years of thoughtful planning and happy anticipation. I can feel their pain. Fortunately (I'd think) it happened before they moved all their belongings in, and the damage can be repaired. I am exceedingly glad that I am just a stupid concrete finisher, and not involved in the finer points of interiors! I do not envy anyone involved in what went wrong. I am sure that the owner is not going to go easy on any of them.
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