Jan. 29th, 2009
Owning a home is an adventure - we've all heard that.
I remember when I was a kid and we moved into a new house, and no one knew what that one switch on the basement wall was for so we turned it off. Two weeks later, when the basement flooded, we found out that it was the power for the sump pump. Ooops.
Well, I've been having trouble with two of my radiators leaking - the one in the kitchen and the one in the bathroom. The bathroom one has resulted in a soaked bathmat a couple of times a week, when the drip-pan that I cobbled together overfills, so I just wring it out and hang it up to dry.
Now, my bathroom has a tile floor and tile half-walls. And apparently the tile/grout seal is really really really really good! Also, the bathmat hasn't been soaking up ALL the water as I had assumed.
I had noticed a bit of a musty smell in there so I went in to do some general cleaning. That's when I discovered over an inch of standing water in the corner behind the toilet! It seems that is the low point of the floor, so that is where the excess water runs to. And because I have a couple of organizey-stand/cart/things in various places around the room because I have no under-sink storage, there hasn't been enough air flow for things to completely dry out. And since the wall/floor tile is really well sealed, there wasn't anywhere for it to go so it's been stagnating there for a while. No actual mildew, but certainly a bit of generalized "ick".
So tonight I got to mop up all the water, clean and disinfect that part of the floor (I'll do the whole thing on Saturday) and set up a fan to keep things a bit more dry until I can get the actual leak issue addressed (have to call maintenance but I've been waiting till I will actually be around a bit so he can actually come in and look at it. In the meantime I fiddled some more with the crip pan and tossed an old towel on the floor in case THAT fails.
Now if I could only catch that )*^#%)*& mouse....
I remember when I was a kid and we moved into a new house, and no one knew what that one switch on the basement wall was for so we turned it off. Two weeks later, when the basement flooded, we found out that it was the power for the sump pump. Ooops.
Well, I've been having trouble with two of my radiators leaking - the one in the kitchen and the one in the bathroom. The bathroom one has resulted in a soaked bathmat a couple of times a week, when the drip-pan that I cobbled together overfills, so I just wring it out and hang it up to dry.
Now, my bathroom has a tile floor and tile half-walls. And apparently the tile/grout seal is really really really really good! Also, the bathmat hasn't been soaking up ALL the water as I had assumed.
I had noticed a bit of a musty smell in there so I went in to do some general cleaning. That's when I discovered over an inch of standing water in the corner behind the toilet! It seems that is the low point of the floor, so that is where the excess water runs to. And because I have a couple of organizey-stand/cart/things in various places around the room because I have no under-sink storage, there hasn't been enough air flow for things to completely dry out. And since the wall/floor tile is really well sealed, there wasn't anywhere for it to go so it's been stagnating there for a while. No actual mildew, but certainly a bit of generalized "ick".
So tonight I got to mop up all the water, clean and disinfect that part of the floor (I'll do the whole thing on Saturday) and set up a fan to keep things a bit more dry until I can get the actual leak issue addressed (have to call maintenance but I've been waiting till I will actually be around a bit so he can actually come in and look at it. In the meantime I fiddled some more with the crip pan and tossed an old towel on the floor in case THAT fails.
Now if I could only catch that )*^#%)*& mouse....