Woke up to a disaster at 3am this morning

[brucoh]

The connection to my RO from the cold water to my washing machine has had a drip for the last week or so (only when I turn on the water going into the RO though, when it's off it's bone dry). I thought it was just coming from the connector on the RO so I unhooked it last night and hooked it up outside to my garden hose spigot to make some water. Couldn't care less if it drips outside. Everything is fine with it unhooked. No water dripping from the y connector. Good to go.

Fast forward to 3 am this morning and my wife wakes me up wanting to know what that water noise is. The end of freakin' y connector blew out from the water pressure and is spraying water full blast all over the laundry room and into the kitchen and flowing into the living room. It had to have been going for about 5 minutes at least because we had a good amount of standing water in the kitchen. I run to turn off the cold water behind the washing machine and the knob is totally stripped! It's just spinning around and not turning anything off. Totally disorientated and panicked, I'm running around in the front yard in the dark trying to remember where the water meter is. Find it and get things turned off. I think the water ran full blast for about 10 minutes during the whole ordeal. When I first ran in there, I grabbed an empty 5 gallon jug and it took about 10 seconds to fill the whole thing up so I don't know how much water went all over the house total.

So it turns out the drip was from the piece of **** plastic y connector all along. It had a crack in the thread area where the RO connected to it. With the RO connected, it kept things together. With it unhooked, it blew out after succumbing to the water pressure.

They make brass y connectors that you can hook your RO and cold water for washing machine, right? Because I'll never use a plastic one again.

I had a 29 gallon tank break on me about 10 years ago while I was sleeping, but this was much worse. What a nightmare last night was. Got me a huge new shop vac to show for it though.

The culprit.

The aftermath..

 

[iamwrasseman]

sorry to see that happen ,hope you get hings straightened out and dried soon .

 

[cody6766]

That blows man! My dad got all new floors when his washer line blew like that. It wasn't RO or reef related, just a crappy hose. USAA didn't ask many questions when he filed the claim. They just came out, looked it over and gave him a check. You may want to look down that alley if your water damage is bad enough.

 

[luvabunny]

Dontcha hate it when things like that happen in the middle of the night? Here's the bright side tho - it could have waited until 8:00 this morning, when the house would have been empty all day....

Hope everything dries out well, and yes, they make those in brass. I have one on my faucet outside. Good luck!

 

[nd31male]

man that sucks i just had a 20 blow up in the middle of that night and that was bad enough. Good luck getting things dried out

 

[eddybabyhd]

Yes they do make brass Y's, I had the same thing happen to my RO years ago, thank goodness it was in the garage.

I have used brass ones from that point on

 

[soonerpuffer]

I had many different flooding incidents. I guess this is part of reef hobby. Last one was came back from New Year dinner at 11pm found out my tank had a leak..I cleaned the floor and took the corals out until 6am in the morning. spent another 3 weeks to get everything back on track again.

 

[Roll221]

Man that sucks, but I am going to show this to my wife and say "see you think that little water I spilt last week was bad"?

With the amount of water you estimate is there you might want to consider putting new padding down since it looks like you have a good portion of the carpet up already. Just a thought?

Ed

 

[MBryant]

Man that does suck!! I woke up one morning and found water all over the floor! Found a turbo snail in my drain and the sump was bone dry. On top of that I have wood floors. I can't say that the snail lived much longer.

 

[kender]

Was the snail waving a little flag that said "Viva la resistance"? :celeb1:

 

[brucoh]

Well, the fans are doing a great job of drying things out. I've got them rented for a week and I'm going to run them the whole time to make sure everything is dry. I've pulled up more carpet and exposed everything that got wet. It could of been a lot worse.

Sad thing is that I had to take down my tank tonight. Water got around and under it and it has one of those particle board Oceanic stands and I could feel the bottom edges starting to expand and warp. I had to get it out of the way anyway so I could dry the carpet around it. Sucks though, because I've had this tank going in its current form since the end of may and it been the best looking tank I've had so far. It's only a 50 gal Oceanic so I split everything between a 20 long and a 20 high for now. I'm just paranoid about the water damage to my stand, so this will give me an excuse to build a real one. Might be a while on that though, I'll be extremely busy at work for the rest of the year.

 

[jkhudson]

I had been doing maintenance on my tank and thought I would change the dirty filter sock after the water cleared. I had got the water pretty stirred up. While I was rinsing the skimmer cup I heard the dreaded splashing. My sock clogged up and the overflows overflowed. I'm lucky my tank is on tile so it was a relative easy cleanup. On your carpet I would put a deodorant and anti-fungal on it if you don't replace it. Mold or mildew gets ahold it can be unhealthy.