Here is the prep work they did to start getting ready. The dryer and utility sink were pulled out. The lower half of all the walls and doors in the laundry room--covered in plastic. The walkway through the garage was covered with sheets. They were serious about being clean.
This is the marking from the $9,000 plumber who was going to tunnel 20 feet under the house to get to the pipe.
The hole created by the Woo-ele-Rex.
We went with the idea from our 3rd plumber. They only needed to bust up a section that was around 4X3 feet.
Here is the pipe that is newly fixed. It *was* really hot in the laundry room. The foundation and the awesome clay dirt created great conditions to trap the heat.
The hot water has basically been off for a week, and, the floor is still hot. The kitchen floor, the laundry floor, and the office floor.
This is the hole that was causing all the problems.
Looks inconsequential, right? Another customer had the same size hole and lost over 10,000 gallons of water in a month's time. It will be interesting to see how much this little hole let out at our house.
Here is the patched hole with the cement fill drying.
In all, though, we are VERY, VERY lucky that the damage is minimal and mostly cosmetic (from what we see right now) and that the leak was easily contained.
And, I shall pause for a minute of self-congratulation for finding the leak before it was catastrophic. I'm the only one that writes this; so, I can do that.
PAUSE
Now, we work on the cosmetic issues of fixing the tile.
One of the things that I learned: it does pay to have a 2nd, and even 3rd, opinion. It saved us thousands of dollars.
