During that interval with no heat, the water pipes in the attic froze, and the ice forced the copper lines to split in four different places. After the furnace was repaired and heat was restored to the house, the attic warmed and the ice in the copper lines melted, and water came pouring out of the 4 splits into the attic. After a few hundred gallons of water, the R-7 insulation batts became saturated, and water began to pour from the one ceiling fixture in the living room, onto the hardwood floor. The waterfall narrowly missed the owners beautiful Steinway grand piano, but damaged the ceiling in the living room and dining room, damaged two exterior walls and one interior wall, and soaked through the hardwood flooring into the cavity created by the building convention of installing 2x4 sleepers over concrete prior to installing hardwood flooring material. Wall paper melted off the walls, and two Persian wool area rugs were waterlogged and almost ruined.
A disaster recovery firm was called that night and began to dry the house out. They removed all the insulation from the attic space and punched approximately 50 holes of 3/8" diameter into the ceiling to allow for water to drain out as well as for some air and heat from the house to enter the attic to help it dry out. A few holes were also punched into the cinder block exterior walls, primarily along the baseboard area, to help dry out the walls. A number of blower fans were put into the room and ran continuously for ten days to rid the house of the excess moisture.
I arrived that night with a plumber and we replaced the 4 split segments of copper piping with replacement material. This picture shows a sample of the splits in the copper pipe.
It took nearly a month for the insurance company to reach a settlement before I could start working on the restoration. I began by re-insulating the attic. I first applied a layer of blown in insulation to fill the ceiling joist cavities (about R-13) and then laid down sheets of 6 mil plastic as a vapor barrier. I then added layers of R-20 and R-13 fiber glass insulation batts to raise the combined insulation layer to R-46. The layers fiber glass insulation totally cover the water lines to protect them from intense cold. I layered the catwalk that leads to the furnace with 2 layers of 2" polystyrene insulation (about R-40) to complete the job.
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Prior to beginning the repairs, all the furniture in the whole house was moved into the attached garage and a PODS storage container. The Steinway was taken by a piano storage firm and warehoused for two months during the recovery process.
Then began the job of repairing the holes in the walls and ceiling the disaster recovery firm had introduced, as well as repairing failures in the plaster in the walls and ceilings. I scraped a plaster texture off the ceilings, applied compound to get a smooth surface, and then applied a knock down orange peal texture to both the ceiling and the walls.
Because of the difficulty of pounding nails into the plaster and block walls for hanging pictures, I installed a moulding around the perimeter of both the living room and the dining room as a nailing rail to facilitate the hanging of pictures. I also installed a plate rail in the dining room so the owner could display her collection of anniversary plates that previously had been hanging from nails in the plaster walls.
The walls and ceiling were painted, and all the wood trim was given a fresh coat of white paint. The owner's married children came and painted the two bedrooms and small hallway, leaving me to paint only the rooms covered by the insurance settlement. As a nice extra, there was room in the insurance settlement to add crown moulding to the living room and dining room, something not originally there.
The oak hardwood floors are in all the rooms of the house except the bathroom and the small galley kitchen. With the hardwood in the living room and dining room needing to be refinished due to the water damage, the insurance company agreed to pay for refinishing the hardwood floors in the entire house. I sanded all the old finish and stain off the floors after the moisture content had dropped below 11%, filled all the holes and gaps, and then applied three coats of semi-gloss polyurethane floor varnish to the floors before re-installing replacement baseboards in lieu of those damaged during their removal from the house.
The furniture was returned as well as the Steinway, and after three months of being dislocated, the owner was finally able to return to her home, much lovelier thanks to 4 split copper pipes in the attic.
