Monday, June 11, 2007

How I spent my Sunday

7:30 AM: Awakened by my wife screaming from downstairs -- "Chad, wake up! Wake up!"
A few seconds later: I wake up and run downstairs to where my wife's voice is coming from.
Another few seconds later: I get to the basement and immediately notice a wet, spongey sensation on my bare feet.
Another few seconds later: Many profanities are spoken in a loud, angry tone as I shut off the water to our house, and the burst water pipe slowly stops spouting water all over my (formally) nice, finished basement. A few electronic items are move up off the floor - including my computer.
9:00 AM: The plumber arrives at our house and locates a faulty plastic T connector going to our water filtration system.
10:00 AM: Many calls and phone messages to our insurance agent go unanswered. We later find out he was on the golf course all day.
10:30 AM: I begin moving stuff out of the basement and in to our living room, garage, etc.
2:30 PM: The contractor arrives at our house to begin cleanup.
5:00 PM: The contractor finishes ripping out all of the carpet pad, and leaves behind 4 industrial size carpet fans and a de-humidifier which will be running non-stop for the next 3 days.
5:30 PM: I take a shower and curse repeatedly.
7:30 PM: I setup my computer in the living room. It doesn't appear to have suffered any water damage.
12:30 AM (technically, Monday): We still haven't heard from our insurance agent.

What a great, relaxing way to spend my Sunday -- especially after a long two-week business trip to Denver where I worked 60 hours each week.

Update:
We finally got in touch with our insurance agent. The kicker of the whole deal is that we go to church with him, and I even play in the church contemporary band with his wife. We called his office and left a message, and even called his house only to find out he was on the lynx. We spoke with his wife for a while, but she isn't in the biz, so couldn't help much. When my wife called his office this morning (yes, we had to call him even after all the messages we left), he basically passed the buck to his wife, and said she should have given us his cell phone number. Whatever. We're not impressed.

The upside is that our insurance company has said they will cover the losses, minus our deductible of course. Unfortunately, since the piping was to our water filtration system, they are saying that they won't cover the cost to fix it since it's not "essential." That cost is peanuts compared to the cleanup cost, but still it's a little disappointing.

Another possible upside is that we may even end up getting our deductible back. The day before all this happened, we had our local cable co. send an internet technician to our house to fix some problems we were having with our service. The primary junction where the cable enters the house is in the same closet where the water filtration equipment that broke is located. I was standing there when the tech was in the closet fixing the cable, and saw him set his very large flashlight on top of the filtration equipment. Was it a coincidence that later that night/early the next morning there was a broken connection almost exactly where he set his flashlight? I think not. We have been told that our insurance company may go after the cable co. for damages, and in turn, we may get our deductible back, which would be fantastic. We'll see...