Frustration, Comedy, and Water Appliances, Part 3

26 Mar, 2026

This is Part 3 of the comedy of errors surrounding my utility closet.
Part 1 | Part 2

In the course of 19 months, my house's pantry & utility closet had gone from housing both a water softener and heater...

...to containing just a water heater...

...to being merely an access point for the water pipes:

The hasty removal of the water softener left a vestigial run of copper piping protruding into the pantry. It took up space, and (being unsupported) would bang every time the kitchen sink turned on.

I work from home, and often use my lunch break for small repairs and other tasks. A year ago (in March 2025), I used one such lunch break to replace a seized shutoff behind the downstairs toilet.

Despite my questionable soldering skills, this task went quickly. Since my wife and kids were out and the water was off, I decided to cut out the unused water softener pipe and free up some pantry space.

I cut the pipe just above the shutoff to avoid spilling water. But I missed something. The incoming water pipe came through the floor as PVC, then immediately transitioned to copper:

I grabbed the copper pipe near the shutoff, and moved it a degree or two to slip on a fitting. This was enough pressure to break the PVC off at the floor. Water started gushing out of the broken pipe, and I couldn't stop it because the broken shutoff was in my hand. I raced to the garage, grabbed a wrench, ran to the water meter, and turned off the water.

At the moment I stood up (wet, muddy, and grassy), my wife came home. I said

"I broke the water line before the shutoff, and I need to fix it. I've called out of work for the rest of the day. You should probably go hang out at your parents' house¹ until I go buy some parts and get the water back on."

She left, and I changed into dry clothes and headed to my van².

But then it got worse:

My van battery was dead. I didn't have a standalone jumper³; I needed another vehicle in order to jump it, and my wife was gone.

But then it got better:

At that moment, my wife pulled back in because she had forgotten something. I hooked up the jumper cables, and let her van charge mine for a minute.

But then it got worse again:

While the van charged, my wife made a comment:

"Can you look at the tire on my van?"

Yup. It was flat.

In life, very few things annoy me. One of those things is nested sidequests that prevent each other from completion. And I was now three layers deep:

Main Quest: Fix the broken water pipe
└─ Side Quest: Run to the store to get parts
   └─ Side Quest: Jump my van's dead battery
      └─ Side Quest: Get a spare tire on my wife's van

None of it was that bad. It only took twenty minutes to get my van jumped and the spare on her van. But the convergence of a water problem and two vehicle issues was hilariously poorly-timed.

But then it got... minorly annoying?

I have two hardware stores to choose from. One is well-stocked and 20 minutes away, and the other is 12 minutes away and has free popcorn.

I should have chosen the first one. The one with popcorn had a plumbing section that was very picked through. It took twice as many parts to accomplish the junction that I really needed.

Despite the extra complexity, the fix worked on the first try. I turned on the water, and there were no leaks in my repair.

But then it got worse:

The story began with the replacement of a seized valve behind the downstairs toilet. By this time, I had entirely forgotten about it. I was rapidly reminded when water started pouring out of it. Apparently I had neglected to close the shutoff before moving to the next task.

This left me with a pantry, utility closet, and downstairs bathroom whose floors had been soaked. The bathroom and pantry mopped up nicely enough, but the utility closet had already been soaked once, and the floorboards were getting pretty warped.

Where Things Stand Now

This week, I'm prepping the utility closet for the reintroduction of a water softener. I discovered that, despite the addition of wood hardener, there is still some surface-level mold growing on the crawlspace side of the utility closet's subfloor. So I've painted the top with some mold-killing primer, and I'll do the same on the bottom once I hit the growth with some bleach.

I'm also planning to clean up some of the temporary plumbing work from the previous two fixes, reducing joints and moving the pipes to a less annoying position. I'm crossing my fingers that I don't discover a third way to soak the utility closet floor.