On Monday I walked down into the basement to check and empty our dehumidifier. As I walked the hallway into the bathroom, I stepped down and was met with the unexpected feeling of water underfoot through the carpet.
Since it was raining out at the time, I immediately opened up the store room where the sump pump is located thinking that maybe it quit working.
Nope
It was running and the store room was dry.
My next thought was the A/C closet in the bathroom. So there I went and upon opening the door, noticed that the entire closet floor was wet and I could hear water dripping. I immediately suspected a clogged condensation tube.
I ran upstairs and turned off the A/C and ran back downstairs. The dripping stopped so I knew it was defiantly coming from the A/C unit.
Crap…
I grabbed a few towels and started the process of soaking up as much water as I could from the hallway carpet.
Six towels later it seemed better.
I woke up the next morning and called my HVAC company. After all, this unit is less than 6 months old and I should not be having any issues yet. They came out and found that a piece of insulation had fallen from the newly constructed box and blocked the tube. Just as I thought!
He removed the piece and did some more inspections to make sure that nothing else was missed. He also promised to make this up to us and did not charge for the service call.
After he left, Ashley went and grabbed her sisters carpet shampooer and I proceeded to use it to extract the water from the carpet. Two gallons later I knew this was not going to work and that I probably had to remove the padding.
So I pulled the carpet up and, sure enough, the pad was soaked. I removed all the wet pieces and then propped the carpet up on whatever I could find and used as many fans as I could to dry the carpet out.
As of this morning, the carpet was dry but I will give it another day or so just in case. Then I will put down new padding and do my best to get the carpet stretched back into place.
Luckily, the water didnt get high enough to hit any sheetrock and from what I can tell, this hallway was the only place to get the water.
I am a bit frustrated that the water didnt go down the drain like it should have. Apparently my house has settled a bit in the 20+ years since its been built. I might have to look into a way to chisel some channels into that closet so if this should happen again, the water goes to where it should.