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Vent: The day I cut a water line under a floating floor
I was installing some laminate in a condo downtown, trying to get it done before the weekend. My oscillating tool hit a copper pipe I didn't know was there, and water just started spraying everywhere... I had to shut off the main valve in the hallway, which took forever to find. The whole room got soaked, and I spent the next three hours with a shop vac and fans. Anyone ever have a hidden pipe surprise like that, and how did you handle the cleanup?
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hannah_west394mo ago
Man, that cleanup time sounds brutal. Did you end up having to pull up any of the soaked underlayment or subfloor after you dried it out? I always wonder how much moisture gets trapped underneath when you can't get to it.
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the_elizabeth6mo ago
Honestly that copper pipe was probably a code violation if it was just buried under a floating floor with no protection. The real problem is whoever did the original plumbing install, not your tool. In a lot of older downtown condos, the mechanical work is a total hack job that you can't plan for. Your cleanup sounds pretty standard, three hours with a shop vac is actually a decent result for a surprise flood.
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tessap736mo ago
Hold up, you're letting the original installer off way too easy. I mean sure, old buildings have janky work, but you still have to take some responsibility for what you're doing now. If your tool can punch through a pipe that easy, maybe you need to check what's under the floor before you go drilling. Three hours of cleanup is a lot of time and water damage, that's not a decent result, that's a huge pain. Sometimes you just gotta own that you messed up, even if the setup was bad to begin with.
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