IN Shaler Area Summer 2025 | Page 21

TRUE Water STORIES A WATER TALE – DON’ T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

TRUE Water STORIES A WATER TALE – DON’ T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU!

In April 2025, Reserve Township was contacted by a resident who decided to remodel their kitchen to avoid their kitchen sink from freezing every winter. The following story is told by the homeowner, and their names have been removed to protect their identities.
“ Every winter since we moved into our Reserve Township home in 2021, our water lines for our kitchen sink always froze and this past winter was enough for us to want to remodel our kitchen and relocate our sink. I spent 2 months designing and price checking online to create the best layout for our new kitchen. All our items were delivered, and we were ready to start the renovation process in April. The new location of our kitchen sink is going to be on our interior wall where the water supply comes from our laundry room and not an exterior wall. Once the new sink was hooked up and running, we needed to disconnect and cap the line at our old sink’ s location. Once we removed the sink cabinet base, the floor was damp and looked very fragile. I said to my husband“ Hey, I don’ t like the way that floor looks, try to stay away from it.” Then I walked into the living room. Once I did, I heard a crack and an“ OH CRAP!” My husband just fell through the rotted floor. I went back into the kitchen where he then said,“ Hey Babe, I wouldn’ t step on that floor, it’ s pretty fragile.” I honestly could not stop laughing at him, because I literally just said that. TYPICAL HUSBAND!
Now that there was a hole in the floor, we needed to investigate why the floor was so rotted. Apparently, there was a small leak from that service line coming into our home that we were unaware of. My husband attempted to install a shut-off valve on the live line but that did not go as planned since water was shooting everywhere. He went out to the meter( located in a meter pit in our yard) and shut off the valve. Thank goodness our meter valve works and shut off the water to our home. Once he installed the shut-off valve, he went to turn the water back on and noticed the black arrow was spinning, meaning the line still had a crack somewhere. He came back in and cut the line some more and moved the shut off further down the pipe and turned back on
the meter. The black arrow stopped spinning, and we knew we were good to go.
After seeing the state of the floor, it only makes sense that this has been going on for a while and could be the reason our water bills were a bit higher since we moved into our home. If we hadn’ t decided to remodel our kitchen to avoid the water from freezing every winter, we would never have known about the leak under our slowly deteriorating floor, going into the crawl space under our home.”

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