Drip...drip...drip...drip...

That's all I'm hearing right now as I type this at 7:32AM. I have a drip in my bathroom from the bathroom upstairs. Maintenance has been called, I'm just waiting for them to show up.

Let me start back at the beginning. We have had zero or sub-zero temperatures at night for the past week. My one bathroom is on a north outside wall, with little protection. I have left the sink faucets dripping to try to keep the pipes there from freezing. Last week about Wednesday or so, my hot water pipe to the shower in that bathroom froze. This didn't cause me any great concern, because I have a second full bathroom in my apartment. And there's nothing that can be done except wait until it warms up. Well, it hasn't, LOL.

The next thing to freeze was my toilet; That happened on Saturday. Again, no great concern because I still have the other bathroom. I can get by with one bathroom. Last night, however, I came home to the frozen toilet "overflowing" with water, that had backed up into the toilet. I immediately got the first thing I could think of that would fit in the toilet bowl to scoop out water. A red Solo cup. I started scooping it out into the sink, but the water level wasn't going down. WTF? So start furiously scooping water from the toilet into the shower, since I didn't have to be so careful with the water placement. Finally, the water level started going down to a normal level, but my hand was now frozen, since the water was ice cold. I ran the hot water in the sink to warm my hand up again, and the toilet started filling right back up again. WTF? I shut the water off to the sink, and again started scooping like mad from the toilet to the shower.

I dried my hand off, grabbed the phone and called the office to have maintenance come, because I didn't want to stand there all night bailing out the toilet. While I was on the phone with the office, I noticed the toilet wasn't filling back up. How observant I am! The toilet was filling up because I was running water in the sink! They suggested I shut the water off completely to my bathroom, using the shut-off valve under the toilet. Maintenance came about 10 minutes later, they tried to rod the toilet to make sure it wasn't a blockage, and when that wasn't the problem, we agreed it was the frozen pipe and they'd come back tomorrow (meaning today) to look at it. Although I tried to make the guy understand there's nothing they can do unless they want to tear all the walls apart and rip all the siding off the building. It's gonna be like this until it warms up. He leaves with the assurance that someone would be back to look at it today.

Fast forward to this morning. I wake up, take my shower, and as I go to take a pair of pants out of the dryer, I notice a drip...drip...drip...drip...coming from the bathroom. I turn the light on, and there is a steady drip of water coming from around the light/vent in the ceiling. *Sigh* I cuss a few times, then I call the office so I can get a message to maintenance about the drip. Then I call work to leave a message for my boss, letting him know I'll be out this morning because of this leak from upstairs.

While I was typing all this, my phone rang, it was maintenance, asking what kind of leak it was. Was it a "gush" or a "drip", that sort of thing, trying to determine how bad of an emergency this is. I said, "It's not a gush, it's a steady drip coming from the bathroom upstairs into my bathroom." The guy on the phone said they'd have someone there as soon as they could. I wonder how long that will be? I'll keep you posted...


Update at 11:30, while my car is warming up...Maintenance was here at about 9am, they went upstairs and determined the drip is from a backup in the bathtub above me. That may be caused by the freezing temperatures, I'm not sure. They said once the water goes away upstairs, so will my drip. So in the meantime I have a couple towels on the floor to catch the drip (and they're probably soaked by now). Nothing more I can do here, so I'm going to brave the snowy streets and try to go to work.