Busted water pipe under the house.

sorry to hear that... as a home owner myself it kills you when unexpected things happened then drains whatever you had to fix it but it's to be expected.

does insurance cover any of it?

Fixed!

The workers knocked it out in an hour.
I didn't have the insurance that covers that; but that insurance is a good deal.
I paid cash; but it was a small job.

Nice sounds like you got lucky - during the summer months we had such a terrible rain storm the sump pump in the basement died and about 1/2 inch of water was on the ground.

bought a new pump - drained the water - dehumidifier - garbage bin loaded with crap - all total a few hundred but the initial shock always gets you especially since after 13 years my AC and furnace went at the same time and we had to replace both of them - thankfully we could lease rather than payout the thousands it was going to cost.

Yup - a home is a huge expense alright.

Glad things worked out for you

You could probably have done it yourself pretty easily, one of the first things I did when we bought out place in NOLA was learn how to fix the dumb shit, busted pipes, blocked drain pipes, dodgy wiring, etc...

I must admit, a lot of it seemed daunting at first but after a few YouTube videos and just getting my hands dirty, it wasnt as bad, or time consuming, as I thought it would be.

I tiled our bathroom in the NOLA apartment, was quoted almost $5k for it all in, ended up spending just shy of $1800 in materials and a long weekend working on it.

Boy, you got off easy!

My neighbor waited his entire life to go on a big trip through Asia and Europe. He was gone from June to August.

Some time in June a pipe in his wall burst that fed his washing machine hot water. His washing machine and dryer were inside the house, not the garage. Because he is a bug and pest nazi he put really good rubber seals on his door to the garage from the laundry room. The door to the rest of the house had a gap of about 1 inch and the floors were a mixture of wood and tile in common areas and carpet in the bedrooms.

That water ran for weeks! Destroyed the laundry room. Destroyed the first few inches of every other room and the carpet in the bedrooms. Furniture. Beds with comforters hanging to the floor level. Couches. Chairs. Tables. Nightstands. Everything in everything.

He finally figured it out when he got his water bill and it was hundreds more than he expected. Asked if another neighbor could check things out and he was like, dude! Your house is like a fish aquarium!

His daughter came in from a few hours away and opened up the house. We shutoff the water and begin draining it and throwing shit into a massive trash bin for him while he tried to forget about it as best he could and continue his trip.

After that episode all of the neighbors decided it was smart to give each other keys and have each other actually go into our houses to make sure all is good while we are away.

He did have insurance that covered broken pipes so he got a lot of money back. But what I thought was really odd and crazy is that when it came to certain things the insurance company would say, well, your washer was 5 years old. So we won't give you $540 for a new one since you already got a lot of use out of it. Here is $280 instead. They did that with a lot of things. But floors, walls, carpet, etc he got all of that redone.

Since then we actually had a hose burst in our garage while on the second day of a three week vacation. One of my neighbors came in to get a beer from my garage. I usually have a fridge full of them. It seemed like it happened an hour or two before he got there so not a lot of pooled water and no damage. People used to ask me, isn't it weird that your neighbors just let themselves into your garage and grab beers from your fridge? Naw! Cheapest beers I've ever given away!

Thats typically policy based, if you want a smaller premium payment, they're not gonna replace old for new, thats usually a grand or so extra on the policy every year. It's definitely worth having though, especially if you have a ton of specialized equipment at home, computers, drives, accessories, cameras etc, they all add up to replace 'as new'.

Alledgedly, if you have home contents & business insurance... You can get the pesos back twice too if you're smart about it... Fuck the insurance companies

Pex pipe and shark bites make fixing it yourself much easier.

The new pex pipe is cool. It will still freeze up, but shouldn't bust like copper or cpvc.

Yes, I was lucky.

Lady I'm seeing just had a pipe freeze and burst right outside her basement. She called me for help since she knows I'm handy (half ass tho). I instantly thought about this thread and almost had the bright idea to pull out my tools, load up some YouTube videos and maybe pm 421fill for some pointers.

Called a pro instead and treated as a nice gesture. Fuck all that. Too cold to be playing chivalrous and paid less than some of our nights out eating. Still get the hero points and sloppy toppy that comes with it 🤷

Did any of you read the stories about the people who froze to death in New York?

It was so sad I fucking cried! Man... to be alone and freeze to death. So heartbreaking to read about seniors passing like that. People fall through the cracks and have no social network to keep an eye on them and they end up freezing to death alone. RIP so sad for several seniors.

alone does suck.

two huggers would probably survive the cold night.

so they chose to die rather just busting into a building window

completely legal to do in a life or death situation