DIY Disaster Stories

[glenimp617]

I was chatting to a local plumber yesterday who told me about an horrific DIY disaster which happened recently in Nottingham.

Basically the customer (a young lad) had one of those foot heaters in his kitchen. If you don't know what they are, they are basically like a radiator which sits in the plinth under the cupboards.

Anyway, he decided he didn't like it and attempted to remove it himself. He turned off the water at the mains and disconnected the electric cable before proceeding to remove the two water pipes.

He thought it was connected to the water like his kitchen sink, rather than the central heating system.

So, he's on his belly laid flat out half under the cupboards with his spanners undoing the pipes when scalding hot water blasts out and hits him straight in the face.

The entire house floor is covering in water, with nothing they can do until the tank empties. He's rushed to hospital and suffered third degree burns to his face. The skin on his face was stripped off and he's in a real bad way.

The plumber said it's amazing the amount of work he gets called out for. That morning he was called out to an old ladies flat where she'd tried to fit a washing machine herself and ended up flooding the flat below.

So, what's your DIY disaster stories? The only one I have personally (well not me, my dad) is watching my dad trim a garden hedge and chopping his finger off

 

[Ayahuasca]

Most of them are disasters in terms of the final result

 

[Jono8]

Haven't had any really bad ones. A few close calls though. Worst was thinking i could screw a curtain tie back hook into plasterboard using just a plastic rawl plug . after many attempts i just ended up making a big hole.That just ended in a mess and a polyfilla patch job. Did the same with a toilet roll holder. Moving into a brand new house is a pain as you have to install every little hook and fitting and its all sodding plasterboard.

Scariest job Ive done is attaching a shower screen onto a newly tiled wall. Had to drill loads of holes through the tiles with a diamond cut bit. Serious squeaky bum time that was.

Also nearly dropped a massive mega heavy mirrored door for a humongeous wardrobe down the stairs/onto my partner.

 

[Rroff]

Not had anything of note but several of my family including dad and brother in law have managed to accidentally drill through water pipes with the inevitable result.

I think the worst I've managed is paint splatter, despite being ultra careful, on some expensive trainers that I was too lazy to change out of when decorating.

 

[Flack88]

That OP reminded me of this for some reason. It's like a scene out of Das Boot haha.

Water damage aint no joke fellas.

 

[glenimp617]

Not had anything of note but several of my family including dad and brother in law have managed to accidentally drill through water pipes with the inevitable result.

I think the worst I've managed is paint splatter, despite being ultra careful, on some expensive trainers that I was too lazy to change out of when decorating.

I was very lucky recently when I wall mounted my sons bedroom TV. Drilled the holes for the toggle bolts and managed to get the wall bracket and TV sorted. Made a great job of it.
Then wanted to run the power and HDMI cables in the wall. Drilled a nice hole at the top and one at the bottom just above the skirting board.

It was only after the drill had stopped spinning did I realise that on the other side of the wall was the bathroom radiator When I looked, the drill bit was resting on the water pipe, being literally 1mm off it.

That was a lucky escape!

It looks great though

 

[VaderDSL]

Next door but one had BT fibre installed a year or two ago. It was a new build, and had a weird gas pipe layout apparently. Well, Openreach engineer was drilling through the wall to pull fibre through, hist something, heard a hiss, smelt gas. Oh ****. Was not a good start to the day for them that's for sure!

 

[glenimp617]

Next door but one had BT fibre installed a year or two ago. It was a new build, and had a weird gas pipe layout apparently. Well, Openreach engineer was drilling through the wall to pull fibre through, hist something, heard a hiss, smelt gas. Oh ****. Was not a good start to the day for them that's for sure!

Jesus! That's very unusual for a new build. Where was he drilling, in the kitchen

 

[Nutty_Death]

Similar situation with hot boiler water.

I had been taking off and putting radiators back on as I went around the house decorating. Annoyingly the pipes for our radiators are 8mm so need a reducer from 15mm. I had changed the trv so bought a new reducer but instead of getting one that sits inside the trv joint I had a weird one that had 3 joints which each needed tightening on the down pipe. As with seemingly every plumbing task I undertake there was a slight drip so I went to tighten the reducer and accidentally undid one of the joints.
Hot but not boiling water shot out and hit the newly painted ceiling, so I jammed my finger into the pipe which was just about bearable. I started to panic and tried phoning my wife, who didn't pick up, she got a voicemail of me whimpering, not knowing what to do. I then took off my top wrapped it around the pipe and ran downstairs and put a bucket under a draining valve which I had thankfully fitted a few days before, ran back upstairs and jammed my finger in the pipe again till the system was drained.

Surprisingly the water damage wasn't too bad and didn't make it into the room below, just needed a good airing and a bit of a repaint.


Lessons learned.

• Don't do plumbing when you're on your own in the house.
• Use the simplest joints possible, particular when using reducers.
• Don't drain systems when the boiler is on.

 

[Puzzled]

M

 

[Malevolence]

That OP reminded me of this for some reason. It's like a scene out of Das Boot haha.

Water damage aint no joke fellas.

Damn you, I came to post the exact same video.

 

[VaderDSL]

Jesus! That's very unusual for a new build. Where was he drilling, in the kitchen

I know our gas pipe comes in next to the front door and is behind the wall in the front room, it then goes up and over down the middle of the house, and theirs is a similar build. It's likely they wanted the fibre in the front room and just so happened to select the one place the pipe was.

 

[glenimp617]

Similar situation with hot boiler water.

I had been taking off and putting radiators back on as I went around the house decorating. Annoyingly the pipes for our radiators are 8mm so need a reducer from 15mm. I had changed the trv so bought a new reducer but instead of getting one that sits inside the trv joint I had a weird one that had 3 joints which each needed tightening on the down pipe. As with seemingly every plumbing task I undertake there was a slight drip so I went to tighten the reducer and accidentally undid one of the joints.
Hot but not boiling water shot out and hit the newly painted ceiling, so I jammed my finger into the pipe which was just about bearable. I started to panic and tried phoning my wife, who didn't pick up, soSso I left a voicemail of me whimpering, not knowing what to do. I then took off my top wrapped it around the pipe and ran downstairs and put a bucket under a draining valve which I had thankfully fitted a few days before, ran back upstairs and jammed my finger in the pipe again till the system was drained.

Surprisingly the water damage wasn't too bad and didn't make it into the room below, just needed a good airing and a bit of a repaint.


Lessons learned.

• Don't do plumbing when you're on your own in the house.U
• Use the simplest joints possible, particular when using reducers.
• Don't drain systems when the boiler is on.

as mentioned above, water damage is not a laughing matter. I pained my house just after lockdown and also took the rads off the wall. Well, I held them on my knees whilst the mrs painted behind them.
Two of them started dripping, but they have since stopped.

My worst nightmare is having a leak in the middle of the night. <-

 

[VaderDSL]

as mentioned above, water damage is not a laughing matter. I pained my house just after lockdown and also took the rads off the wall. Well, I held them on my knees whilst the mrs painted behind them.
Two of them started dripping, but they have since stopped.

My worst nightmare is having a leak in the middle of the night. <-

I know growing up, our family got home during Winter from holiday, opened the front door. And ankle deep water throughout the house. Was a terrace house, and unfortunately, the radiator/pipe that was leaking was not on the first floor, nor on the second floor, but was in the converted attic which was my bedroom. Can't remember how long it took, but house had to be gutted.

Can only assume that the attic had gotten so cold a pipe had frozen and burst.

 

[FortuitousFluke]

I was doing some bike maintainence. I had taken the wheel off to fit a new tire, when I out it back on the pads were rubbing the disc brakes. I span the wheel and then, and for the life of me I can't work out why I did this, I reached in to adjust the brake pads. Half severed the tip of my thumb. Off to a&e i go.

Funny side note, this was 10 days before my wedding. The a&e doctor referred me to the plastics team at Addenbrookes but first he bandaged me up like a mummy (Genuinely he had gone to town with the bandages, when I went to see the plastics guy for stitches his first words were "who the bloody hell bandaged this"). When I walked out the fiance burst into tears at the thought of wedding photos involving a giant comedy hand. I luckily managed to get the stitches out two days before the wedding and was given second skin plaster for the day. Wedding salvaged.

 

[SpeedFreak]

Decorating the spare room and had the carpet up ready to be replaced. Noticed one of the floorboards was sitting up so put a nail in it in line with the joist. Heard a hiss and had to cut out the board pronto. Managed to nail into a water pipe that was running diagonally across the room with a notch in each joist.... God bless push fit, took about 15 minutes to fix.

 

[dirtychinchilla]

I’ve got many, many, incorrect holes in places in my house.

When I still lived with my parents, my father had renovated the entire house and so was very reluctant to ever get involved in any DIY. I put some shelves up but in old houses, bricks have stones in them. So every holes I’d intended to be maybe 6-8 mm ended up with a radius of about 2 centimetres of crap around it with a small hole in the middle. They got it fixed after I left.

When we first moved into our own house, a friend and I did the tiling. That involved installing the toilets...turns out I did one wrong and my wife came downstairs to find a few mm of water covering the entire ground floor. Fortunately, it was all either concrete or tiles at the time so no harm done, but she wasn’t best impressed. Doesn’t trust me to touch toilets any more...

Great tip for anyone with plasterboard - I always use an old school hand drill (where you spin the handle) to slowly make my way through the plasterboard. It works perfectly because it would take forever to go through a pipe or wire like that.

 

[neoboy]

I was doing some bike maintainence. I had taken the wheel off to fit a new tire, when I out it back on the pads were rubbing the disc brakes. I span the wheel and then, and for the life of me I can't work out why I did this, I reached in to adjust the brake pads. Half severed the tip of my thumb. Off to a&e i go.

Similar scenario, was also doing some maintenance on a car and then wheel unexpectedly turned with my fingers still inside the alloy and one went into the brakes.

Literally torn the fingerprint right off my pinky and nail mostly separated but kept it on so could fall off naturally. Not sure what hurt more, the incident or when I doused the whole finger in iodine as it was covered in all kinds of grime

Did get slightly infected and go a little green so went to walk in centre later on, they scanned it for breaks and then doused it in even more iodine

Didn't lose any tissue though so skin grew back on its own and have a brand spanking new nail, as if nothing ever happened.

 

[touch]

I dropped my car off the jack once. I had it supported on 2 axle stands and the jack as well. Doing something to the rear brakes and had both rear wheels off. On a slightly inclined gravel drive. It rolled forward and the wooden blocks I was using as chocks just pushed out of the way rather than stopping it.
It landed on the sides of the toppled over axle stands before the brake discs hit the ground, just high enough to get another jack in the lift it again. That was a lucky escape - I wasn't under the car at the time and there was no damage I could find anywhere. I'm much more careful when lifting cars these days.

 

[JBuk]

I was using an sds chisel to take the plaster off the back side of a disused chimney Breast which was in the kitchen , half hour in and I chiselled into a water pipe that had been chased into the wall, I had no shut off valve in the house So I had to turn it off outside Which took me about 10 minutes as I had to scrape out all the gunk from around the valve , the pipe was an old lead pipe about 2 inch diameter so not a simple fix, it would have cost me a fair few quid to call out a plumber so I went to Halfords and asked for an old inner tube , got some jubilee clips and clamped it all to the pipe , it worked a treat and luckily for me I discovered my home was full of lead plumbing so I renewed everything with plastic.

I also removed said chimney breast later on , to save time I just chucked bricks from the top of the attic down the chimney flue, after about 30minutes I went down stairs to put the bricks in a skip only to be greeted by a thick plume of black dust throughout the whole bottom floor