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

 

[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

 

[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

 

[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. <-

 

[glenimp617]

I would recommend people buy one of those metal rods used to turn the outside water off with. In an emergency, you simply can't turn it without one. If you think a big screwdriver will do it, think again!

 

[glenimp617]

The outcome was by no means disastrous, but in terms of plain stupidity of action...

When I was very new to owning a house and DIY, one of the units in our kitchen was a bit loosely fixed, so I decided I could make it more secure with some longer screws. All seemed to go well, and I was very pleased with myself.

Until the next time I went up the stairs and saw the two screws sticking two inches out of the wall.

For some reason, my mind hadn't even considered the 'abstract concept' of rooms being next to each other and walls not having infinite thickness.

haha, how long were the screws?

 

[glenimp617]

Just remembered a corker from my Dad's big book of DIY. We had a tree at the bottom of our garden when i was growing up, the decision was made to take it down and pop in some decking. So he trims the branches, slowly lops down the trunk until he's left with just the stump which Dad starts digging out. It was a fairly stubborn bugger so a pickaxe is employed to attack the roots. About 3 or four strikes in Mum calls out from the house that the TV has gone off, then he notices that all the streetlights (it was early evening) have gone off too, then, with rising dread, it becomes apparent that he can't see any lights in the neighbouring houses.

Yep, he took out the power to half the street.

brilliant