Terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad-day!

Picture this, if you will...

A peaceful Sunday morning. The sun just beginning to finish its early morning shadows, the morning dew, long gone. Mid-summer, yet a nice cool breeze floods the surrounding air. You think to your-self... "Today is going to be a good day!"

FTFO

Quickly, before the noon heat decided to break, I figured I would mow the front yard. Bam, done! Knocked that off in a quick hour. Ambitious, I decided to see why our AC system wasn't operating normally. I suspected that mice had chewed through the soft-lines, and turned it into a personal highway to the warm attic.

With a flashlight in hand, and a peculiar stance, I weaved through the rafters. I didn't see anything suspicious, until I reached the second portion of the attic, above our main living-room. My inspection for a leaky feed-line, stopped once I saw that the return-line was collapsed. It looked like a giant had stepped on it.

I attempted to fathom what might have caused such an odd thing to happen. (For those who do not know about soft-lines, they are like dryer exhaust lines. There is a long spring-style winding encased in plastic. That keeps the soft-line from folding and collapsing, so it can weave into odd places.)

Looking around, I could not find any holes, so I made one. Hehe... how else are you going to see inside? I reached in, and felt around. There was no inner support wall, well, it was there, just not where I poked the hole. So I cut the hole bigger, reached inside, and eventually found the inner support. The plastic had torn, and the pressure had sucked the inner case deep inside. Since it is a giant spring, it just bunched up, and fell flat.

The best way to imagine it... Take a roll of quarters, dump half of them out. Pinch the tube flat, but not completely flat. Let the quarters inside, slide to the end where it is flat, but not fall out. That is what the inside looked like, sucked flat, and the spring all twisted and flat, running the length of the tube. Ok, easy enough to fix... Unfortunately, I don't do contract work anymore, so my tools are limited. I don't have a 16-inch soft-line union on hand. (That is what joins two sections of soft-lines. You need to put a piece inside or you have nothing to bond them with.)

Hehe, Time for my ghetto-quick-fix. DUCK-TAPE, the cheap stuff. Not fun to work with, but I didn't have any other options at the moment. All patched-up and ready to go, so I got out of the quickly heating attic, and played with the house vents. (They were all whistling from the pressure, now that the line wasn't crushed.) Yahoo, the AC actually turned off for once. Normally it would run all day, and never get below 81F.

OK, I headed to Home-Depot, picked up a union, some real tape, and got a coffee. (Yes, my tooth is feeling better now, I am on antibiotics.) I come home, and everyone is asleep, in the nice chilly house. The stuff was set aside, for later. I didn't want to climb up there again in the noon heat.

I am not sure why, but I had an urge to "Check" the patch-job, and wanted to see if the union I had purchased was the right one. If it was not, I could take it back before they closed. That was where the nightmare begins!

I found it hard to breathe, the air was so hot, it felt like it was burning my lungs. This was going to be a quick check. Um, No!

While I was up there, I noticed the ghetto tape job, well, worked like a ghetto tape job... It had come undone, and was sucking in full hot attic air. Just a quick hit with some of the new foil-tape should fix it until I can get back again. Carefully I pulled back the insulation, and started to feel for the hole I could hear. Suddenly, I heard water???

I had snapped a brittle PVC water-line that runs to our fridge. In a panic, with water spraying all over the rafters, I flew out of the attic. Frantically I searched for the water shut-off valves. All I could find was the valves to the washer and the water-heater. WTF, some idiot reinstalled new water lines, without adding the water-shutoff valves!

I had to run outside, and dig a foot down to the water shutoff line buried in the front yard. Sure, it needs a valve key to turn the damn thing! Where the hell am I going to find a valve key? (It is a giant T bar that has a special key to fit the water valve. Not a standard twist valve.)

Great, the house and attic is flooding, water pouring out the AC vents, walls, and ceiling... and now I have to try to make a damn valve-key! Lucky for me, one of the neighbors had one. (Don't aks why.)

By the time the water was turned off, it was raining a storm in our house, and small rodents would drown if they didn't know how to swim. Quick, where is the wet-dry vacuum?!?! Hehe... Um... it works!

OMG... Now it is past noon. The attic is like 190F, the house doesn't have AC or water, there is rain slowly dripping through every nail holding up the ceiling... I am never doing a favor again! (Nor do I think they will ask me to do a favor again!)

After suffering for six hours without AC and water, I was able to cool the attic down enough to get to work. The AC works, but I have not tried to turn the water on yet. I hope I am a good plumber!