Flooded a client's basement trying to flip a house fast last weekend

I was rushing to get this old foreclosure in Tucson cleaned up for a quick sale. Hooked up the garden hose to test the plumbing and forgot to check if a drain line was actually connected. Water poured out behind a wall for 20 minutes before I heard it dripping downstairs. Cost me $600 in drywall repair and a water extraction crew. Anyone else have a simple mistake blow up a quick flip timeline?

2 comments

2 Comments

laura_wright18d ago

Oh man that's rough. I've done something similar but on a smaller scale, left a toilet filler hose dangling into a bucket while I went to grab lunch and came back to find the bucket had tipped over and water had soaked half the subfloor in this 1920s bungalow I was working on. The worst part was trying to dry out all that old wood without it warping, ended up running fans and a dehumidifier for three straight days before I could even think about laying new flooring. And of course that pushed everything back by a week and a half because I had to wait for the lumber yard to order in this weird size of tongue and groove that matched the original.

blakem1318d ago

Did you notice any weird smells before the water showed up downstairs? I had a similar thing with a flipped house in Phoenix where the previous owner capped a drain with duct tape and it failed slow over a week. Ended up pulling out moldy drywall two rooms over because I didn't catch it fast enough. That $600 fix sounds light compared to what I dropped.