Twice in same week I've drilled or nailed a pipe!

[Phil]

Last Sunday afternoon while alone in an empty flat installing an electric shower I was drilling through into the airing cupboard from the top corner of the bathroom, I had to angle the drill bit to avoid drilling into the soil pipe that came down from the upstairs flat that was in the corner of the airing cupboard.
I felt the drill bit go through the wall and then......WHOOOOSH!!! Water erupted everywhere, all across the ceiling, out the light fitting, through the hole I'd drilled and all over the airing cupboard. Turns out hiding behind the soil pipe was a black alkathene water main feeding the upstairs flat!

I couldn't see it and at this point I didn't know where the water was coming from so I got on my stepladder and thrust my hand up behind the soil pipe and tried to grab hold of whatever had just ruined my relaxing Sunday afternoon couple of hours work.....by this stage I was completely soaked through to my underpants and water was pooling up on the carpets.

I threw myself under the kitchen sink and turned the stoptap off but the water didn't stop so I got back up the step ladder and tore shelves out and the ceiling away with my bare hands and managed to pull the pipe to one side and cut through it with my shears and kinked it over and thank God it stopped.

I then had to let go of it again to grab my Duck tape to hold it kinked and then run outside and (in the dark) find and turn off the outside stoptap which took four flats out of play.

for the next 3 hours I was frantically wet vac ing up and pricking holes in ceilings and fixing the pipe.....a total nightmare.

Then on Monday night at another job I was called in to deal with knocking pipes under the landing floorboards, I took up the board and underneath it contained 2x22mm pipes and 2x15mm pipes, ring main and alarm cables.

I did what I needed to do and at 8:30pm proceded to care fully nail it back down (all my screws were left at my bathroom job and customer didnt have any) I had one more nail to put back in into the existing nail hole in the board and you guessed it.....WHOOSH! ....straight through the alarm cable, straight through the ring main cable and the right through the central heating pipe! Bullseye triple whammy!! I could have cried!!

Another two hours of stress!

 

[lame plumber]

hee hee hee, been there, customer with leaky rad, husband had stopped the leak!! down on my knees in gloomy kitchen and knocked said rad feed to see the end drop out of the lockshield and black water shooting everywhere, the lady of the house scarpered screaming leaving me with thumb over pipe trying too stop flow moving towards nice cream carpets in lounge through open plan arch!!! No tools, so bent pipe in half rushed to van for pipe slice and pushfit cap to cut and stop. Flow stopped and off I went home to change, lady of the house miffed I wouldnt sort it first, me not worried as I said it would give her time to mop up first

 

[Phil]

The worse thing is having a toolbox full of stuff but its too far out of reach to hook your foot over it and drag it towards you before you drown so you have you whatever is to hand.

 

[buckley plumb]

been there last wk mate turned the nut on a combination valve prv to free it off to change it and the prv blew off it was on one of those nuts with an eccentric hole turned through90degrees luckily my bucket was at hand till soaked carpet

 

[Leo21]

Last Sunday afternoon while alone in an empty flat installing an electric shower I was drilling through into the airing cupboard from the top corner of the bathroom, I had to angle the drill bit to avoid drilling into the soil pipe that came down from the upstairs flat that was in the corner of the airing cupboard.
I felt the drill bit go through the wall and then......WHOOOOSH!!! Water erupted everywhere, all across the ceiling, out the light fitting, through the hole I'd drilled and all over the airing cupboard. Turns out hiding behind the soil pipe was a black alkathene water main feeding the upstairs flat!

I couldn't see it and at this point I didn't know where the water was coming from so I got on my stepladder and thrust my hand up behind the soil pipe and tried to grab hold of whatever had just ruined my relaxing Sunday afternoon couple of hours work.....by this stage I was completely soaked through to my underpants and water was pooling up on the carpets.

I threw myself under the kitchen sink and turned the stoptap off but the water didn't stop so I got back up the step ladder and tore shelves out and the ceiling away with my bare hands and managed to pull the pipe to one side and cut through it with my shears and kinked it over and thank God it stopped.

I then had to let go of it again to grab my Duck tape to hold it kinked and then run outside and (in the dark) find and turn off the outside stoptap which took four flats out of play.

for the next 3 hours I was frantically wet vac ing up and pricking holes in ceilings and fixing the pipe.....a total nightmare.

Then on Monday night at another job I was called in to deal with knocking pipes under the landing floorboards, I took up the board and underneath it contained 2x22mm pipes and 2x15mm pipes, ring main and alarm cables.

I did what I needed to do and at 8:30pm proceded to care fully nail it back down (all my screws were left at my bathroom job and customer didnt have any) I had one more nail to put back in into the existing nail hole in the board and you guessed it.....WHOOSH! ....straight through the alarm cable, straight through the ring main cable and the right through the central heating pipe! Bullseye triple whammy!! I could have cried!!

Another two hours of stress!

Dude! I've Been at this a while and I just can't top that. Is it wrong that I'm happy someone has worse luck than me?

 

[oz-plumber]

I would be very careful for the next couple of day.

All things - good and bad - happen in sets of 3.

One you get over the next bad thing - you could be on a 'good luck streak'

 

[Ermintrude]

I've had a few 2.5mm2 cables

 

[cdodds2004]

I fell out of a loft last year because the hatch was tiny and customers ladders were awkward. only problem was I had a wet vac full of brown water! BOOOSH all over cream carpet! I could of cried and really hurt myself lol! 3 hours of wet vacing and loads more water down the carpet actually came clean. never let it dry lol

 

[plumben]

Screwed my tile baton on the wall after taking care no to screw the wires id clipped out the way, straight through the cooker cable that the plaster had decided to yank on in the kitchen and pulled all my clips off

 

[Mike Jackson]

I've got quite a track record of hitting things.

It started when I was about ten and decided to "help" my father by nailing a board back down. 5 nails and every one went through a pipe.

Since then I've drilled and sawed many pipes and cables, normally because they were in the wrong place but occasionally through tiredness.

A couple that stick in my memory are

1. Taking some boards up in a mates flat. Set the saw depth and buzz through. Hissing and a smell starts coming trough the boards. I was down the stairs, into the basement and had the gas off before you could blink. Quite an achievement as I could barely walk due to the arthroscopy on my knee the previous week. When I got the board up I found a lead gas pipe, wiped a repair on it and Bobs your uncle (this was about 30 years ago).

2. Last knockings of a heating job. 4 of us there to get it done. Set the circular saw to take a few boards up to get the blow off out. Stop slipped as I cut and I went straight through the heating flow and return. I was not popular at 5 on a Friday.

All that is trumped by a labourer we had working for us a good few years ago. We used to sub to the Post Office and one of the things we did was put post boxes up for them. We were putting a lamp box up and i left the labourer digging the hole whilst I shot off to get the ballast etc. When I got back I found him standing over the hole scratching his head. Apparently the "tree root" that he'd tried to chop had crackled when he tried to cut it with the mattock. He was standing there with the mattock under the "root" and he said listen and levered the "root". It did indeed crackle, just as you'd expect a 2" diameter 415 volt electric cable to do. I called the leccy board out who initially informed us that it would be chargeable but back tracked when I showed them the plan, that they had supplied, showing the cable 6 foot away under the pavement. Apparently they also had to pay compensation to the petrol station that we had cut off.

On a similar note I almost went through the roof of an underground car park whilst removing a pillar box. The PO asked us to remove a pillar box situated near the entrance to Hastings Pier. Pillar boxes are set around 24" into the ground so can be a lot of work to get out. I attacked round the box with the breaker and was finding the going quite hard and I was hitting reinforcing bars so I decided to try breaking out closer to the box first. I got a couple of inches down and hit a steel rim. Odd I thought as I uncovered some bolts. Then a thought occurred and I walked along the street a bit. Yes, I was right, the box was sitting above the entrance to the underground car park. The box had been cut short and fitted with a rim that was rawl bolted to the concrete. Luckily I'd only got about 4" down before I'd given up.

 

[rocketmanbkk]

Nasty, I don't like reading posts like this.

 

[Dotty]

My brother is the king of hitting pipework and cables.

His best one was where the screws he decided to use were barely long enough to go through the boards.

One screw just touched a pipe. It took three weeks of people walking about for it to pierce a pipe. He wasn't popular......