Melanie and I moved into our house in the Woodside Park section of Silver Spring right after we got married in September, 1996. The place needed a bit of upkeep: some bathroom remodeling, a bunch of new windows, new driveway and stonework - hey, it was built in the 1930's. By 1998 we figured we'd taken care of most of the structural work and contracted the interior painting, including a nice multicolor wash of the foyer and dining room. The main items out of the way, we relaxed and began to enjoy the results of the work we'd put in. Here's the chronology of our confrontations with pinholes.

First Inklings: Late 1998 Melanie spots an occasional drip coming from the flourescent light fixture over the washing machine in the basement laundry room. It disappears by the time I investigate and we chalk it up to the dishwasher, which we never liked anyway. We paint the house.

Leak #1: Laundry Room, January 1999 There's a steady drip coming from the light fixture in the laundry room. I cut the power, remove the fixture, dismantle the dishwasher upstairs. It's dry. I frantically clear out the cabinets under the sink - dry again. Thinking the pipe to the outside spigot has burst, I move the clothes dryer and wedge a small mirror into the access door in the wall to take a look. Nothing. The ceiling paint is starting to bubble, making a line for the air vent. I grab an X-Acto knife and carefully cut a little rectangle around the vent, angle the mirror into the hole, and spot a puddle under a horizontal cold-water pipe running beneath the kitchen floor. I cut a larger, cautious rectangle under the section of pipe projecting the thin stream of water and try to wrap the leak with electrical tape. Water squirts around the edges of the tape. I put a bucket under the rectangle and call my dad. Dad recommends I install a saddle, a pair of rubber-backed metal plates clamped together with screws. The plates sandwich the pipe, using compression to seal the tiny hole. Problem solved, I put off patching the tidy holes in the ceiling - nobody sees the laundry room very much.

Leak #1.5: Laundry Room, May 1999 There hole in the laundry room ceiling is dripping again, but the water's not coming from the saddle I installed. The leak is hidden by a crossbeam now, and I call a plumber. Plumber #1 takes one look at my neat holes in the ceiling, says "We've gotta go in," and puts his fist through the drywall. He punches a few holes, pulls down a chunk of ceiling, and finds another pinhole, this one maybe a foot from my previous repair. I make a note to call my handyman to replace the ceiling.

Leak #2: Breakfast Room, May 1999 Not two weeks later I come home to find water streaming through the ceiling in the breakfast room adjoining the kitchen - it's right under the master bathroom. I forgo the X-Acto knife for a claw hammer and rip down a chunk of ceiling. I'm greeted by the nasty smell of old wet sand and a cascade of ancient razor blades. Ever wonder where all those non-disposable razors went when you stuck them in that slot in the medicine cabinet? That's right - they went straight to the floor of my breakfast room. The sand I'm at a loss to explain - I don't know what structural purpose that served. Anyway, Plumber #1's busy, so I call Plumber #2. I'm not nuts about this guy, but I can't see the leak myself. Then again neither can he - we do some exploratory surgery upstairs, taking a Saws-All to the hall closet to get at the shower pipes inside the wall but they're dry. Finally he spots the problem - another pinhole in a horizontal cold-water pipe under the bathroom floor, but it's hidden behind an air conditioning duct. I'm told to call an A/C guy to get the ductwork out of the way. Great. A/C Guy #1 arrives the next day, pulls down half the ceiling to get the duct out, and informs me that a large section of the pipe work is encased in concrete - apparently whoever laid down the original master bathroom tile set it in about six inches of concrete, poured around the pipes. Lucky for me this leak is in the exposed section, and when Plumber #2 returns the next day the section gets patched. I make a note to get Gary (my handyman) out here as soon as possible. Interestingly enough, Gary's been chasing pinholes around his house for the last year. He's very good at repair work, and always busy, so I put my name on the list and tack a light painter's dropcloth to the ceiling. It gives the room something of a pirate ship feel, and I kind of like it.

A few weeks later we're awakened by a giant crash in the middle of the night. The six-foot-wide mirror over the fireplace has peeled off the wall, done a backflip, and landed intact on the area rug. This has nothing to do with the plumbing, but it's a great story.

Homeowner's insurance will only cover the portion of the ceiling directly damaged by the leak, and definitely won't get involved with preventative measures like repiping. The whole breakfast room ceiling has to be replaced - not a really big deal (the room's pretty small), but coupled with the plumber and the air conditioning bills the insurance estimate doesn't quite cover the incident. Oh well. While Gary's here I ask him to redo the laundry room ceiling. Good as new.

Leak #3: Dining Room/Basement, November 1999 We really like this room Joy. I arrive home one evening to find a hard, steady drip falling into the basement. The water's wrecked some books and guitar lessons that are exposed on my music stand, and I move my guitars and recording equipment to higher ground. I lay down towels to soak up the water that's been drilled into the carpet and grab that claw hammer. The ceiling fights back; this is something much tougher than drywall, and I contemplate buying my own Saws-All. I cut out little holes and am met with floorboard - I'm sure this has to be the same pipe as the one in the adjacent laundry room, but I can't see it anywhere. I try to cut off the main water supply but the shutoff valve doesn't quite work - it's old and gunky and won't close all the way. The only way I can get the leaking to stop is to close the valve as much as I can and leave the tap running in the utility sink by the washing machine - the water goes up one pipe and right back down through the faucet. I call Plumber #3. Signs point to something wrong with the second bathroom upstairs, the one above the dining room, but Plumber #3 suspects the bathtub. His advice is to stop using the second bathroom and see if the problem clears itself up. It doesn't. Melanie and I watch the paint begin to bubble at the moulding and long streaks of water run down the wall. This is the one room we really, really didn't want to see damaged, as we spent a long time (and a lot of money on a decorator) getting the kind of paint effect we were looking for. In an effort to better close off the main valve I employ a monkey wrench and rip the handle off the spigot. I can still turn the valve with a pair of pliers held just so, but we're headed to San Francisco for the weekend and I can't schedule a repair job until the next week. I leave the tap running in the utility sink and spend the trip hoping the sink doesn't back up. It doesn't (not until a year later, but that's another story).

Still haven't repainted Holes in the basement ceiling My new plumber shuts the water off at the street and installs a new master valve. Through the closet wall I can hear the pinhole hissing (horizontal cold-water pipe again) - we hack a hole in the dining room ceiling and I suggest that we just repipe the whole bathroom, but there's more concrete here and I'm told to wait until the cause of these county-wide leaks is determined before doing any preventative work - no sense putting fresh pipes in the same peril as the existing set. The water damage has warped the wall board near the floor and may have affected the hardwood floor itself. As I'm on the phone with the insurance agent I hear (another) crash and end the call; the swinging door between the kitchen and dining room has fallen off, the hinges apparently pulling out of the weakened wood.

We get a decent insurance settlement this time. Gary comes by around Christmas week and fights like crazy with the basement ceiling, but eventually we're back to square one.

Leak #4: Basement Hall, July 2000 In the summer of 2000 we notice... liquid... on the linoleum tile of the basement near an interior wall. The puddles are near the cats' litter box, and this wouldn't be the first time a cat has punished us by using the wall, so we mop up and move on. Eventually the puddle is too big to blame on a cat. Rinse and repeat. I call Plumber #3 again, and he removes a four-foot length of horizontal cold-water pipe with maybe half a dozen visible blisters - I look down the inside of the pipe and see where several more pinholes would eventually have formed. His recommendation - leave the ceiling down and wait to see what the WSSC's investigation brings. A big chunk of his work these days is handling this problem - some days he'll do several pinhole jobs. There's clearly something going on across Montgomery and Prince George's Counties, and it may be the case that a lot of houses will have to be fixed at once. I wait, and in the meantime I fill out WSSC's online pinhole report form. The Washington Post has started running stories about the mysterious leaks. People are starting to have their homeowner's policies cancelled. I keep my mouth shut.

Leak #5?: Foyer, January 2001 Something's wrong Leaving for work one Monday morning I notice a hairline crack in the foyer wall - here we go again, it seems. The plaster is beginning to swell near the ceiling. I place a call to my plumber. He recommends a conservative approach (he still doesn't trust that upstairs bathtub) and I agree - no sense re-cratering the ceiling before we know more about the source of the problem. I can't hear any hissing or dripping through the wall, so I just stop using the second bathroom. The swelling abates... for now. But I remember that first leak crept up on us slowly in 1998. So I wait, and check the ceiling every time I pass.

I registered WashingtonAreaPinholes.com the day after I discovered the foyer cracks. I'm not losing my mind, but not being able to trust my own house is very distressing. I'm constantly shooting glances to the ceiling - was that crack always there?! - and the idea of gutting my house to repipe after all the money we spent painting pains me. I know a lot of Washington area households are going through this same misery, and if my story strikes a chord with some of those going through this process, then I've managed to make something positive of this. If you've got a similar story, contact me at chuck@washingtonareapinholes.com and I'll post it here for the next pinhole sufferers to read. January 2001

Leak #5.: Breakfast Room, March 2001 Tears of Joy What tips me off is the cracking paint on the yellow runner along the floor. Looks like the pipe below the master bath - the one above the A/C duct, encased in concrete - is busy again. I leave a message with my plumber. I never hear back. The next day I hammer a hole in the ceiling to let the water drip straight out instead of detouring through the wallpaper. I really don't care anymore - when I run out of buckets I'll call another plumber. (04/05/2001)

Pilot hole

Set in stone

Duct down again

Call it a draw The leak is deep in the bathroom tile concrete. The concrete saturates in early May; water starts to flow down the wall again. I put together a tinfoil funnel to route the drip into the room but now I'm out of buckets, so I get Plumber #4 to come out - it's a $1300 job, with all the rerouting around the concrete. Thankfully we're able to localize the damage to the breakfast room... for a brief shining moment it looks like we're going to have to go through the living room ceiling. (05/25/2001)

Leak #6: Laundry Room again again again, Christmas 2001 I finally get Gary to come out and replace the breakfast room ceiling in late fall of 2001. I notice some staining of the wall in the laundry room but blame it on some of my misguided plumbing escapades of years past - with a catchpan under the master shower and a ceiling in place the staining should stop. Ha. Just before Christmas I notice the stain has evolved into a complex herringbone-and-pustule pattern. Then I notice the mess in the ceiling by the light fixture. Gimme the hammer.

This little bastard is clearly visible and accessible, and with the tenacious assistance of our new cat I clamp it down pretty quickly. I say it again - I really don't care anymore. And I feel fine. (1/6/2002)

Leak #8: Breakfast Room, cold water riser for a change, May 2003 I haven't forgotten number 7. Back in December I tore out some of the basement ceiling to get at a persistent leak, one that predated my main run of pinholes and that all the plumbers said looked like a sweaty drain stack. Turned out it was probably my first pinhole ever... I've seen stains from this thing since 1997, I think. It had closed itself up for the most part, and only dripped a little bit. I wicked away the water with a paper towel and left it for another time. Last weekend it started to smell damp in the basement and I decided to patch up that old leak. I wasn't prepared to find water dripping down from upstairs. Hammer time. I'm really repiping this year - we're getting a new kitchen as a reward for all this misery. I started the demolition work last night, with my micro-managing assistant checking my work. Can't wait for that fresh pipe. (5/22/2003)

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