Yay! My laundry room flooded!

[Adam]

There's really no better start to a day than a cheerful "I don't mean to alarm you, but the laundry room is flooded and the furnace is off" at the crack of dawn from your roommate.

So, after ten minutes mopping the floor, five minutes restarting the furnace, half an hour crawling around the laundry room trying in vain to figure out what leaked, and running the washing machine a complete cycle to make sure it wasn't the culprit, I still have no idea what happened. The washer isn't leaking. Every hose and pipe fitting in the room is bone dry, and nothing is disconnected. The water heater, and the floor around it are also dry. My best guess at this point is that something in the pipes under the house backed up through the drain on the laundry room floor, although I'm not sure why that would cause the furnace to go out.

I did notice some water along the side of the furnace and I apparently have something called a condensing furnace that drains water off through a PVC pipe that runs form the side of the furnace over to the floor drain, but I can't imagine that there was that much water condensed inside the furnace that all drained out at once.

So, anyone know anything about plumbing or furnaces? Any suggestions as to where I should look?

[Pinecone]

We once had the drain for the furnace over flow some, but not a lot. Turned out lime had built up from the humidifier on the furnace plus the condensation added water to it. The lime had coated the sand the drain was running into. Made itself a water proof little limestone barrier, ain't nature cute?

If your pipe is open to a sewer system I've no idea unless their pump went out!

[cappuccino]

Was the water clear or dirty? Was it actual sewage?

[Dingfod]

It could be that the washing machine water pump is going bad, the pump shaft seal is leaking. It would only leak when the pump runs, which is only when it drains the washer tub.

[Adam]

Thanks for the ideas.

It's clear water, capp.

Dingfod, wouldn't that have caused a leak when I ran the machine this morning? I let it go through its entire cycle, including draining the tub.

That's interesting, Pinecone...I do have some insanely hard water, so lime build up is not out of the question. I had a softener put in about a year ago, but I wouldn't be surprised if such a barrier had already built up.

[Dingfod]

Good point, but if it were the drain, running the washing machine again would've most likely have backed it up again.

Our floor (carpet in our office and adjacent den) was getting wetted by our water heated only we couldn't actually catch it in the act until it finally rusted all the way through and was leaking steadily. What it was doing before was only leaking a little during the heating cycle, when the metal expanded. How old is your water heater?

[Adam]

The water heater, if the word of the previous owner and the service tag pasted to the side are to be believed, was installed in 2004, less than a year before I bought the place.

[Dingfod]

It's probably not that then.

[cappuccino]

Your roommate probably filled several buckets up with water and dumped it all over the floor just for kicks.

[viscousmemories]

Sorry about the troubles, Adam.

I wonder if the furnace has a safety mechanism that makes it shut down if flooded. (I'm assuming that you would've noticed if it had a pilot light that got snuffed).

[ChuckF]

Originally Posted by Adam

I did notice some water along the side of the furnace and I apparently have something called a condensing furnace that drains water off through a PVC pipe that runs form the side of the furnace over to the floor drain, but I can't imagine that there was that much water condensed inside the furnace that all drained out at once.

So, anyone know anything about plumbing or furnaces? Any suggestions as to where I should look?

Here is my crazy half-informed theory.

Your condensation furnace is probably an electronic ignition "90+" (high efficiency) furnace, especially if it's newish. Flue gas from the combustion are sent through a second heat exchanger where they cool and water condenses out. That water usually drains down into a drain under the house. That drain could have backed up and sent that same water back up to another part of the basement. It may have evaporated and condensed again on the electronic ignition wiring and bogged it down. How much water was it?

[Adam]

Originally Posted by ChuckF

Your condensation furnace is probably an electronic ignition "90+" (high efficiency) furnace, especially if it's newish. Flue gas from the combustion are sent through a second heat exchanger where they cool and water condenses out. That water usually drains down into a drain under the house. That drain could have backed up and sent that same water back up to another part of the basement. It may have evaporated and condensed again on the electronic ignition wiring and bogged it down. How much water was it?

That's pretty close to my current operating theory, minus the basement part, since I'm on a slab. It was...I dunno...a big puddle? Enough to throughly soak the throw rug in the laundry room and the two towels I used to mop it up.

[ChuckF]

Huh...that seems like a LOT of water for my theory.

Better put some Dran-o in the furnace, just to be sure.

[Adam]

The current plan is just to Dran-O everything I can fit a bottle into. Furnace, washing machine, roommate, etc.

[Adam]

So, for those of you anxiously awaiting the action packed conclusion to Volume Two: Wet Linoleum, it turns out that the culprit is the plastic tube that runs from the water softener in the laundry room out to the salt tank in the garage. It passes right behind the furnace, and the guy who installed it apparently thought that it would be sufficient to only use a cable tie to keep it off the furnace pipe on one side, as long as he tucked it under the...uh...metal foil stuff...around the air vent on the other side. Yah, that worked well. It's been sitting up against the furnace pipe and, now that I've been running the heat, it's melted through, so when the softener runs its regeneration cycle with the salt tank a couple nights a week, it leaks everywhere.

[seebs]

Awesome debugging technique!

[livius drusus]

What's a salt tank?

[seebs]

I think water softeners use them.

[BrotherMan]

A water softener works by having a tank that is filled with salt, and a tanks full of a special resin. The resin can remove the hardness from the water, but requires that it be regenerated by washing it with salt brine during regeneration. Water softener are either demand based (after a certain number of gallons have been processed), or time based (e.g. twice week). Regeneration happens in the early hours of the morning, depending on how you set it.

From Sears

(Odd. Wouldn't let me put that in a quote.)

[Adam]

Yah, what BrotherMan said. I don't know the exact details, but a softener removes carbon and magnesium from water by running it through a resin that those particular molecules get stuck on, and washing it with salt water removes them.

As for my debugging technique, it essentially boiled down to being awake at 2 am on a night when the regeneration cycle ran. OK, if you want to get technical, it boiled down to being out in a bar at that time and getting a "Hey, your laundry room is flooding again and I think I know why" call from the roommate.

[Pinecone]

Originally Posted by Adam

OK, if you want to get technical, it boiled down to being out in a bar at that time and getting a "Hey, your laundry room is flooding again and I think I know why" call from the roommate.

Now you kids that are all hanging out in the wine and drinks threads can take a from this.

Sherlock is out and in his cups

and Watson solves the mystery and gets all the