So that infamous sound had been lurking on the other side of the bathroom wall for the last four days. At first I was in denial - "I'm sure that's nothing..." So I ignored it. Jeffrey actually checked after day one, but found nothing. So the nearly inaudible noise continued to haunt all who entered our bathroom.

Yesterday Jeffrey checked again.

"Brandon, I've got to show you something. Come here."

"What is it, Jeffrey?"

"You've gotta see this."

I got up from my comfortable seat in front of the fireplace where I'd been studying and followed him down the stairs. On the way he continued talking:

"So about four days ago I noticed this strange sound while I was in the bathroom."

"Oh no!" I thought, "There's a leak..."

Sure enough, he opened the door to the utility room (located behind the bathroom) to reveal a small thunderstorm in progress.

It turns out that it was the result of a pinhole in a 3/4" elbow just above the hot water tank. This single pipe feeds all the hot water to the rest of the house. It's under quite a bit of pressure, so this pinhole was emitting a hairline stream of water up into the ceiling - hence the rain storm. And parts of the ceiling just outside the utility room were showing signs of the squall inside.

So we shut off the water, wrapped a rag around the pipe, and set up a makeshift drain system (using a dust pan, block of wood and a string) to control the damage until we could fix the joint properly. We turned the water back on and one of the guys called a friend who is a plumber and arranged to borrow the necessary tools for the job.

So first thing this morning I set about fixing this thing. Torch, flux, solder, pipe cutter, sandpaper, pipe brush, all these things took me back several years to when I'd been helping my family build our home in Colorado. I actually had a blast!

I shut off the water and drained the system. The I sweat bullets while cutting the pipe, fearing that somehow I made a mistake and the water from every pipe in the house was going to back-drain into my face when I got the pipe cut. Fortunately, it didn't. Then I heated the joint and pulled the elbow off. I cleaned and prepared the replacement pieces, fitted them together and soldered them. Then I cleaned up while the pipes cooled. Again, I sweated bullets as I turned the water back on, hoping there wasn't a leak - there wasn't. That's actually one of the most fun things I've done in a while - 45 minutes and a huge sense of accomplishment!

Now the thunderstorm has passed, but the ceiling is still reminding us of what happened. I could fix it, but I think we'll stand as a memorial for a while...