How Much a Burst Pipe Costs

Blood Flood money#

Let me record the interim financial damage from the flood.

America is the kind of country where if you don’t have money, you’re screwed — even if you’re a thousand percent in the right. I didn’t flood anyone, I’m not at fault for anything, but right now I have to deal with the consequences of the flood out of my own pocket, and then (someday, maybe, hopefully) the insurance company will get around to reimbursing something after a few months. And there aren’t even really “flood consequences” to deal with — it’s just that we need somewhere to live during the uncertain time while our home is being restored.

First Airbnb#

We live in a small town with no hotels and almost no short-term rental options. There weren’t many options at all once you apply the filters “right now” and “we have a cat.”

In a panic I picked one nearby, thinking “at least we’ll have a whole two-story house to ourselves” — turned out to be a shack on chicken legs. Or rather the witch’s house from Hansel and Gretel: beautiful pictures online, the stench of an uninhabited and none-too-clean place in real life. A wasteland instead of a garden out back, random nails and screws scattered around (rusty and otherwise), window AC units that make sleeping a special kind of joy, loud neighbors across the yard throwing a party past midnight, dishes that were somehow… unpleasant to use for no clear reason, a grand piano in the living room, peeling paint…

We got out after living there about a week (didn’t move in right away and took our sweet time leaving) and managed to get a partial refund for the unused days from Airbnb. I also tried to leave the most expressive review possible — a shame the limit is only 1,000 characters.

Second Airbnb#

This time I had to forget about distance and choose on quality. The “closest” decent option turned out to be 20 minutes by car (or 30 by bike) — so dropping the kid off at school is no longer a five-minute stroll but twenty minutes there and twenty back, park and unpark, two hours out of every day: an hour in the morning and an hour at noon.

Very few complaints about the place itself (people smoke a lot), space is tight, but at least it’s clean and quiet. The location though — above a busy road that’s also under construction, next to a new apartment complex going up, nothing to do, nowhere to walk, a stark contrast between the cleanliness of the complex (with a heated pool and mini golf) and the grimy back alleys of what’s basically an industrial zone — a scrap metal yard nearby, weeds and broken glass on the sidewalks…

At this point we’ve run out of energy for moving. Finding something else and hauling ourselves there — no strength left for that. We’re getting used to what we have and slowly extending our stay as the (discouraging) repair timelines keep coming in.

Electricity#

A grand in electricity racked up by the fans and dehumidifiers that kept the apartment at almost 40°C for a couple of weeks. “Verbally” they said “of course we’ll reimburse everything, just keep all the receipts” — but right now that grand has to come out of my pocket.

Let’s tally it up#

ChatGPT says: forget about insurance reimbursing your time, effort, and stress — except in the rare case where you file and win a separate lawsuit.

So two hours a day for a month (or who knows how much longer) — nobody is going to give that back or pay for it. I also really want to hope that these savings and credit cards whose money I’m “burning through” right now will come back to me, rather than another “here’s a fig, take it and be grateful” along the lines of “why did you rent something so expensive, you should have found a dog kennel somewhere — our limit is $3,000, here, chew on that.”

So, as of today:

Total: 18k. What a disaster.

PS#

The answer to “why not just move away from there for good” will come when this post gets a thousand likes…