Oh the damage a little leak can do

We developed a mystery leak in our living room ceiling on Tuesday.  Actually I noticed a small spot on the ceiling late Monday evening.  There had just been a quick, but freakishly robust wind and torrential rain storm an hour before.  I naturally thought that the wind had somehow drove water behind the siding and that it had managed to find its way between the 1st and 2nd floors of the house. So when it was still there on Tuesday morning, and had grown a little, I still thought it would dry out over the course of the day.  That didn't happen.  By Tuesday evening, the leak had grown substantially and was dripping through the sheet rock into buckets.  By Wednesday morning, the spot had expanded, as had the dripping, and now there was a new bubble forming in a new location.

Clearly whatever was leaking had picked up the pace.  The problem was there is only a bedroom above the living room; no bathroom anywhere near the spot where the leak had manifested.  We do have baseboard heating, but the pipe that is exposed in the bedroom above was dry; no sign of leaking.  There is a segment of pipe that runs between the floors, but it seemed too far away to be the culprit.  We were perplexed. But there was no other answer.  It had to be the pipe.  So we called in the plumber.  He showed up Wednesday morning and had some fun ripping out the ceiling as he traced the water to the source.  It was the pipe.  Whoever sheet rocked the ceiling years ago had drilled a screw right below the pipe.  We're not sure whether the screw just barely dented the pipe and over the years it has rusted and created the pin hole, or whether the two differing metals had set off a chemical reaction that slowly corroded the pipe. The end result was the same; a slow leak that had created a large pool of water that had taken some time to soak its way through the sheet rock.

The joys of home-ownership.