Without going into too much detail, my son receives a few hours of therapy in our house for speech. On Wednesdays, he sees 2 therapists back to back. This week the mess outside was too much to handle and a bit dangerous with big machines and deep trenches being dug, so I canceled the Wednesday sessions the night before. On Tuesday our water was turned off and I still went to wash my hands a few times a day, once even getting the foamy soap on my hands before I remembered there was no water. So on Wednesday we ended up leaving for the day, first to a play our daughter had at school, then making the decision not to come home after and instead meeting Tony for lunch at his office. Apparently, during this time there was a major electrical problem at our house! When the guys working on our foundation went to cut the water line to reconnect it elsewhere, they were jolted by a shock of electricity! They immediately called the electrician and he came to fix it. I don't understand how it all works exactly, but the way it was explained to me was that the wrong wire was grounded which caused a powerful power surge in our house and had we been home, anything that we touched (that conducts electricity) would've basically fried us. Dead. This is where I can't help but think 'if only' I had kept the therapists appointments we would have been home during this time our house was "hot". In only I hadn't been so annoyed the day before how much I took our water for granted and kept going to the faucets for different purposes, I wouldn't have decided to spend the day out. If only I hadn't decided last minute to meet Tony for lunch, then stayed there a little longer than planned. I was really shaken up by all of this and I couldn't sleep all night that night. I unplugged everything in our kids' rooms, checked our appliances all night, and was even terrified to jump in the shower before bed (fastest shower I've ever had)!
Our electrical issue pretty much fried a few of our appliances; our espresso machine, AC, cable boxes, Xbox, light bulbs, lamps, phone, microwave, and probably other things we haven't discovered yet. It also caused a small fire in our master bedroom. A power surge plug was smoldering after the power was restored and I discovered it when I went into our room and walked into a cloud of smoke. I ran outside with the kids and the guys doing our foundation ran in and turned off the power again, just in case. Our neighbor Dave across the street is a retired fire marshall and he came in here to check everything out. He found the power strip and said it was safe to come back inside. Just to be safe the electrician came back and made sure everything was fine. The power strip had been slowly burning since the initial surge and we hadn't realized because no one had gone in that room. (PSA: make sure your smoke detectors have fresh batteries in them once a year, we failed at this!)
Anyway, I feel so lucky that it was all material loss and the guys cutting the water line are ok, just a little startled and that Luke and I were spared from it all because we were gone all day. Thank God! I'm disappointed in the people who wired this house to begin with. There could have been a huge tragedy! So I leave you with a few pics of the visible damage. It doesn't look like much, but the fire was really the least of the problems.
And here's a photo of our beautiful footings! :)
Just keeping this construction process real. You never know what might come up! Hopefully no more surprises, just good (steady) progress!
Another PSA: Always keep your house clean, you never know who will need to run into your master bedroom in case of an emergency! I also learned this the hard way. :/
Until next time,
-Cynthia
