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I have water coming from my ceiling....fast.... It's the second story ceiling over the foyer. It looks like the ceiling is about to break open. Doing what I can to catch the water and protect furniture & wood floors - but how do I get it to stop? I think it is coming from a pvc pipe that goes/comes from the a.c. up there - so who do I call in the middle of the night or what can I do?

Thanks.


update: Yep, the ceiling just 'opened' - like a slit in it. I'm hoping that chandelier doesn't fall - but I suppose it is connected to a stud and not the ceiling, right?

If it's the PVC pipe that drains the AC, it is clogged and needs to be opened up. If your lucky it's clogged near the end and you can unclog it w/ something...

Lighting should not be attached to ceiling material, but too stud or joist.

If you know where the cold supply enters the house, there is usually a small stop-dingle (outside) beneath an iron plate around 5" (125mm) square. It may be deepish, but if you can turn that off, it will stop the water actually getting into the house, so the problem can be rectified.

I hope the damage isn't too bad..

Rog

Er..... Yes. The anti-bad language brigade has struck.

In the message above, I wrote (now seperated by full stops):-

stop-c.o.c.k. - which is a technical term!

Rog

Man. Hope this came out as well as possible.

It's nearly 6 am here so things should have resolved themselves one way or another, I'm afraid. So this may be a post-mortum, and/or thoughts for the future.

Just in case, let me offer another possibility (my a/c puts out water, of course, but not what I'd call "fast"). In some of today's houses the water heater is in the attic to save space. It typically sits in a shallow "pan" to catch leaks. It also has a pvc pipe to the outside. If the tank opens up too quickly for the pvc pipe's capacity (or the pipe is plugged) the pan overflows, and then through the ceiling.

Shutting off the water supply will help, but there's a bunch of water in the tank already. I think mine is 80 gallons. There's a fitting/faucet on the bottom of the tank it can connect to a garden hose to drain the tank. If ever faced with a rapidly leaking tank this can offer added ability to drain.

Sorry I was "away" and couldn't help.

Update:

It seems most of the water is coming from soaked insulation. I removed a bunch of it last night and that slowed the pour to a drip every 3 seconds. Hopefully I'll be able to call someone out to take a look at it within the next hour or so.

I do have 2 hot water heaters up there and checked them and they are fine............ it appears, so I think the guy who installed one of my new ac units a couple of months ago must have not sealed a pipe or something and a slow leak started when the ac began being used a month ago. So I think the slow drip soaked the insulation under the pipe to the point that the ceiling could no longer hold back the water and so it started coming through the ceiling.

That's my best guess anyway.

Unless you have a water-coooled air conditioner, the most likely cause is the drainage line that routes condensation from the cooling coils to a drain of some kind. If this line gets clogged, the condensation pan that collects this water will overflow. Usually the flow rate is pretty low, so you won't notice a problem until everything under the pan is so soaked that it can no longer absorb the drippage. If you can find the outlet to this line, sometimes you can just blow out the clog.

Sounds like you're in for some professional repair to the ceiling, so maybe the person you bring in to do that might be able to trace the leak.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the help.

The a.c. man admits fault and is going to repair everything.

I was planning on cleaning out the attic, closets, and garage anyway to get the house ready to put on the market over the next few months, so this incident just gave me a head start. And a freshlly painted ceiling and walls and repaired floor will only help sell ........... I hope!

Thanks for the tips that night guys. It helped a lot when I finally got in touch with the a.c. man the next day....... I had "suggestions" for him. (I bet repairmen love it when women have 'suggestions' on how they should do their job, right?)

Here's the follow up - kind of funny to me........but most things are.

The a.c. man didn't seal a joint when replacing the a.c. and so I ended up with this a couple of weeks ago in the middle of the night.


So the a.c. man came back to fix the problem and agreed to pay for repairs. The damage is to the whole ceiling, not just the area where it opened.

So now I've got this all week:


Which is okay - except for this minor problem....... Reggie



The cat loves being on the scaffold with the repairman - and as you can see there are no safety rails. Reggie plays with the guys stuff around up there too and gets in his way sometimes. Although Jose loves having the cat follow him around, I fear one of them is going to fall. I'm not sure Jose always lands on his feet like Reggie does!

Curiosity is what killed the cat!

I have a couple cats and see where that saying came from.

Hopefully Jose has been on that scaffolding enough to know how to avoid falling off. As for Reggie, well he's a cat. Probably the worst thing that could happen to him is Jose dropping a tool on him...or stepping on his tail.

Cats love high places, and if that scaffold had a rail Reggie would probably be perched on it. Juan's feet, though could be a problem; he could fall trying to not step on Reggie. Can you arrange to feed Reggie when Juan goes up the scaffold?

(Do you know the kind of insurance coverage that applies? Is there any? )

Yes, and I have that kind of insurance........ lot's of it. It could be very beneficial for Jose. But - Jose finished today and neither fell. Come to think of it...... I haven't seen Reggie in a while. I wonder if Jose took him with him. Oh well.....