Well, these days I’m reading so many books I’ll probably just pick book club books that I’ve already finished reading. Thus, the pace of the book club episodes will be entirely upon the shoulders of Rym.
Obviously I am team Fox Gambit.
The house I grew up in was built in the 1970s, and the people who built it were either dumb or lazy. A part of the water pipe system runs along the outside wall of the house between the floors, in a place that was not insulated. In New England during the winter, this is bad. We often had to let the kitchen sink drip all night long to keep water running through those pipes so they didn’t freeze overnight.
One winter, it was cold enough that it froze anyway. This is where we discovered the problem with the pipe layout, as we came home one day to discover the ceiling in the finished basement bowing out in that scary way. We knew what was inevitable, so I went to the garage to get a bucket and a drill to poke a hole to let the pressure out, but while I was up there, the whole portion of the ceiling collapsed. We lost the ceiling, the carpets, the walls, and the water tank closet. They all had to be ripped out and the entire basement remodeled. Luckily that was after my brother had moved out, since that used to be his bedroom and he had lots of expensive music production equipment stored down there. Ever since that day, I wouldn’t even risk putting anything valuable in that basement - I wouldn’t even leave my laptop down there unattended in case it happened again.
Nice, I’m ready for the Pain.
I’ve read it twice before, but it mostly loses me about two thirds of the way through. I have only a vague recollection of how it ends. Which might be the point.
From what I remember of the plot, that’s very on point for the meta story about memory.
There was some water in the ceiling once when it rained that one time. Then we patched the roof. Then there was no more water in the ceiling.
Identical story for most people?
Most of my life I grew up in a house which my parents built, so it was constructed better than most, and we never had water leakage. There was some water damage in parts of the roof that weren’t done that well, but we fixed all that when we replaced it a decade ago (that was legit a fun project).
I guess we’ve also been pretty lucky in our apartment living so far since I haven’t had any problems with water thus far. In our last place we did get a little bit of grayness in the kitchen ceiling due to the washer overflowing one time, but it never got any worse so never did anything about it. Let the landlord decide what to do with it now that we’re out of there.
I’ve had water in the ceiling twice, both times it was air conditioning. First was in Texas in a rental, the drain for the pan under the system was clogged so when primary failed it filled up. Tech unclogged the drain, stuff dried.
Second time was our new house. No pan under the system, no auxiliary drain, no proper trap in the main drain, and the primary drain was too small. As part of closing corrections a water sensor was added to prevent flooding in the event the primary drain failed since the location of the system made it impossible to put a pan underneath. Stupid technician did not put it directly under the system so failed to detect the water.
Never fun to come home a few weeks after moving in and hear it raining in a closet. Re-plumed the main drain with proper sized drain and trap, added the proper auxiliary drain, and put the wet sensor actually in the unit where water would first go. Ahh home ownership, a constant flow of “what stupid shit did the last owner do here”.
A few years ago I lived in a tall apartment building. It had a pool on the roof.
The pool didn’t stay in the pool, and ruined I think 13 floors of apartments below it.
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And then I get to watch myself making choices that will make a future owner wonder the same thing.
Seriously, why didn’t I run network cable before sheetrocking the garage? Past Peter was such an idiot.
Meanwhile, no water in the ceiling here, but apparently when you get gutter guards you need to clean them off or else your fancy water abatement system won’t work the way it’s supposed to, so now we got some water in the basement. All my yay.
At least we know how to fix it this time.
A friend of mine had a pipe burst in his second floor bathroom while he was out of town. He came back to 3 feet of water in the basement. House was a total loss.
Water. It’s no fuckin’ good.
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We had a pipe loose under the shower tray when I lived at my brother’s house. That brought the kitchen ceiling down. Had to tell him and he fixed it all up.
Then when I lived in a flat in the old Ovaltine factory rain came through all the ceilings walls and around the window of my bedroom. The room was so cold and damp, even my bedsheets were clammy. The building management gave me a dehumidifier the next day to borrow until they’d fixed it.
And when we moved into our bought house we detected a leak above the kitchen on Christmas morning. The sealant on the shower was poor so when the shops reopened a few days later I redid all the sealant.
I know it sounds like that! But the building had an actual rooftop pool.
I will never, ever hear that “the pool in the roof sprung a leak” and not giggle and think about crash override hacking with his leet dank source codes.
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As I always say, Hackers and The Craft are the same movie with different proper nouns. And I love them both.
Even the Olympics cannot escape.