It's Raining in the Garage

As the garage door opened on Sunday morning, I noticed something was wrong. It was raining in the garage.

After twisting the water cut-off value, I went into the garage to investigate. The entire place was a mess. A large part of the ceiling had collapsed over my '72 GMC and the workbench next to it. Everything on the bench was soaked. Across the room, water was rolling down the face of the cabinets that I had recently built onto another workbench below them. Many tools were lying in the torrent of water. Water was close to an 1" deep on the floor at the lowest spot in the garage.

The last few days have been really cold. I had heard this was the coldest winter we have had in 6 years. I spent several hours in the shop on Saturday just generally cleaning up. (And I finally got around to putting door handles on the cabinets as well as touching up the paint) The clean up effort was in vain, the place was a mess.

I spent most of Sunday afternoon dragging stuff out of the garage, and sweeping and vacuuming up water. After removing most of the water, I setup a box fan to assist in drying out the garage. (I took several photos before the cleanup effort began for the insurance company. )

It appears that a copper pipe in the unfinished upstairs area had frozen. The pipe has about a one inch split that runs lengthwise. After splitting, water sprayed upward. Some water went down the stairwell but it appears most ran across the floor and down into an A/C vent. The duct-work filled with water and the ceiling collapsed under the weight. When the ceiling collapsed, the duct was ripped in half above the ceiling. At this point water was running across the top side of the ceiling and downs the walls.

Upstairs, most of my hardwood supply got wet. I store the wood standing upright to save space. The bottom end of every board has soaked up water. About six to nine inches of each board is swollen. The boards will not dry back evenly. Hard wood is fairly expensive and my stash is all wet. This discovery made me sad.

Back down stairs, I noticed that my planer and chop saw had been subjected to the flow of water as well. I also had a soggy box of truck parts. On the truck, the new bolts had already started rusting. This was frustrating. For about three years now I have been working on the truck - taking it apart, sandblasting the parts to remove all rust, painting them, and putting it back together. It was discouraging to see some rust forming on the truck I had worked so hard to remove it from. I realize the truck would have eventually gotten wet, but my plan was to finish it first.

While cleaning out the garage, I was glad I had sold the 1925 Chevrolet. The ceiling caved in right above where the truck was normally parked. I am not sure that truck would have ever recovered from that much water.