The plumber came last night, and it was a “good news, bad news” event. The bad news was that we do indeed have a leak in the ceiling over Beck’s office. The good news is that the only time it leaks is when the outside faucet is turned on. We can control that, so we didn’t have to shut off the water to the house, and we’re in control of our leaking destiny.

He’ll be back by tonight to fix it — didn’t have the right parts with him — and that’s a good thing. However, the scope of the damage is not yet known. There’s some damage in the ceiling, wall and baseboard right at the point of the leak, but I don’t know if there’s any additional damage we need to look at.

So what caused this? Well, the current theory is that the loss of power during the dead of our winter ice storm is the most likely culprit. I cover the outside faucets with a nice styrofoam insulating cup, but when the temperature dipped so low both inside and outside… well, it seems that those temperatures could have caused the initial break in the pipe.

Tonight, we’ll sleep to the sound of a rented dehumidifier running downstairs, and hopefully have Becky’s office functional tonight, and back to normal in a week or two.

I’m still left with some questions about long-term archival storage of images and media, but that’s a topic for a different day! 🙂