The floor in our kitchen started getting swollen. Hmm maybe it’s the humidity, I thought? So I turned off this extra humidifier I had running. Okay and I put our big box fan on that too. Another day I wonder that okay if it is next to the dishwasher maybe there is a leak? I unscrew the dish washer floor plate and I see yea it is wet there. I am gaffing around with the insulation ard I realize I can just take it out. And then I see it, wow a gentle water leak at the place that connects to the fresh water. I try to capture the water in different ways. First I use an oven pan that is too big because the floor board has now started to open up once I took out that floor plate, because it was putting pressure on the floor. Okay so I use a smaller oven pan but that is still not ideal because when I try to take it pick it up it is really easy to spill anyway I go between that and little dishes that fill up way too fast. I’m trying to work too so I don’t have time to solve this problem since I’m trying to solve work problems too! I get a spare minute and as I’m realizing it is getting late and my building maintenance request is not going to get looked into today I realize there is a good chance I will still be switching this leak oven pan through the night if I don’t shut the water off.
I try to switch off what I had been told a while back is the apartment shut off value but it is not budging. And I don’t want to break it with too much strength I know that another plumbing emergency is possible if I cause the main shut off value to leak. It is now pretty late, I have made some dinner and I am looking at this in another light, fresh eyes. I send a photo to chatgpt of the main shut off valves. Well there are two because one is cold one is hot. Not sure why but I ask about what water goes to the dishwasher and chatgpt says typically hot. Oh okay the cold was tight but I try the hot and that actually closes easily! However the leak continues–now therefore only now I am thinking wait maybe there is a shutoff for the dish washer closer under the sink. I have actually installed, fixed messed with dishwasher water connections in the past but for some reason I did not remember it. Anyway now I am looking and I can see the hot water connection going through from the dishwasher into the space under the sink. Wow! So yea the person who told me about the apartment main shut off value basically didn’t know what they were talking about. Of course like all the other valves in this apartment, this under the sink hot valve was a little cranky (or not cranky depending on how you see it?) and so I had to apply wd 40 a few times and then I was finally able to close it by hand.
