Pipe busted

Elin

So, my apartment is heated by steam. It goes through these baseboard heater things. This morning, the pipe obviously busted. Hot water is fucking STREAMING into our bedroom. The carpet is soaked halfway to the door already and, as my boxspring sits on my floor, it is presumably getting just as soaked.

My question is, if they ever manage to get the water stopped on the weekend, how the fuck do I get this shit to dry out in the middle of winter? Gallons of water are fucking pouring out right now by the second really. It's going to be soaking my hallway soon I think.

I have no idea how to fix this (if the water ever gets stopped).

Aumni

How responsive is your landlord?

Elin

Water is centrally located in the building. Maintenance has access... the office is calling maintenance... but they kind of aren't answering their phone.

Bendery It Like Beckham

There should be a street level water cut-off. You might need a wrench though.

edit: oh I'm probably 3 hours too late.

But for best chance of drying it out, you're gonna need heaters and a dehumidifier.

Elin

They had to turn off the boiler to stop the water since it was a busted radiator, nothing I would have had any access to. They replaced the radiator in the bedroom and had a carpet guy come out to suck out most of the water from the carpet. Our box spring is soaked because that was resting right on the carpet. We have a fan going to dry out the rest of the carpet but I'm not how good this will dry being it's the middle of winter and it keeps snowing. This is as moist oa Colorado ever gets. I think we have negative humidity most of the time and now that I need something to dry out we keep getting precipitation.

Midshipman

Elin wrote: »

I think we have negative humidity most of the time and now that I need something to dry out we keep getting precipitation.

There is no such thing as negative humidity.

Also for drying things out, your most effective solution would be to point some kind of electric heater/fan unit at the box spring as a sort of industrial hair dryer. Be sure to avoid running the heater too hot or placing it too close to the bed of course. If you don't want to spend the electricity, you could try using rice or maybe some desiccant packs to passively absorb some of the moisture, but that will take much longer.

zepherin

Use fans against the baseboards on the wall and corner. Then drop dehumidifiers. Also you can pump water out. steam cleaners will pull water out of carpet too. Spray a funguscide on the wet carpet and box spring.

Ashaman42

I've heard cat litter in tights works quite well at sucking up water. Keep meaning to try it in my car as one of the doors is leaking into the footwell.

tntc.tig

I would advise against running a heater to try to dry things out. It'd really suck to replace a water problem with a fire problem The cat litter thing might work, or some other desiccant. Some of our furniture came with big bags of that Silica gel stuff. Might want to try packing it with those. A shop vac may help get most of the wet our of the mattress. I know it's the day after, but it wouldn't surprise me if your stuff was still damp

Frei

Definitely get something that kills fungus and spray the stuff down, you don't want to deal with mildew/mold, really hard to get rid of the smell once it gets in there.

Jebus314

tntc.tig wrote: »

I would advise against running a heater to try to dry things out. It'd really suck to replace a water problem with a fire problem The cat litter thing might work, or some other desiccant. Some of our furniture came with big bags of that Silica gel stuff. Might want to try packing it with those. A shop vac may help get most of the wet our of the mattress. I know it's the day after, but it wouldn't surprise me if your stuff was still damp

Additionally, that hot humid air is going to condense on the first cold thing it hits, which will probably be inside your apartment still. So this will probably just spread the problem around, unless you also have dehumidifiers going.

Elin

Well, the carpet actually dried in less than 24 hours with a heavy duty fan on it. My theory is that the state of Colorado itself acts as a desiccant.