Once again, my husband woke me up in the middle of the night a few days ago because he heard something that didn't sound right. He's not hearing burglars, or sirens outside. He seems to have this sixth sense (or very sharp ears) when it comes to the mechanics of the house and for some reason it always strikes while I am sound asleep.
This time he said that he heard water running. Since it was around 3 a.m. that was very strange. We did have house guests at the time, so he thought that maybe one of them decided to take a shower or something. He walked around the house and figured out that the water sound was clearly coming from the guest bathroom, but he didn't want to open the door and surprise our guests.
He came back and reported his findings to me (I was already dozing again) and asked if I would take the "honor" of opening the door to the bathroom to check things out. There were no lights on, so I was fairly certain that no one was showering. There was still a chance someone was in there, so I carefully opened the door and was relieved to find that no one was in the bathroom. There is a second door to the bathroom that connects it to the guest room, which I carefully closed to avoid disturbing our guests.
The sink was not running and neither was the shower, so that only left the toilet. I heard the sound of water, but there were no visible signs of water gushing anywhere. I jiggled the handle on the toilet, but that didn't do anything. This bathroom is only a couple of years old, so the toilet is fairly new. I quietly left the bathroom and reported no people in the bathroom and no obvious water flowing to my husband who was waiting in the hallway. Next he checked the sump pump and the ejection pump and determined that the ejection pump was working overtime. He realized that the sound of the ejection pump going off and on is what woke him up. The pump looked fine and seemed to be working properly.
Back we went into the bathroom. My husband turned on the light that is over the shower so that we could see better. He removed the cover to the toilet tank and glared into the tank which had barely an inch of water in it (the tank is supposed to fill up after each flush, so clearly there was something wrong). As his sleepy eyes adjusted to the dim light, he spotted a piece of paper, actually a tag of some sort, that got caught in the mechanics of the tank. Apparently this tag had been affixed to the side of the tank, and over time it came loose and got caught in the wrong place.
Had we not discovered this stupid piece of paper when we did, I assume that our water bill would've gone through the roof. And maybe there would've been an impact on the ejection pump from working so hard - who knows.
If I had been home alone I would've slept through the whole thing. Our house guests heard the water noise and they thought that we were showering or that it was our dishwasher running.
Thankfully my husband catches these things. This isn't the first strange noise he found in the middle of the night, and I'm sure it won't be the last. There have been some false alarms, but I guess I'd rather have that then deal with the consequences of ignoring the strange noises, which have revealed a variety of malfunctioning items plus some baby squirrels in the attic.
Thanks for reading.
nsk
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