Hooray for plumbers!

When our heating system turned on for the first time last night, it seemed to work fine... until Kim heard a dripping sound start near the furnace a couple of hours later. Turns out that the expansion tank attached to the radiator system had sprung a pinhole leak, which was gleefully spraying warm water across the furnace room. Our attempts to patch over it with tape were ineffective (too much pressure, I guess), but they did replace the wild spray with a steady trickle. So we put a bucket underneath, turned off a valve that we hoped would do some good (the trickle did slow, but only slightly), and waited for morning.

Well, we sort of waited. The leak was producing about two gallons of water per hour, and our largest bucket holds about five gallons. So I got up every two hours or so to pop down and empty it out. When morning finally rolled around, I called the plumbers whom the previous owners had told us "know the house inside and out". They had a guy who was able to come to the house right between my two morning classes, and it was a pretty quick fix. I even learned what a few of the valves do!

All in all, not a pleasant night, but for our first potential major home crisis I think it went remarkably well.