Panic, clothes on and in the car! I was driving there half asleep trying to convince myself that it’s not that bad the floor is rubber and can be dried and carpet tiles can be dried out. As I arrived and opened the door I could hear gallons of rushing water, it was deafening, my stomach turned I didnt want to go in.
I switched on the lights on. There was water everywhere and I waded to the toilet. All the pipes were fine!!
Then I noticed there was water dripping from the ceiling in the toilet, I stepped back out and then looked up. There was water pouring in all along one side of the unit down the wall and through the ceiling. I quickly left the building and rang the landlord to tell him it was coming from above. He sent the electrician to find the leak. Jon had arrived at this time and we found the electrician on the top floor drenched holding on to a split pipe gushing with water that he could not stop. I said ‘just bend it out of the window’ and so he did. He then found the stop tap and switched the water off.
Jon the electrictian and some of the other mill workers then started to sweep the water from the top floor, then the next one and then got to mine. The water was obviously still coming through but was easing off. It was about 7.50am and I thought my alarm is going to go off in a minute and I’ll wake up in bed and it will have been a bad dream. I was beginning to feel a bit sick at this point, when would the water stop, how long will it take to dry? what’s ruined? how long will we have to close? I have a heelwork to music routine assessment in two weeks, this wasnt in my schedule!!!!
As the water had come in through the ceiling it had soaked the office, kitchen and daycare area and come through those ceilings. We got a pump and started to pump the water out from one side of the unit and then onto the other. The running water had eased off now too, I started to feel a bit better seeing the water level inside the unit go down. The rubber floor is sealed except for the edges so we knew the water would have got under there.
We mopped the excess water off the rubber and then began to lift the floor with the help of Matt who has been out walking all the dogs for me!! The rubber floor weights just over 2 ton! Once we has lifted and rolled all this we dried the DPM and then lifted that. The concrete floor was wet but not too bad. We mopped the excess off and lifted all the carpet tiles and put them all on their sides to dry. The office and kitchen were fine except for the floor and carpets which had to be ripped up and binned. The daycare is all UPVC lined and tiled so most of this is fine but the ceilings have some damp patches that need to dry.
We decided that the show must go on and after some last minute contingency planning we laid out our old rubber mats from the church hall which I still had and ran classes as usual. Stewart did Mondays classes and I went home to bed! We even managed agility but we had to have all the contacts low and on the rubber mats. We decided due to the restriction of equipment we would have to be creative and set up a mixed agility and rally obedience course which the classes thoroughly enjoyed.
The centre is drying nicely now thanks to the help from people at the mill and lots of fans and humidifiers and we should be able to re-lay the floor at weekend and back to business as usuall!!
The carpet tiles and rubber floor are all dry and nice and clean, my books are fine and the water was clean water so its not soo bad! Lucky for us there is actually very little damage at all.
Must get on with that routine!!!
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