Owning a Home Is Great Until It Starts Leaking

We had some heavy rains last night and this morning, and as a result the heating duct thingamajig leaked water into our laundry room. Luckily a pile of dirty laundry was underneath it to collect the dirty roof water. Bonus for the fact that our new comforter and sheets were on top of the pile and absorbed the majority of it. Great.

But even more important than my dirty(er) laundry is the fact that there is water coming into the house in ways that it should not, and is therefore potentially rotting away the wood surrounding the duct work. I looked at the vents and they are covered in water stains so I'm sure this isn't the first time this has happened.

And that leads me to the assumption that there are other things wrong with our house that the previous owners kept to themselves.

The previous owner was a contractor of sorts and remodeled most of the house. We really appreciate that. Unfortunately, he was a teensy bit careless about certain things. For instance, he installed a jacuzzi tub in the bathroom but there was no outlet for it. Rather than create a new outlet in the bathroom, he plugged the tub into an extension cord and then put the extension cord through a hole in the floor and plugged it into an outlet in the laundry room. Nice and safe!

He also installed a new heater in the basement and then never had the gas company come out to inspect and approve it. There was also a missing fire guard on the 20 year old water heater. So, next to the unapproved gas heater was a semi-open flame. Fantastic! Luckily, the entire house didn't have the chance to blow up before the inspector caught it.

Obviously, the inspection is worth the money. But even then you're not guaranteed that your house won't start leaking at the seams once you move in. I'm hoping that if there was something really wrong with the house we would have found it out by now. But days like today make me really wonder.