Hard to believe how many mouse turds we found in an insulation packed short knee wall under the stone ledge in our living room. A short brick and mortar wall carried copper pipe that circulated water from our boiler but it pooped one winter when the heat went off while a previous owner was in sunny Florida. We heard all this from the neighbors after we we bought the house and after I opened a shut-off valve in the basement below and quickly spotted water gushing from the ceiling.
I talked to Clarence, the man that built our house in the late forties and who recently died at 100, and he said it should be a pretty simple job to fix this thing. Simple for Clarence maybe but a circular saw, chisel and shop vac can really make a mess in your living room. With encouragement from our heating guy and the can-do willpower of Pete Monacelli we were able to find the weak spot where the copper popped. That ledge by the big window, the coldest spot in our living room, will once agin be the warmest spot in the house, the way Jackie and Jill, who grew up in our house, described it.
Leave a comment