You wouldn’t think that a three-story house located on a hillside about 100 feet of elevation above the Avon River could suffer flood damage to all three floors…but that is what happened to Scott’s house at 21 Calton Walk in Bath. Around Christmas of 2009 there was a cold snap that froze the water line that fed into a large holding tank in the attic.
I guess the normal water pressure wasn’t high enough to keep water flowing all the time on all floors, so they stored a couple hundred gallons in the attic to help maintain pressure all the time. When the pipe feeding this froze the water in the pipe expanded and broke the pipe. When the temperature warmed up a bit in a few days the pipe thawed and water flowed out of it into the attic, and then ran down through the three levels below. This pretty much destroyed the ceiling and floor on each level, and spread out enough to damage walls and the contents of the house.
This probably went on for a week or more, until the neighbors returned from their Christmas vacation during the first week of January, 2010. They heard water running and noticed that one of their walls was damp.
During the next few months Scott hired people to haul off all the damaged stuff and strip the walls and ceilings down to studs and joists. The floors were stripped down to the wooden floor boards.
Since Scott was living with his girlfriend Rose in Solva at this time, he didn’t rush in to repair it.