This past week we’ve had some exciting sewer, pipe and plumbing adventures at Zoom Creates. Our office is in the old Freightliner factory on NW Quimby, and the ancient warehouse building is expressing its age this week through overflowing toilets and a very elusive burst pipe.

I’m very glad to say that Zoom didn’t experience these overflowing toilets; our neighbors two doors down, who are apparently downhill from us, bore the brunt of the back up. But a crew of plumbers has been roaming around our offices going on 4 days now, swinging beeping pipe detectors around the floor, pushing camera-wielding snakes down the drains, and making some crazy thumping and pounding noises in our bathrooms, all in an effort to locate the broken pipe. They’re on a mission.

On Friday they thought they’d hit the jackpot: their sensors and detectors beeped like crazy over a spot in our storage room. They spent the weekend digging a huge square hole down through the concrete floor and into the bowels of the earth, making a huge pile of dirt in the middle of the room. All this, only to locate a perfectly intact pipe sitting there innocent as can be. I can only imagine there was some swearing and frustration at that point.

Now Monday arrives and their hunt starts anew. There’s a theory that the pipe takes a 90-degree turn and heads out to the street, so our plumber friends will be swinging their detectors out front today, possibly joined by representatives from our fair city. Good luck and godspeed, plumber guys. We wish you the best of luck in finding that burst pipe, and are really, really glad that our bathrooms work.