Got Mop?

Karen called and said that there is water leaking in the garage from the spigot. It's not leaking though. I come home to see that the cinder blocks are all moist like there has been water leaking slowly out for a bit. I can hear water in the wall but both the bathroom on the other side of the garage and it are dry... for now. Thinking that it a bad spigot I open up a small V of drywall under neath the spigot in the garage since it was just a tapped in peice anyway. That's when I heard the noise get louder. I went into the bathroom and turned the water off to the toilet but that didn't stop it. Then I saw water coming out from underneath the wall and molding. After running back and forth from the garage to the bathroom and then closet I couldn't see or find the pipe leaking. So I tried the shutoff valve and relized I didn't know where it was. I only had the shutoffs for the washing machine and hot water heater. I found some towels to help stop the water which now was out of the closet, bathroom and making it's way on the pergot (fake wood) floor and towards the front door and carpet. I took my shoes off because i didn't want to get them wet. Of course wet feet and pergot don't get a long and as I was walking towards the kitchen slipped and fell on my back but kept my right leg under me as I went down smashing it into the wall. I looked at the wall first when I got up slowly thinking I just punched hole through it with my knee but amazingly it was intact, my knee didn't fare so well. It was sore but I had to stop the water. I called Karen thinking she might have an idea as to where the water vavle shutoff was. She remembered that in our pantry there is a tall wooden board in the back. Hope that was it, I ripped down to shelves and pulled a lot of food out of the pantry and foudn the door .... screwed shut with flat head screws. I grabbed a pry bar to pull it open and couldn't get the leverage. I then went to get the screw driver and finally got two screws out and pulled the board out. Right under the stairs I see the shutoff valved and finally shut the water off. Next I get a mop and a bucket and start the drying out. Karen got home and gave me the third degree to which I rambled and hobbled around until she understood that I hadn't started to hit the spigot with a hammer to break anything. We called a plumber to help us out but after we explained that the water seemed to be coming up from the floor he mentioned jack hammering the floor worst case. I have visions of not having water for days and bills in the 4 digits. When he came out we cracked the water on just a bit and found that the water was now shooting out a hole in the closet about 2 feet off the ground. WTF? He opens the wall up and finds that there is a valve IN THE WALL that had cracked. Why is there a valve hidden in the wall and why did it crack. He had no idea and hadn't seen it before. So 45 minutes later he put in a straight pipe and gave us a bill. Our pergot floor is history and were hoping the carpet is ok too but the next fun part of the story is to come. We called the insurance company because we have insurance to pay for this kind of stuff. They'll cover it but our rates will go up because this is our 2nd claim. Our first claim was a tree falling on a fence and this claim pushes over a new policy limit of 2 claims to get rate increase. "Just like an auto policy" the insurance claims. We don't drive our house around wrecklessly how the hell can you impose a policy such as this?

So now we will submit the claim and then look around for a new home owners and car insurance. Whoopeee!