My friend Chinchih bought her house "as is". Because of that, ever since she moved in, her home repair became the constant topic of our conversations. After the owners beefed up the insulation, replaced the water heater, installed solar panels (and numerous other fixes I lost count), the only repair left was the water leaking. The plumber they hired (another story there) relied on his experience to diagnose the cause. He first suggested replacing some old piping, which the owners followed. No use. Then he suspected the water was from the bath tub. They wrapped the bath tub, still the leaking happened. Then he thought the wall in the bathroom was not properly sealed and suggested the owners to use this chance to do some home remodeling.
Frustrated, the owners decided to take things into their own hands and solve this mystery scientifically (after all, my friend Chinchih was not getting her Biophysics PhD for nothing). The solution? They decided to use fruit dye as tracer and try it on different water sources to see where the leak was really from. So last week I accompanied my friend to Smart&Final and bought a bottle of fruit dye. (We settled on the beautiful blue color used in making cup cakes.) After a few trials, lo and behold, they found the source. It was from the toilet! (They just put the fruit dye into the water tank and after a few flushes, viola, there was blue water leaking out.) They could finally confidently tell the plumber where to fix. (The plumber then used an endoscope like device to look and confirmed it.) After that, as far as I know, no water (especially blue water) is leaking as of now.
P.S. lesson learned, instead of thinking of your old house as a money pit, treat it like a science project.
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